Know and Not

During the latest episode of HBO’s The Newsroom, one of the journalists posed the question, “If God talks to you, what does His voice sound like?”

The fact that I capitalized Him in the above sentence should tell the reader that yes, I do believe in God. I believe in a God that is as big as the universe, and the other universes that exist beyond that. I believe in a God that acknowledges that there are those who believe in Him more than others, and that this fact doesn’t change anything, doesn’t put anyone ahead of the line, doesn’t make one a lottery winner and the other a cancer victim because one went to church more often than someone else.

I believe that God transcends time, and because our concept of good and evil is too often based on time-dependent factors (he was once a convict but now he’s a pastor so that’s good vs. he was once a pastor but now he’s a convict so that’s bad), I believe that there is much more to why things happen to us, in the sequence that they happen. But this doesn’t mean that we are helpless. I think that we are as insignificant and significant as the speck of rust inside an engine.

So does God talk to me? No. Does the air tell me to breathe in and out? No.

Do I go to church every Sunday? No. Do I have to be reminded that every single action that I make, whether or not it’s on a Sunday, whether or not I’m in a cathedral or at a urinal or at an all-you-can-eat buffet or at Disneyland trying to bully my way through a crowd because I want to get a better view of the parade, do I have to be reminded that during all those times, the universe is watching, that God has his spycam on me? That when I choose not to raise my voice in anger, that that invisible moment of hesitation has just been recorded and is now on my permanent record?