Suppose, as in the Drew Carey comedy Bruce Almighty, God told you he was taking a few days off and he wanted you to fill in for him. You have all his powers and your power is not limited to a few blocks, it covers the whole Earth (but not beyond Earth’s atmosphere – let’s keep it simple). You have to answer all prayers (answering “No” is always an option), but this is not a practical problem because you can enhance your own workspeed, without limits, to give every prayer individual attention, if you wish. (Wonder why Bruce never thought of that . . .) You cannot interfere with free will – e.g., you cannot make the girl of your dreams fall in love with you (but you can improve your chances by enhancing your appearance/odor/whatever). Other than that you can do anything – with the awareness that the senior God will be back in a few days and might reverse any of your decisions.
As Temp God, what do you do?
Would you heal all the sick? All in the world, at once? That wouldn’t eliminate all disease from the world, but it would ease a lot of suffering and give the medical profession a short spell of breathing space. But can you, ethically? Viruses and bacteria are God’s creatures too – are you any less responsible for their welfare than you are for the welfare of humans?
Would you unseat all tyrants? God might let that stand – but you have to do it by means that don’t directly interfere with free will, and you have only a few days to arrange things so that a given tyrant will be replaced by a better, and stable, government. You could simply kill all tyrants and God would allow them to remain dead – but in most cases that would lead to an outcome of “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
Maybe you would be so frustrated with practical/ethical dilemmas like the above that you might just leave everything as it is, answer all prayers, “Reply hazy, try again later,” and spend your term in office wallowing in pleasure in self-created fantasy scenarios. But isn’t it a monumental waste of opportunity, to use the powers of God to do what amounts to playing with a Star Trek holodeck?
After eliminating the most annoying members of the human race, I’d appear to every remaining person as a Holy Vision, proclaiming tolerance and love. Contradictory, I know. But I am large…I contain multitudes.
Well, being God for a day, or even a few minutes really, would be all I need. See there’s this one girl I know who’s perfect in every way and digs my chili as well, but see, I don’t believe in God and she’s all about church & God and all that business. It’s not that I’m stubborn about it. I’ve tried to believe for a long time. On and off. But no matter how much I want to believe in God, it just never seems to click.
So if I were God for a bit, and then became Inigo again, I could believe, no problem. Shucks, with all the inside info I’d have I’d be more than just an upstanding member of the congregation, I could be a power player in the church–and chicks dig powerful & assertive guys. She would be mine. Oh yes, she would be mine. And because my mom’s investment stocks would go through the roof (because of something I did when I was God for a day) she’d die of a heart attack and I’d inherit the wealth so we’d never go hungry! Which is good because she likes good cooking. The girl that is, not my mom–she’d be dead and all.
I would appear to all the people on Earth and tell people to quit wasting their time worshipping me, just flat out tell them to abolish religion altogether, and that anyone who practices religion or tries to foist their beliefs on anyone else will burn in hell.
I would visit every mega-church, every intolerant, “christian” leader and their flocks, St Peter and the Vatican, the Wailing Wall and the holy sites of Islam as well, and literally put the fear of God into those people. I would castigate them for making a mockery of Me and My teachings.
Like Jesus, I would rid the “temples” of the businessmen and Pharisees (modern day ones).
Then I would plant a tiny seed in every adult person that would inspire them to consider the greater good and the environment when making consumer choices and life decisions.
I wouldn’t do anything. I’d be static. Just take it all in. Everyone is doing what they should be doing; experiencing horrors, sadness, great loss and terrrible grief, fear and terror, pain and emptiness. But also great joy in unexpected places, beauty in strange forms, laughter and friendship, love and ecstasy. I’d only hope there was a lesson to be learned from everything, whether it simply be “let’s not allow this to ever happen again” or, “I should do this more often!”
I’d be fucking paralysed, man. I couldn’t move. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. But then God can come back and take the reigns, and the world can blame me for WWIII and disappearance of the rainforests and infant deaths and the like for a while. I’d be too shaken to care much. I don’t know if God would scold me while sticking trees back in the scorched ground and creating miracle babies in Virgin Marys everywhere, or smile at me and say, “Good job!”
If I came to my senses quickly enough, however, I would make chocolate the healthiest vegetable and ice cream a good source of vitamin C. Oh, and sitting on the sofa watching TV would burn more calories than jogging…
I’d appear in the sky in thundery inexplicable majesty in many places at once and call all the presidents and kings and potentates and CEOs and power-brokers and gang leaders and religious leaders of the world together, take a searing look into their souls, show them the wars and pollution and oppression going on, and ask them, “Why do you disrespect My Creation?”
I’d make all weapons disintigrate if they were used for aggression.
I’d make everyone sterile, only able to breed if they showed that they were financially and emotionally stable enough to raise a child.
I would erase all traces of pollution from the earth, wind and sky with a wave of my god-hand.
I would make desert lands areable. I would make fresh, clean water plentiful to all mankind.
I would eliminate childhood disease. No kid under the age of twenty would die of illness. Adults still would, because you have to have a means of controlling the population, but all disease would be painless.
I would make dogs able to talk-- just for the fun of it.
The Twelfth: Thou Shall Be Kind to One Another, No Exceptions
The Thirteenth: Thou Shall Not Be Greedy
The Fourteenth: Thou Shall Wait Thy Turn or I Will Smite Thee With Hemmorhoids
The Fifteenth: Thou Shall Not Give Unto Televangelists
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add ticks to the list as well, heck, all biting insects for that matter, ticks, mosquitos, black flies, deerflies, horseflies, mooseflies, stable flies (think houseflies that drink blood and have the reaction speed of a housefly), who needs 'em, all they do is spread disease
