DEAR LORD....

[relearning]

Dear Lord,
Allow me to finish this letter that seems to have been left incomplete.
How are you? I hope you are fine. If you ask about humanity — of course you already know, you don't need me to tell you, but I want to anyway — well, it has been quite a long time since you last sent a book and a prophet. One thousand four hundred years, to be precise. And in that gap, humanity has made enormous progress. We are more civilized, more modern. Slavery has been abolished — I know that was something you wanted, it is there between the lines, we just needed a few millennia to figure it out.
We have also developed entirely new ways of communication, far more advanced than a single book delivered by a single messenger. The internet age, my Lord! With these new tools, it is now possible — quite literally — to reach every human being you created. Every single one. I thought you should know.
I also suspect it bothers you — and I say this with the greatest respect — that so many people, in every age, have made careers out of interpreting your words. Building fame, authority, and comfortable incomes by declaring this is the correct reading, this is what pleases you. And it must sadden you that your book, though perfectly clear perhaps to the first Arabic villagers you addressed, has since produced countless competing creeds, each fighting the others for your approval, each certain they alone have your ear.
So allow me to humbly offer a solution.
A Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account, my Lord. Think about it. You could personalize your message to anyone you wish — and that is what you want, is it not? You love every creature uniquely. Why burden them all with one book when you could have the pleasure of private messaging each of them, whenever you wish, whenever they need you? This would surely increase the number of people finding their way to heaven, which I know is your preference.
And please, do not worry about hell sitting empty. You, as an all-powerful and endlessly compassionate God, could create a category of beings who genuinely enjoy it. Nothing is impossible for you, my Lord. It seems like a reasonable arrangement.
You happy. We happy. Satan sad. I cannot think of anything better than that.
Yours sincerely,
Your everlasting humble servant.

[relearning]

Yunus Emre wrote this about seven hundred years ago. He was an Anatolian dervish who spent his life addressing God directly, and here he does something the clerics of his era would not have dared: he opens a case. He concedes his sin in the first line, then asks what exactly it cost an infinite God — and proceeds to dismantle the scale, the bridge, and the fire, using nothing but God's own attributes as evidence.

I found it after writing the post above, and it made me feel less clever and more accompanied. Seven centuries, and the same questions. He ends, as one must, with vallâhu a'lem — God knows best. He retracts nothing.


O my God, if You should question me,
this, right there, is the answer I give You:

I wronged myself. The sin I committed was mine.
What did I ever do to You, O Sovereign?

Before I arrived You had spoken me ill;
before I was born You named me rebel-Adam.

In pre-eternity You write me down a rebel,
then fill the whole world with the noise of it.

Whatever You wished in my case, You did.
Whichever way I stood, it was You who aimed me.

Did I assemble myself? You assembled me.
Why create me full of flaws, O Self-Sufficient One?

I opened my eyes: inside a dungeon.
Appetite and craving — inside a devil, crammed full.

So as not to die of hunger in that prison
I ate a few mouthfuls — some clean, some carrion.

Did anything go missing from Your kingdom?
Did my word overrule Your decree?

Did I take Your provision and leave You needy?
Did I eat Your meal and leave You hungry?

You build a bridge thin as a hair and say: cross.
Cross it, and drink the wine of heaven.

Can a man cross a bridge thin as a hair?
He snaps, or he slips, or he goes off into air.

And it is Your grace again that carries the servant over,
carries him over and pours him the heaven wine.

Your servants build bridges for the merit of it —
and the merit is this: that people cross and travel on.

So the thing had better stand firm there,
so whoever sees it says: look, the straight road.

You set up a scale to weigh my sins,
intending to pitch me into the fire.

A scale is what a grocer has need of —
or a merchant, a trader, a seller of spices.

Since sin is the filthiest of all filth,
in Your presence it is the trade of the worthless.

So why uncover the filth and weigh it out?
What befits You is to cover it with grace.

Now You say: let Me throw him in the fire,
let Me see whether the evil runs one grain over.

Evil should be reckoned small, and good large.
Those with no good at all — those were the ones lost there.

You are the All-Seeing; You know my state already.
What need, then, to weigh out my deeds?

God forbid it of You, Lord of all creatures —
that You should sit and watch the show while I burn nicely.

Wasn't Your revenge already taken — killing me,
rotting me, filling my eyes with dirt?

All this haggling over one handful of dust —
what is it for, O Generous Lord of Majesty?

Since the black hair has gone white,
let go the loves of this world, let them out of your hand.

Since no harm ever came from Yunus,
You know it — the open and the hidden both.

Let no other answer come from us to You.
That is the word. And God knows best what is right.