V. A Good God
(After a long time living in peace with Clarice, Hannibal revisits his notions on God)
Let us suppose there is a good God.
I know you will remind me of my usual quip,
"If God is good,
He would not have let her go the way she did."
But, permit me, if you will, to offer another response;
You see, in the chambers of my mind these days,
A curious muse oft visits me
And speaks of what happened during man's fall from Eden,
And the nature of loyalty and love.
..
What if we suppose the Fall is death, a divorce?
Would that change our understanding of the story?
Man died because he did not heed a warning,
And God's family, once secure, was sundered into the unknown…
..
Do you suppose God felt betrayed, abandoned, angry?
We focus on man's poor descent into the cold earth,
But we forget the One left behind,
Picking up the pieces.
We both know how that cuts a person to the quick,
Wounding the soul in unspeakable ways,
Until we no longer wish to be reminded of the trauma and pain.
..
Can we not suppose God felt this too?
After all, are we not created in His image?
Did He then, in tormented anger, seek to destroy man to block the pain?
Was He not justified then, like a jilted lover, to be jealous of man's pandering to other gods?
How much that would cut if He truly was working on bringing man back
To New Life, as Christ reminds us.
Don't you think, my dear, that man has been utterly rude?
..
I do suppose this could explain man's accounts of a "malicious and cruel" God;
The Big-Bad Jehovah, dropping typhoid and swans alike upon poor man,
Only to find our "victim" did nothing to warrant the latter symbols of fidelity.
Why, if I were God, I would certainly do worse,
Likely the reason the Adversary did not become man's Advocate.
..
I do not suppose we will know the full story.
But one part of the account fascinates me:
If God is only malicious, why the plan to save wretched man?
Man is not a lamb, but a wolf, a serpent,
Why then, go through such lengths to save that?
And to bring back to His house?
Surely, this God is baffling…
..
…And so, I suppose, that God is good.
Not because He isn't wrathful,
But because He chooses resilience and reconciliation in spite of the pain.
How marvelously psychotherapeutic our God is!
That, in itself, tickles this old psychiatrist's heart.