Thank you, God!
I dedicate this letter to all of my religious friends.
God, I love you and your son Jesus so much that I had to write a letter of praise to you, to thank you for what you've done for mankind; the joys and happiness you've given that we celebrate weekly at our churches, synagogues, temples and mosques. After all, no matter what colour, creed, religion or belief, you're still the one true God, Father to us all.
Thank you, God, for giving us cancer. Thank you for giving us a disease that strikes indiscriminately, from new babies to old women. Thank you for giving us a disease that doesn't just kill, but so utterly destroys a person's body that most people who "die of cancer" actually die of starvation, incoherent with pain.
Thank you, God, for giving us mental illness. Thank you for a disease that strikes people of all ages, lifestyles and habits; a disease that so warps and twists a person's mind that they are driven to take their own, or other lives, or frequently both. Thank you for a disease that can give a lifetime of misery to ensure the sufferer learns to love You unconditionally.
Thank you, God, for giving us famine and war. Thank you for allowing those children to die, bones so poking through the flesh that even each breath is agony. Thank you for allowing children only just old enough to feel pain to feel nothing else. Thank you for the tens of millions of young, fit men who did not not live out their three-score-and-ten, to instead be blown apart, blinded or maimed before they get the key to the house, or can vote.
Thank you, God, for giving us hate. In the lack of hate, we could not have developed weapons capable of turning a billion people into ash at the touch of a button. Thank you for the hate, jealousy, lust and greed that enables infanticide, rape, serial murder, Ponzi schemes and the death penalty.
Thank you, God, for giving us injustice, intolerance and bigotry. These are the things which make us human, that allow us to indulge in our Alpha Gender - Colour - Species arrogance that is destroying our home as surely as You could with a single asteroid.
Finally, God: thank you for apathy.
Amen
Copyright © Alan Charman