Deity Survey

Dear Christian God:

I would like to extend my appreciation for your filling out this questionnaire. Matters of religious belief being so confusing, I am optimistic that your responses can provide some clarity for myself and others as we decide who is worthy to be Followed™. Please be advised, though, that Dionysus has already returned his survey, and it is sweet.

1. Leviticus declares the eating of shrimp to be an abomination. Given You and Your Son’s coeternal existence, omniscience, and direct communication through the prophets, why did Leviticus not also inveigh against American cheese?

2. We have had more than a half century of Adam Sandler (for which we are grateful), but could you really not have given us five more years of Keats? WTF, Lord.

3. I’m aware that #2 isn’t really a question, but you are welcome to comment (not that I expect you can have anything to say).

4. Suppose I leave instructions for my funeral indicating that my favorite verse is the King James Version of 1 Kings 21:21, but my only purpose for doing so is to troll whatever preacher gets dredged up to preside and has to discuss it. Is that bad?

5. …and would that be more or less objectionable than requesting someone play a pipe organ arrangement of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”?

6. Who would my grandmother have been if her mother and twin had not died?

7. You’ve had your softballs. Herlitz Junctional Epidermolysis Bullosa: how can you do it?

8. Too hard? Here’s an Annie Dillard passage that @TomJonas shared with me that I’ve never been able to forget.

At the Sea of Galilee, I saw a man splitting wood. He was a distant figure in silhouette across the water and I heard a wrong ring. He raised his maul and it clanged at the top of the rise. I heard it ring just as its head hit the sky, and in silence, it hit the wood. Absorbed on the ground, skilled and sure, the stick figure was clobbering the heavens.

I saw a beached red dory. I could take the red dory, row out to the guy, and say: Sir. You have found a place where the sky dips close. May I borrow your maul? Your maul and your wedge? Because, I thought, I too could hammer the sky—crack it at one blow, split it at the next—and inquire, hollering at God the compassionate, the all-merciful, what’s with the bird-headed dwarfs?”

Discuss.

9. I have tried; I have prayed that You know I tried. When have I failed without knowing it?

10. When Franco Harris galloped down the sideline and somehow caught the ball in the 1972 AFC Divisional Playoff Game, had it deflected off of Jack Tatum or Frenchy Fuqua?

11. Are you a Led Zeppelin fan?

a. If yes, did you give John Bonham and road manager Richard Cole a pass for the mud shark thing?

b. If no, can you and I still burn one and listen to Houses of the Holy?

12. You’re cool with satire, right?