The Fall of Gods

"Maybe God himself is lost and needs help..." - Tom Waits

So, you say the upper hand is yours? Hah! Lest you should be so lucky! Throw whatever waves of chaos you shall, but I will find course. So tell me then, oh King of Kings, what is it you desire? What motive have you for your torments? I have walked the crossroads where your lost souls wander and have seen the pain in their eyes.Have you no mercy left? Has old age made you bitter and senile? Do you remember the days of old when you lead your people into victory and performed miracles for the eyes of men, that they would believe? And yet, what fool am I to question you? You, unlike my fellow man, have watched me commit my sins and seen the wickedness in my heart. I would deny you as your apostle, but it is simply an act of denying a shadow exists where the body remains. This is our draw. I am utterly stripped bare, naked to the very core of my moral existence where only the strongest parts of me remain. With a single invocation you could destroy that too and send my withering husk to the soil. Yet that may be a better fate than allowing the suffering that you have. Children are dying and women are starving. There are murderers who have no justice to answer to and evil doers with the blessing of kings. What times are these that you, the supposed Lover of Men, have deserted us to our own ends? Once, your son turned water to wine and was praised for his miracle. Would not a country of men be worth more?

Let it be then. I shall tell you of what has been done. While I slept you crept quietly into my presence without waking me and whispered the words of power into my ear.

“Go and do my will.” You said.

You commanded my presence and I have given it! I have sought to listen if only you would speak. I do not send messengers to you in the guise of friendship but rather I speak openly to you as though you were present with me. Yet you only hide yourself from my view and cloud my judgment with mixed messages from questionable sources. No deeds these days bear your seal, but rather the seal of men that they are responsible for their own fates. No, you have allowed a wickedness to prevail and have forgotten how to forgive yourself. The sins of our ancestors long ago in that Garden of Eden were not our own! You have forgotten what it is to love and protect.

It is with a heavy heart that I tell you that you have fallen off the pedestal of children and been replaced. In your neglect for us you have forgotten what it is to walk among men and feel as we do. Each day that we face each other and the encroaching evil, we lose more and more of ourselves. We fight a battle that we did not begin because we did not design ourselves. I do not reject you because of this, but rather I am inclined to ask again as so many have done before: will you not hear us and answer? Will you not remember what it is you so admire about us? We must fight this war with ourselves, not you. With the thought you would have solved a thousand problems that men drive their minds to insanity over. That I condemn to bitterness.

Alas, I will tell you also how we have coped. Our philosophers all agree to disagree and our religious leaders seek fame and fortune using your name. The existentialists have adopted an idea. In fact, they say, we are stronger without you, for when we learn to rely on ourselves as the sole responsibility and source of our decisions, we empower the human race and remove the crutch that is your name used as excuse. So that is how it shall be done. I cannot believe you do not exist, though perhaps it was man that killed you and we have simply not heard the news. Therefore, I will make my decisions and I will live this life in the name of those morals which I have chosen because I feel they are right and when you return from wherever you have gone, you may advise me. You cannot judge me, though, for you were seeking your own ends when I was fighting in the world you abandoned for the teachings you introduced.

Farewell, King of Kings. May your journey find you safely home.