If at Faust You Don`t Succeed

CHAPTER 6

When Mack reached the topmost cloud mountain, he beheld, directly in front of him, the great pearly gates, which opened slowly on their valves of gold as he approached. He entered, and Found himself in a bounteous garden in which every tree and bush bore good things, and there was not a slug or weevil in sight. And then a man came hurrying up to Mack, a tall, bearded man in a white robe before whom Mack bowed low, saying, "Hello, God." The man hastened to help him to his feet, saying, "No, no, don't bow to me, I'm not God. I'm afraid He can't come talk with you right now, as He'd love to do, but He sent me, His servant, to tell you that He has decided to overrule Ananke and proclaim you the true victor in the contest."

"Me?" cried Mack. "But what have I done to deserve that?"

"I'm not clear on the details," the bearded man said. "And anyhow, it's nothing personal. It's just that a decision has been made to turn the workings of the world over to common rogues and people no better than they ought to be. The old gods have tried to lead mankind and failed, God and the devil have tried and failed, Law has tried and failed, Reason has been insufficient, and even Chaos has proven insufficient.

This is the era of the common man. Your simple, self-serving actions, Mack, done for your own good but with a vague hope that they would serve nobler purposes, must be declared the winner of this contest, for even that hint of idealism has in it more conviction than all those greater and more complicated ideas."

Mack was dumbfounded. "Me run things? No, it's impossible, I won't hear of it. Frankly, it sounds like blasphemy."

"God exists in the blasphemy, the devil in the piety."

"Look," Mack said, "I think I'd better discuss this with God Himself."

"If only that could be!" the man said sadly. "But the One God is not to be seen or talked to, not even here in Heaven. We have searched for Him and He simply isn't here. He seems to have absented Himself.

There are even those who say He never existed, and of course we have no photographs to prove that He did. But our legends say that at one time He did exist, and that the angels visited Him often and basked in His countenance. He used to tell them that Heaven and Hell were in the details. No one understood that.

He told them that as below, so above. No one understood what that meant until slums began to appear in Heaven, and then crime."

"Crime in Heaven?" Mack said. "I can't believe that."

"You'd be surprised what goes on here. It was along about that time that He suddenly told everyone that He wasn't God at all, not the big one, the immanent, the indwelling, no, He was standing in for God because God had had something else to do. But everyone wondered what that could be. Some suspected that He was starting things all over again in another space and time, and this time simplifying them so that they worked. It was felt by general consent that God was disappointed with how things had turned out in this universe, though of course, being a gentleman, He'd never breathed a word about it.

Perhaps 'intimated' would be a better word."

Mack stared at the bearded man in the white robe, then said, "You really are God, aren't you?"

"Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing," Mack said.

"No, no, not at all."

"I know that's what you're thinking. Remember, I'm omniscient. That's one of my attributes."

"I know. Omnipotence, too."

"Well, yes, that. But that's a power best left in abeyance. God's real task is resisting His own omnipotence and refusing to be bound by it."

"Bound by omnipotence? How can that be?"

"Omnipotence is a strong hindrance when combined with omniscience and compassion. There's always such a temptation to interfere on the side of gentleness, to right a wrong."

"So why not do that?"

"If I put my omnipotence in the service of my omniscience, the result would be a clockwork universe.

There'd be no free will. No one would suffer the consequences of their actions. I'd always have to be there to see that no sparrow fell from the sky, that no person died in a traffic accident, that no doe was ever taken by a leopard, that no human went hungry, naked, cold, that no one died before their time, or, indeed, why not go all the way and make it so they don't die at all?"

"That sounds good to me," Mack said.

"That's because you haven't thought it through. Suppose everything that ever had been continued to exist.

All of them with their claims, their priorities, their desires. All of which must be met. And of course some other arrangements must be made. If the leopard isn't allowed to eat the doe, then we have to provide other food for him. Turn him into a vegetarian? But what makes you think that plants don't know they're being eaten, and don't resent it as much as you would if someone were eating you? You see the ramifications. It would leave me doing everything, interfering constantly. People's lives would be unutterably boring if I did all the important stuff for them."

"I see there's quite a lot for You to think about," Mack said. "But then, You're omniscient. That must help."

"My omniscience tells me to limit my omnipotence."

"And what about Good and Evil?"

"Well, I realized, of course, that it was absolutely important, but I could never quite figure out which was which. It was all very complicated. I had deliberately projected this less-than-godlike image of myself.

Even though I am a god, and the only God at that, I still had a right to be humble. And I had the right to give myself something to be humble about. Even though I was omniscient and omnipotent, I refused to use those powers. I felt it was an unnecessary restriction, trying to make Good right all the time. It seemed very partisan and onesided to have to support Good constantly. Anyhow, since I was omniscient in those days, I knew that in some ultimate analysis, Good and Evil were complementary, equal. Not that that solved anything. I refused to be checked by it. I said the trouble with knowing everything was that you never learned anything. I preferred to go on learning. Maybe I did know the secret reason behind everything. I never let myself know what that secret was. I have said that even God is entitled to His secrets, and had the right and duty not to know everything."

"But what am I supposed to learn from all this?" Mack said.

"That you're as free as I am. It may not be much, but it's something, isn't it?"