I s there a way, a stratagem if you will, for men to get the attention of God? It is easier to think of this on a mass level. How easy it is to say that “God so loved the world.” But how easy is it to say, “God loves me?” And know it. And feel it? Worse, how easy is it to believe that God notices? That God genuinely cares about the struggles or for that matter, the whims of an individual? How curiously satisfying to know that God is my Friend, my friend, as distinct, different and unique say, from being your friend. I have no quarrel with God being your friend or his having as many friends as he wishes other than myself. But I want the character of my contact with him to be different than it is with you. I want to know him in a way nobody else does; be with him in a way nobody else can.

Does God actually concern himself that I have a stall for my ass? Does he fret when I am late for an appointment? Do the stars in the sky actually have names that he gave them? Are the hairs on my head actually numbered? Does he really notice when a single sparrow falls from the sky? If so, he needs to get a real job. Why doesn’t he notice whole races of people in slavery? Why doesn’t he notice genocide? Why doesn’t he catch the opium-crazed adolescent who jumps from the causeway into the night? Why doesn’t he notice the bulging eyes and protruding bones of starving innocents? Why doesn’t he shoo the flies from their nostrils? Never mind friendship with God on the individual level. God has the power and the motivation to address this terrible human trauma. Why doesn’t he? While his eye is on the sparrow, while he sees the tiny bird fall, does anyone notice that God does not catch it, that he does not lift it again to fly? Does anyone notice that God lets its carcass rot in the dust? It is enough to make one reject entirely the notion of an omnipotent, loving God. If God really does exist, then he must be a monster. He must actually enjoy the killing fields.

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