What If? or, Sarah Laughed

What if everything that we were told to believe in is all predicated on a lie?

What if the history we follow, the faith we adhere to all began with a lie, an idea or a dream; but nothing truly based on reality?

Some live life searching for a meaning, searching for answers that may or not be found.

Some fictionalized the answers they want to hear, turn it into a belief system and then others, seeing the same answers simply follow along?

Abraham was a kid; unimpressed with the Idols the people all worshipped; his father, in business selling all sorts of idols for different needs. Idols for livelihood, idols for love, idols for a sunny weekend – anything your heart desires. One day, little Abe, still unimpressed; takes a stick and breaks them all.

His father, freaking out, comes in a sees the mess. “I leave you alone to watch the store for ten minutes and this is what happens? Who did this?”

“I did.”

“Why? How can you destroy the Gods we worship?”

Abes reply? “If they were so powerful, why didn’t they protect themselves or fight back?”

“Oy, I had to raise a philosopher?”

With the sun and the moon both taking their turns in the sky; how can one be more powerful than the other? He was unimpressed with the stars because there were way too many of them to form any one spirit or powerful force. “There must be something omnipotent out there…something that is in charge of the sun, the moon and the stars.”

In love with his wife, though unable to conceive any children – he closed his eyes on a hot day as he waited for some answers outside his tent. In the heat he daydreamed and in the dream came the voice telling him what he needed to hear.
“Yes you will have children and the children you have will be like those stars in the sky – too numerous to count. By next year at this time your wife will have a child.”

Sarah laughed.

“Did she just laugh?” The voice said.

“No, she was laughing at me – you know we have this joke and sometimes it pops up in your head and you can’t help but laugh.”

“Do you remember who you are talking to? I know she laughed just like I knew Cain killed his brother; it was a metaphorical question. Well anyway – I have some bad news as well, we are going to destroy Sodom.”

Abe negotiated with God and went from 50 men being pious to save the city to 10. But even 10 could not be found so a city was destroyed and at the age of 90, Sarah and Abraham had their first child, Isaac.

Was it divine intervention which caused Sarah to conceive or was it divine intervention which caused her not to conceive for the first 90 years of her life?

We all know what happened in Europe in the 1930’s and 40’s. We all know the “miracle” of 1948” returning the Jewish people to their homeland when just three years earlier they were being incinerated by the German efficiency machine.

Was it divine intervention which brought the Jewish people back home? Or was it divine intervention which allowed six million living souls to be destroyed without the world intervening?

Is God as powerful as we want God to be? Or is God as powerful as God can be? Is He limited to a fragment of the population? Is sickness and disease, wealth and poverty, hunger and indulgence, love and solitude all not in His power, His control?

There are so many answers we seek, the ones who dare question the unquestionable. Is God an interventional God?

What if it’s all a lie? What if all the faith we have clung to, that has kept us moving one foot in front of the other, is all based on something that never truly existed?

A father is leaving on a week long holiday with the mother. He tells their six kids to follow a basic set of rules while he is gone. He doesn’t force them or hypnotise them into following the rules or not. He does say the most important rule is to not do anything to each other that you do not want done to you. Simple enough, right? They have the ability to either follow the rules or not; he cannot force them to. A couple of the kids follow out of fear that their father will punish them, a couple break every rule and wreck havoc on the others; while the other two follow the rules out of trust that their father knows what is best for them.

God, as I believe, created a world for us. Gave us laws to follow in order for us to live in an society of equality and respect for others. (Do not do unto others as you would not want done unto yourself. That pretty much says it all). He gave man the freedom of choice – this way man is accountable for all his actions.

We do not know the true answers – there is no tangible proof that God exists in any shape or form. It’s all a feeling which is embedded in the ones who believe possibly because it has been pounded into our thinking over and over again or possibly because the alternative of not believing has no positive aspect.

It’s hard to believe, to truly have faith in a non-tangible power and to follow the laws and the directions handed down. It’s hard, but we have true faith, that in the end there will be a new beginning.  

It’s harder not to have faith and to believe that further on down the road the end will be just that, the end.