Judgement Day

For one man, Judgement Day has been and gone. He has stood before the throne and awaited God's decision. He was not a believer and when he saw that he was wrong, he expected eternal damnation. But God surprised him. We should never assume that we know what God will do or what He wants. He is not tame and predictable. Nothing that commands so much respect from so many people could be.
This is a story of that man's surprise.

When God didn't immediately damn him, he decided that perhaps God was a little busy and he had better occupy himself. He saw there was no point in running away as God, being omnipotent, would find him again. He had expected crowds of people behind him, as seeing how this was Judgement Day, the whole world should be lining up. And he had been feeling a little hurt that he seemed to be at the front of the queue and this presumably meant that God thought he most deserved to be damned. He had once run over a cat, but it was an accident and he had cried for hours, although he would never admit that to anyone, except God of course because he already knew. The only thing he'd really done wrong was that he didn't believe in God. So he didn't think he should be at the front of the queue.

But when he turned around, he couldn't see anyone else, apart from those angels, sort of there and sort of not. It was just him and them. And God, of course. He thought he had better turn back around and see of God was still there. Perhaps He might have forgotten about him. But then he realised that God wouldn't forget anything. Maybe he should remind God that he was still waiting, although he didn't really mind waiting. But he couldn't really just walk up and tap God on the shoulder.

He realised he had been standing there for quite a long time. Except that time probably didn't exist here, even though it felt like it. He guessed that was just his soul being used to earthly ties. Except he didn't believe he had a soul.

'If you don't have a soul what's standing in front of me?' remarked God. 'I mean, your relatives are going to find it pretty strange if this is really your earthly body and I've just whisked it away from its coffin, and then when they come to bury you, there's nothing to bury. Don't you think?'

‘If it’s Judgement Day I think that’s the last thing they’ll be worrying about.' the man replied, without thinking. Then he realised that he'd just spoken to someone he didn't believe in and also that perhaps this meant God was in the mood for a bit of philosophical debate before he was damned. And he decided that this was probably a good idea, seeing as it would put off going to hell.

‘Who said it was Judgement Day?’ asked God. He looked at the angels. ‘None of you told him that, did you?’

The angels didn’t exactly shake their heads, but the man sensed that they were telling God no. He thought he could feel the waves of denial radiating off them. He also felt rather puzzled. If it wasn’t Judgement Day, then why was he here being judged? He said this to God, rather amazed at his own daring.

‘I didn’t say you weren’t being judged, I just said it wasn’t Judgement Day. In fact I didn’t even say that, but I suppose I did rather imply it.’ answered God.

‘Is it or is it not Judgement Day?’ said the man. He was feeling rather confused at this point but also rather determined that he wanted to win this argument, just so as to show God, as it were. He wasn’t going to lose to some one he didn’t believe in.

‘No. It isn’t.’

‘So…. Why am I here again?’ asked the man, thinking he was getting the upper hand at last (he was also quite surprised about this, but the real surprises are yet to come).

‘You’re dead. Dead people go to heaven or hell. I decide who goes where. So you’re here while I decide.’

God was starting to sound a little impatient, thought the man. Better be careful. Then he realised what God had just said. ‘Hold on, when did I become dead?’ he demanded, feeling like this was not going his way at all. ‘I didn’t die, at least no-one told me I did.’

‘I just did.’ said God. ‘Now…’

The man stopped listening. He started to feel that perhaps God had gone a little crazy from being on his own so long without any company like himself. A bit like astronauts do on their own in space. Suddenly he caught himself wandering down a path of thought that passed through the question of is God lonely and ended with the thought of marriage but then rather inevitably decided to extend a little further and enter the quagmire of sex. Stop there, he told his thoughts, firmly.

‘Yes,’ said God. ‘I think stopping there is probably a good idea. If you must know I decided to skip all that bit and go straight to children. I suppose omnipotence was quite useful there. Although I didn’t exactly skip it, I just hired a third party to do it on my behalf. Anyway the point is that you’re dead, and I have to decide whether to send you to heaven or hell. Please pay attention’

‘It must be fairly obvious surely. I don’t even believe in you!’ exclaimed the man. He was beginning to feel extremely confused, and he just thought he’d heard God say that He’d hired the Holy Spirit to have sex with the Virgin Mary on His behalf. Which meant she wasn’t properly a virgin even if the Holy Spirit hadn’t exactly entered in the normal manner. He wondered if perhaps the philosophical debate was a bad idea and it might be better just to go straight to hell.

‘This isn’t a philosophical debate, this is your trial. Don’t tell me you hadn’t even worked that out yet.’ God said. ‘Although that would explain why you seem more inclined to talk about my having or having not done it than your defence.’

