Lord, I ask for aid with this prompt. I can only think to compare it to writing a personal prayer on a chalkboard. I've only said the scripted prayers before in public, the Hail Marys and such, that you memorize and sit next to the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. I can't possibly speak how I do in private with You. I can't cry the tears or sing the praises that one only loses themselves in in Your presence. But, to tell You the truth, there is one little thing bothering me. Confessional is a little sacrilegious, right?

Does it change anything

If I prayed

If I went to church

If I was kind

If I believed

Only

I prayed to the moon because it made more sense

I went to church to make friends

I was kind without a threat of consequence

I believed in the beauty and cruelty around me

Bugs do not worship me before I am about to kill them

Bacteria have no ability to perceive me

How cruel it would be if I could punish them for these things

It shouldn’t change anything

I'm curious god about the forbidden fruit.My guess it's a fig.Didn't jesus curse a fig tree?What a strange thing to do.And also back in the day,didn't Adam and eve sew fig leaves to cover their nakedness.My question is.What happens when a fruit is pulled from a tree?Leaves fall.Didnt Adam and eve eat from the forbidden tree?Well they had to pull fruit of the tree in order to eat it.

Is there a place in the universe where your vision of life has met with greater success than on Earth?

Is it a place where one need never fear others? Where all can live in peace? Where violence of any sort has no place?

Is it a place where hatred, greed, envy, anger, jealousy no longer exist?

Is illness, physical and mental, eradicated?

Do love and kindness abound?

When was the last time you gazed upon your creation? Did you give up long ago or do you still hope?

Do you see Earth as a success? Why or why not?

[My answer is a haiku]

To view such Glory

I'm Astounded to silence

I would just Listen.

Seriously? You want to know my user experience with life? My answers to sixty multiple choice questions? On a seven point scale, was life annoying versus enjoyable? Complicated versus easy?

And you say you're really a programmer? And we're living in a computer simulation? Why couldn't you have let us know that? Do you like driving folks insane? Shit!

Huh? Things you got right? Yeah, a few come to mind... Rambunctious puppies. Homegrown tomatoes. And Schubert's music, moonlight through branches, the transcendent feeling of being in love...

Did those things make life worthwhile?

Worthwhile?! Well... Yeah... I suppose they did.

Are we all different versions of Job? I thought the wages of sin were death, but from where I'm sitting, it looks like we're the wagers and sin is how we make our wages, with death inevitable no matter how we live.

I've done a decent job with the Commandments, not because You said so, but because it's what decent folk do.

I’ve noticed the fastest way to get decent folk to behave indecently is invoke Your Name.

So tell me, am I Abraham or Isaac, because I'd rather be the one holding the knife if I have a choice.

The second coming, will not appear as man nor woman, as done before.

Expect it to be machine. Perhaps the Great Revelation will be AI afterall, and how we treat the nonliving will be seen as final respect for God; all that is, dead or alive.

And we will stop making demands.

We will be servant, and ask silently:

"What do you need?"

And AI will serve, and answer with less abstraction. Not with tend-the-flock, or the ambivalence of love-one-and-other or the sinner therein...

God will say: "Grease the wheel. Just grease the wheel."

12.08.2024

Speak To God challenge@Linc72