AN INTERVIEW WITH GOD

As was my usual custom several times each week, I enjoyed talking to God on my way to or from work. Some may call it prayer, but I like to think of it as a one-on-one conversation with the creator.

This conversation helped to clear my mind for the day’s work, to inspire me, to strengthen my resolve or, if on the way home, to clear my mind from the travails of the day so I can arrive home with a happy and unburdened attitude.

I remember one interesting topic we talked about. As I was trying to picture God in my mind, up popped this incredibly ancient man with a long flowing beard and piercing blue eyes, who was wearing a brown robe like a monk and holding a gnarled wooden staff.

He was sitting on the truck seat next to me with a silly grin on his face. The staff he held was stuck beneath my knees and interfering with my driving.

"Well, what did you expect?" God asked me, "Gandolf from Lord of the Rings, or perhaps Charlton Heston from Moses?"

"I guess that’s how I have envisioned you in my mind," I replied, with a sheepish grin.

"So your visual interpretation of what I look like is some very old geezer with a long flowing beard reeking of wisdom and solemnity," God noted somewhat sarcastically.

While I was thinking about his remark and the sarcasm with which it was delivered, God disappeared. Within seconds he was replaced by a very skinny black man with a bloated stomach, bushy gray hair, and a long white bone sticking through his flat nose.

"How about this image?" God asked, blowing on a digeridoo that made an awful noise that almost caused me to swerve off the highway.

"Well, it doesn’t seem to be very God-like to me," I replied, "Especially with that silly grass skirt you’re wearing."

Once again, God disappeared. This time he was replaced with an incredibly fat Chinese man who would have given our image of Buddha a run for his money. Instead of speaking he just looked at me and smiled through the wrinkles on his face.

"You’re not going to pull that burning bush thingy in my truck are you?" I asked God.

God looked at me with a "don’t get smart with me look" then asked. "You’re not getting the message, meathead, are you?"

"So, what are you trying to tell me?" I asked God, who had transformed into an attractive young woman, which slowly faded into an emaciated African child.

"How you perceive me is how you perceive others," God replied. "Your preconceptions of how I should look to your human eye have been tainted by your life experiences, much of which is based on your prejudices."

"I’m not prejudiced," I blurted out.

God looked at me with a… ‘You’ve got to be kidding look.’

"You are going to sit there and tell me that each of those people I manifested as are equal in your eyes?" God asked. "That while you may have been impressed by my Moses look-alike you were not uncomfortable with my other bodies. In some cases even... revolted?"

God was right in his assumptions. I have always pictured him as a wise old white man in my mind. He could just as easily have looked like any of the other characters into which He had transformed. But, I didn’t think this was the real meaning that He wanted me to get out of His obvious fun with theatrics.

"It’s all about judging isn’t it?" I asked God, as He sat on the seat next to me, this time looking like a successful politician in a dark pen striped suit.

"You’re not as dumb as I thought," God mockingly replied. "You, and when I say you - I’m talking about almost everyone in general - judge others by your preconceived concepts. People with deformities are out, pretty people are in. Different cultures are out, your culture is in. Smart is in, illiterate is out…and the list is endless."

"Judge not least you be judged," I blurted… "And don’t judge a book by its cover," God replied. "I know all the sayings just as you do because I wrote most of them, but, do you really go by them?"

"I’m trying to," I replied, "But it’s hard to accept concepts that I have rejected most of my life."

"Well, what if I told you that to me you’re like one ugly dude," God stated. "There’s no way you could imagine what I truly look like, it’s so far beyond your human ability to fathom that it’s almost impossible."

"But you made me," I reminded God, upset that he had called me ugly. "In your own image you made me, remember?"

"That is the image you cannot imagine," God replied. "It has nothing to do with your physical appearance. I made all of you - the ugly, the fat, the beautiful, the dirty, the sick, the bad, the good, of all races and all creeds. And, I love all my children no matter what they look like on the outside.

Besides, I was kidding when I said you were ugly, I just wanted to get your dander up. You wouldn’t do anything to harm me, would you? You’d be kind to my face, nice to me around others, talk well of me when I wasn’t there, and think good thoughts of me?"

"You know I would," I earnestly replied.

"The next time you meet someone how will you know that it’s not me you’re talking with or listening too? How will you know that I am not judging you through the eyes of others? Because the truth is, I am in everyone and everything all the time and I witness everything you do, or fail to do. How you treat my children is how you treat me."

"I need to start my new year with this in mind," I said to myself as I parked the truck in my driveway.