‘Trial?’ cried the man. ‘And no, I don’t normally discuss my judge’s sex life with him before he sentences me. I say normally, but actually, I’ve never been in this situation before. Could we just perhaps pretend that in fact we haven’t had this conversation and just forget it?’

‘Ok, we’ll start again. Deep breath. So. This is your trial, welcome to the courtroom, you’ll notice the lack of jury and the very impressive judge,’ said God, in a tour guide sort of voice. ‘Me,’ He added.

‘Yes, well I had got that far,’ said the man. He was going to ask how long this was likely to take, but the tour guide voice put him off. It was exactly like those tour guides that say ‘Any questions’ in a there better not be tone and then rush straight on to the next piece of million year old stone.

‘Right, get started then’, encouraged God. The man looked up. ‘Get started? It’s not fair, there isn’t a jury. I mean, you are omniscient so you already know everything about me, so you must have already made your mind up. I need an impartial jury!’ complained the man.

‘So you can lie to them?’ inquired God.

The man realised that he might well have just made a rather big mistake. He backpedalled. ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that. I just meant I could, well, present things in a different light, perhaps…’

‘Hello? Omniscient? Not going to work.’

‘So why bother with a trial? You must have already decided.’

God sighed. ‘I can only decide when you tell me what to decide. It’s that whole free will thing. I gave you free will, that means you also have the choice to choose whether you want to go to heaven or hell.’

‘Why would anyone choose hell? Unless they’re a pyromaniac or something?’ The man was extremely puzzled and extremely surprised. God had just told him he could choose whether he wanted to go to heaven or hell. There must be a catch

‘There’s no catch. It was one of the mistakes I made. Fortunately I’ve found a way round it.’ said God, sounded both annoyed at making a mistake, and pleased that He could get round something declared by an omnipotent, omniscient etc. etc. being.

‘How?’

‘I use their better nature.’ God said.

The man laughed. Then he realised that laughing at God was probably one of the most stupid things he’d ever done. Suppose God lost His temper and decided to just wipe him from existence. He stopped laughing and said, ‘Better nature?’

‘Yes,’ agreed God. ‘Everyone has a better nature, I know, I made everyone. It’s just that most people suppress it. Then when I free it here they realise what’s happened and choose hell.’

‘But what about upbringing? Take people abused as children. They’re more likely to abuse their own children. That statistic isn’t their fault. When you’re growing other people can suppress your better nature.’

‘Now we’re on to culpability.’ God said. ‘Who should I blame. That’s another thing I leave up to you. Well, not you personally, but people.’

‘You leave the answer to philosophical debates to us? People who think the best way of settling it is to kill everyone that doesn’t agree? Haven’t you paid any attention to our history at all?’ The man was incensed. ‘So what do you do, every time someone says something was someone else’s fault, just go assign that someone else an extra few years in hell?’

‘I told you; they decide whether they go to hell or not. The point is that I have to go with the majority decision. If your society thinks that the government is to blame for loads of people dying in some war, then when they come up here, they look back at their life and they think, that wasn’t my fault, I don’t deserve to go to hell, there wasn’t anything I could do. So they pick heaven. But if everyone thinks that actually you were all a bit responsible then when they look back they think, oh, I should have done something, it’s my fault, and they pick hell. It all comes back down to free will.’ explained God.

At least, He obviously thought He was explaining, but the man thought he’d never heard anything so ridiculous or unfair in his life. It sounded to the man like it just consisted of God doing as little as possible. He was surprised God ever got round to sending the Holy Spirit down to have…to impregnate…Mary on his behalf.

‘Can we get back to the point. Your life. Reviewing? Remember?’

‘Right, sorry. Why was that again?’ The man was distracted again by God and sex.

‘So you can decide, better nature, all that kind of thing. Ringing any bells?’

‘To be honest, I think I can probably decide now…’ ventured the man, hoping for an easy ride.

‘No, not possible, reviewing is compulsory. Failure to comply results in detention in purgatory. A slightly nicer hell. You don’t want to go there.’ God advised.

‘Ok, well in that case I’ll just take the reviewing option.’

‘Good. There are just a few formalities to go through first…’’

‘Name and age, please.’ said one of the angels, appearing in front of him and looking important. He gave them. ‘Thank you. Shoe size? Weight? Tie length?’

‘Um, 9, 82 kilograms and no tie.’ the man said randomly.

‘Thank you.’ The angel turned to God and saluted. ‘All tests carried out, sir’

The man looked at the angel. It obviously had a large degree of self-importance. Thought it was chief angel or something. He wondered what a good name for a chief angel would be. Maybe Angelica…But it was male. Did angels have sexes or were they all just its? In which case, Angelica would work well. If angels did have sexes, was that how they made new angels?

