Metro Pulse/Yikes!/Roadside Revival

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God would like your attention, please

by Zak Weisfeld

God has recently come into my life. Maybe it's the holidays, maybe it's the real millennium but God's back. And it's making me nervous. But I don't think it's me. Really. It's him. Or as He prefers it, Him.

Part of the problem is our history. I didn't use to have any relationship with God. As a kid I never saw Him. It wasn't that I never tried. My mom would take me to go visit Him every once in a while but I could never get time alone with Him. There were always a lot of people around, and most of the time I never even caught sight of Him. In fact, I never did. And He certainly didn't make any big effort to make contact with me. Which, I'll be honest, left me feeling kind of cynical and bitter—left out, abandoned. Those were hard times for me. I cursed and railed and for a while decided that He didn't even exist.

But I was just a kid, and as I got older I started to understand. God was busy, there were lots of other people who needed His attention more than me, He was an important guy, y'know, and it was selfish of me to demand some kind of personal time with him. Sorry, Him. Anyway, the years passed and even this level of engagement—me trying to be tough and not need Him and He just being His aloof self started to seem kind of pathetic and wistful and I started to see the whole thing as kind of silly. Why did I want to see Him in the first place? God didn't need me, obviously, so why did I need Him? Why did I feel I needed to be noticed at all? Was there something wrong with me? Something missing? The answer was no. Basically it seemed like I was doing just fine without Him, and He was clearly fine without me. Or if He wasn't He didn't show it. And that was the way it was. I went my way, He went His.

And it was fine. Really it was. I got a job, fell in love and was enjoying a full, rich life full of love, friendship and rewarding work. The full package. As my life grew, the whole "deal" between me and God faded until I wasn't cynical, or angry or wistful or even indifferent. I was happy, I hoped God was happy and that was that.

Almost.

I'm not proud of it, but there were moments of weakness—a few phone calls, but they were mistakes. It was late, I was drunk, I'd been reading too much Nietzsche and I'll admit it, I was reaching out. But not far enough apparently, because He never answered. Not once. And He didn't call back—not even when He would know I was out to lunch and He could just leave a message. Nothing. Zero. The void, if you know what I mean. So that was it. The end.

Or so I thought.

The years went by, and the truth is that I had pretty much forgotten about God. And I figured He had forgotten about me. At least that's what it seemed like.

Then it started. The messages. Right there in broad daylight, as I'm driving down the highway, God decided He wanted back in. "We need to talk," He said. Which, honestly, made me want to scream. It'd been 31 years, 31 freaking years of nothing, then, all of a sudden, "We need to talk." Which, honestly, was just like Him. Very heavy. Very serious, like there was something between us to talk about. And OK, maybe I was a little bitter after all because despite his message I pretty much ignored Him.

Which, apparently, God didn't like because the next time I heard from Him He sounded like He'd gotten His dander up a little bit. "Don't make me come down there," God said to me in that holier-than-thou tone of His. Well, you can imagine what I was thinking. It's a little late to come in here and start throwing your weight around, if you know what I mean. I'm just trying to get along, be a good person and now He decides to start threatening me. And what's even weirder is that all I wanted for all those years was for him to come down here. But now that it's a threat, I'm not buying it. I gave Him the same cold shoulder He gave me all those years.

And you know what, it worked. The next time He left me a message He went all soft on me. "C'mon over, and bring the kids," He told me. Which to me meant one of two things. First, either God was drinking during the day, or He had really misread the whole situation between us. Not only do I not have kids, but I haven't seen Him in forever and then he starts threatening me and now He's just expecting me to come on over like nothing ever happened. I don't think so. It's not that I hold a grudge, not at all. It's just that I don't think it's fair to expect things to move along so fast—like the past can just be made to disappear and all of a sudden I want to be hanging out in His house with my non-existent kids.

Which I guess makes Him mad. But hey, now He knows how I feel. The only difference is that God is more used to getting His way than I am, because the next time I got a message from Him I could tell He was pissed. Oh, He was trying to hold it back, but His tone said everything. "That love thy neighbor thing, I meant that." Gone is the chummy "C'mon over" God, now we're back to the imperious, Chuck Heston, laying-down-the-Law God. And this just pushed me over the edge.

I mean, it's one thing to withhold affection, attention—even existence, but it's another to suddenly pop back up on the side of the road and start threatening me. So now I'm pissed. Before I wasn't talking because I was sulking. Now I'm wondering who this God thinks He is.

But even though that's how I'm feeling, I keep it hidden. Or I try. Because I figure I've just got to ignore Him and live my own life and He can work out His own issues—and when He's ready and mature enough and centered enough, then we can talk.

The problem is that even though I thought I was hiding my feelings I guess I wasn't hiding them well enough. Because the next message I get from God, while I'm on my way home from work, really creeps me out. All of a sudden, out of nowhere it's God. And I guess He's in a bad way because He's begging, literally begging. I mean I'll admit, my late night phone calls weren't necessarily the height of cool reserve, but now He's literally throwing Himself at me. "I love you. I love you. I love you," says God. Three times. I'm serious. Not just "I love you." But "I love you. I love you. I love you."

Which for me is the last straw. Now I know He's drinking during the day, or something worse. So there's no more sulking, no more hiding, no more feigned indifference. Nope. This time I'm getting a restraining order.