Thursday, December 17, 2009

Overheard: Charity

“Charity is impatience with God. That’s all it is. Doing something God ought to have done already but God didn’t do it and finally it pissed you off enough you decided, fine, I’ll do it myself, and I’ll have a talk with that G.O.D. when I see him.

“There are so many paths to God, so many attitudes one can assume: friend, slave, child, mother but nowhere in the sacred treatises will you see 'God as roommate' discussed as a sacred path. And that is because God SUCKS as a roommate. God will leave the dishes in the sink forever.

“And all God’s codependents, all God’s buttbuddies, will try to explain it away: God is busy, God couldn’t possibly be expected to --, maybe God thinks this would be a nice time for YOU to develop your leadership skills. More generally everyone will just pretend that the dishes aren’t there or even that it’s the dishes own damn fault.

“And this is how charity arises, charity means being entirely pissed off and fed up. To such an extreme degree that you decide, fuck it, I’ll just do it myself. This is charity, and naturally it is virtue most prized by God, since it gives God one less thing to do.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Believing that there is a God, I think that S/He, like you, is impatient with a great deal of our situation--past, present, and what's next (or between). I've never sincerely believed in a higher power that would solve our problems externally like a magician, but I definitely don't have a waterproof answer to the problems of pain, suffering, and the injustices that destroy our dignity in light of a benevolent creator. Christ certainly did not
offer a comforting way of life to his followers, and he's certainly where I begin when people pose the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" I'm never able to respond directly, but I think that the question is not the right question, like "What is the meaning of life?" It's definitely just not the proper place to begin. But maybe this perspective is all rhetoric and bullshit, and I'm trying to justify it. It gives another perspective, at least, despite its flaws.


I'm not a fanatic; hell, I wasn't even a believer for a long stint. But it's made some sense to me--not complete or fully comprehensible, I'll admit.

Whatever you do, I respect your impatience, and I hope that your charity changes the situation.

And of course:
Merry Christmas.