‘Why are humans so preoccupied with sexes and sex? Especially men. I mean, it’s not even one of my better designed systems,’ God asked.

‘I suppose you could say it’s our raison d’etre. The whole point of living is to make more of you for when you die. Sex is pretty essential. Haven’t you heard of Darwin’s  theories of evolution?  Species that make lots more of themselves are more likely to survive?’ The man realised he was talking about evolution to God – two things that pretty much everyone on Earth thought couldn’t co-exist. Either you believed in evolution or you believed in God. In fact believing in evolution was almost as much of a religious cult thing as believing in God.

‘I have heard of evolution, thank you.’ replied God. ‘You do realise I put fossils etc. in to add colour? It’s like directing films – you like to put the detail in even if you don’t think anyone’s going to notice it. Except you all did of course, and instead of taking the obvious path, and ascribing what is really quite a minor deed to me, you invented some load of incredibly complicated stuff just so you didn’t have to admit it was me. That is not logical.’

The man was quite impressed by God’s reasoning. He’d never thought about it that way before but evolution really was quite complicated?

‘Right, back to topic. The first twenty odd years are pretty dull. Being born, school, A-levels. University. Media studies’ God looked up. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a degree for people who don’t know what they want to do with the rest of their life, but can’t face the thought of getting a job.’

‘And your parents paid for this?’

‘Yes well, they probably thought it was worth it, not to have me living with them for three years. Incidentally how does money fit into your view of humanity?’

God groaned. ‘Do you all ask this many questions all the time? We’re supposed to be reviewing your life, not my opinions.’

‘Well it varies…some of us… hang on…you should know, you must have done this before!’ the man exclaimed.

‘Hell,’ muttered God. ‘Of course this has been done before.’

‘Have you done this before?’

‘Sort of. Well, not exactly. Not at all actually.’ God took a deep breath. ‘This is sort of the representative one. Just to show I’m doing something. The same way that Jesus dying didn’t really take away everyone’s sins; it was just a sort of symbol. Well, your trial is just symbolising me judging everyone.’

‘So how does everyone else get judged? Why me?’ demanded the man.

‘Through the automatic system, of course. Like a computer, but powered by divinity. So it is me doing it really. Powering the system anyway. Why you? Blame Jesus. He picked you out the hat.’

‘Whose hat?’

‘Oh we borrowed someone’s. Had to stretch it a bit.’ said God vaguely. The man realised he was starting to feel that perhaps God should be sectioned. So far today he’d discovered a being he didn’t believe in did in fact exist, and then discovered that this same being was completely irredeemably insane. Maybe when people went insane, in fact they were actually closer to the image of God than any of the rest of us. Hah! The world would love that…curing God.

‘Haven’t you learnt anything yet? To be God is by definition to be perfect. You can’t cure what’s perfect. Anyway, I’m perfectly sane. I just have a different perspective.’ interposed God.

The man wished God would stop listening in to what he was thinking. It was distracting and it made it extremely hard to plan any sort of strategy. And now God knew that he was trying to plan a strategy it would probably get even harder. He paused. Hang on a minute… ‘You said it wasn’t Judgement Day! How is it not Judgement Day?’

‘Ok, I lied. I was trying to avoid the explanations.’ admitted God.

The man was starting to feel more and more justified in his lack of belief in God. Everything became a conundrum. It was impossible to apply logic. By logic God could not exist. The fact that God did patently exist meant that logic had missed something rather important about the world. Or something rather important about God, and his disregard for logic.

‘I am still here you know. And can we please keep on track. So you did this degree to waste time. And then…’ said God.

‘I got a job. That thing people have to do so they can earn money and live. Not all of us live off prayers.’

‘I never said I didn’t eat. I like fish and chips too.’

‘How do you pay for them then?’

‘I don’t exactly pay. I sort of borrow them…’ started God.

‘What, and then give them back when you’ve finished? Here you go here’s your dinner back. Think how much more it’s worth now its passed through me. Instant pass to heaven.’ Actually that wasn’t all that far off what people did anyway. Go to church, tick the box, say ‘Yes, I believe’ to St. Peter on the gates and get in. This is just an edible version. Play the system and get in.

‘Spot on. Which incidentally has led to heaven becoming slightly less than heavenly. I’m having to work out a sorting system. One heaven for those who actually believed, and another for those who jumped through the right hoops. I keep meaning to do something about changing that. Anyway, about the fish and chips. The people I borrow them from don’t need them back’

The man paused, letting this filter through. A horrible thought was coming into his mind and he sincerely hoped it wasn’t true. Unfortunately the conviction was growing that it probably was. ‘You take them off dead people, don’t you?’ he said flatly. ‘You take them from people who die at the fish and chips shop.’

‘Just being economical,’ said God defensively.

‘Get a job and pay for them yourself,’ yelled the man. He was thoroughly pissed off. God thought he could just nick things off dead people. Probably went to the funeral still munching on the last chip. Didn’t he have any respect?

‘Apparently not,’ said God. ‘Anyway you’re supposed to respect me.’

‘Well, I don’t! I think you’re the most disgusting thing I’ve ever met! You live off other peoples’ problems, you don’t help anyone. You just leave people to manage by themselves. You don’t help. You’re supposed to make it better, to stop the bad things.’ The man paused for breath.

‘I told you! It’s all to do with free will!’ God yelled back.

‘I don’t care about free will. I want things to be right, for people to stop getting hurt!’ The man looked up, angrier than he thought was possible. ‘You don’t do what you’re supposed to do.’

‘Its not that easy! Oh to hell with this, I don’t have to explain myself to you. I don’t have to explain myself to any of you. If life is so crap, then let’s just end it all. Right now. You have been judged and you have been found wanting. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?’ snapped God

The man watched, appalled, as God gathered clouds and fire around himself. The air itself darkened and all light grew dim. God raised his arms and began. Then God rained upon the Earth brimstone and fire from heaven. He started to overthrow the cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. And the man watched. Rain poured upon the Earth and the seas rose in a great flood. And the man watched. And as realisation hit him, that God was destroying the earth, ending creation, and that he was at least partly responsible, he acted.

He threw himself at God in a rugby tackle vaguely remembered from school days. As they hit the ground, the lights flicked back on, the rain froze and the meteorites falling on the earth paused and stopped. He realised that time had stopped. While he and God fought out the battle for the Earth, in a plane of existence that thousands of people never even realised was there, everything else waited. And as they grappled, he realised that everything he’d spent his life doing was a waste of time. God had never got that far, but in fact the man had spent his life working to try and stop the effects of war. He’d even daydreamed that maybe the human race wasn’t that far off achieving a warless existence. And now here he was, fighting God. It looked like violence was in fact going to be the answer to everything. Except how could he win?

But maybe there was a way. Maybe God could lose if people thought he could. The man prayed that there were as many hardened cynics and sceptics on the Earth that there had appeared to be. People who could refute the existence and the power of God in a sentence. The sort of arrogant gits that were extremely annoying at dinner parties, but as it turned out would be extremely useful right now.

God was weakening. There was no doubt about it. He was weakening and the man was winning. And then suddenly it was all over, God was gone and it was just the man standing there on his own. And time started again. The meteorites resumed their fall and the light dimmed again. Without thinking, the man screamed ‘Stop!’

To his eternal amazement, they did. The meteorites and the rain vanished and the earth returned to normal, albeit a rather scorched version of normal. Also as the man looked down it struck him that normal wasn’t normally when most of the people were dead and most of the houses were small piles of something gooey and melted. Seeing as he seemed to have power over meteorites, he supposed he should probably do something about that. On the other hand, this could be a good thing. A good thing in very heavy disguise. Extremely heavy disguise. But it was a second chance.

He looked down on the Earth and quickly picked out several people. In front of one family (from Essex), confronted by a huge flood, he placed a huge boat. He gave another family safe passage through the furnace of a great fire but unfortunately he slightly misjudged and the older women (who was actually having an affair with the guy) got charred. He also had a go at sweeping apart some floodwaters but got it slightly wrong and drowned the ones at the back. He consoled himself with the thought they’d have died anyway.

He decided that was probably enough people, otherwise they’d just fight. He sat back and let them get on with it. He gave them a few hints and clues but nothing too obvious. They had to do it themselves.

But over the years, he got rather bored of waiting. He didn’t want to intervene as he thought people should work their problems out for themselves, but it was pretty damn boring sitting around watching. He started devising some new games. He tried rounders but the angels kept cheating. He rather had the feeling they resented him for taking over from God. Although the fact that he called them all Angelica probably didn’t help. He did have a look at the Earth one time and spotted a rather cute girl he quite fancied. He decided that was probably worth a visit. Other than that he left the earth strictly alone. Besides, it turned out there were some much more interesting creations out there. At least as good as TV.

And so man made the same mistakes as God. He forgot that what people need is someone to sort it all out for them. He never realised that he was just as bad as God. He thought that he was right. Right became infallible. Infallible became perfect. He forgot how much he didn’t know and believed he knew it all. He became omniscient. He had power over the Earth and the people so he forgot his origins and called himself omnipotent. So it went on until one day he grew bored of waiting and finally went back to the Earth. That day was Judgement Day again.