Some Suggestions For God To Help Him Improve

By David Metcalfe

October 5, 2019

Dear God,

I know you don’t like to hear from me too often, because in your infinite knowledge you probably foreknow that I’m going to be fairly critical (and based on the Psalms it seems like you’re kind of obsessed with getting complimented all the time). But one thing I was told by a human resources person a while back is that, to spare people’s feelings and present information in a kind way, it’s good to “sandwich” criticisms- by putting compliments before and after.

I’ve seen a lot of improvement from you over the years. Back in the Old Testament, you were smiting people, burning entire cities, opening up holes in the ground to swallow people, ordering the Israelites to murder and rape people, and so forth. But then your son was much more chill with the whole “wrath” thing and was much nicer to people who didn’t act “righteous”. And then for quite a while your only church on the earth was the Catholics, and I’ll give you a break on that one because I think we both know there was a lot of human interference responsible for that fiasco. Now days it seems like most churches emphasize your son’s teachings about love, and ignore some of the morally questionable stuff you had been doing before that.

Ok, sorry, that compliment got kind of convoluted.

But really, it seems like you inspired a lot of people to do amazing things- Mother Theresa cited you as the reason she went to help orphans in India, Martin Luther King Jr. cited you as the reason he fought for racial equality, and several football players cited you as the reason for moving a ball past a random line more times than the other team (alright, the third example is crap but the first two seem pretty good).

Some of the universe is very well made. Like, I mean some solid artistic work; mountains, beaches at the ocean, forests, jungles. Expand more and the solar system looks amazing. Just from earth the stars look very good but then scientists have all kinds of instruments now to see things a lot better and the stars, planets, moons- all that stuff- is just incredible. Animals are very cool too. I watch those nature documentaries sometimes and I’m like, “nice one, God”.

There’s just a few small issues I’ve noticed in the set up here. So, for one, babies die…a lot. Babies in their mother’s womb die, babies just born die, and babies a few months or so die. And it’s not always our fault. Sometimes, the parents really want the baby to live, but it gets a disease or the birthing process doesn’t go well, or any number of things. Now, there is the problem of the parents, family and friends having to deal with the loss of their baby (but we could just say that is a part of suffering through things to find meaning or whatever). But conceptually, it simply doesn’t work. If you send humans here for a purpose- to learn and grow, to get to know you, to experience life- then why would you make a human and then let it die without the chance to do any of that stuff? Furthermore, if all babies go to heaven when they die, they weren’t able to exercise free will. Beyond that, assuming all babies go to heaven when they die, isn’t abortion and murdering all infants a morally justified thing to do, because then they would all go to heaven for sure rather than living life and risking choosing the wrong path?

Needless to say, allowing so many babies to die was not a wise decision practically or theologically.

The next problem is that you created all things, and like I said, some of them are quite good. Problem is, tons of them are terrible. Spiders are disgusting looking creatures. I don’t know what the hell you were thinking with that one. “Let’s make, I don’t know, something kind of small with eight legs and fangs and it’ll spin a sticky web. And umm…it paralyzes bugs, bites them, and sucks out their blood.” Messed up. Also, it’s great that you made a giant ocean (water is the most important thing for survival), but you put a bunch of crap in it. Do you know how many people are desperate for fresh water? And you made salt water almost everywhere…uuuuggghhhh. I don’t know how to break this to you, but it was just a bad idea.

You don’t do much these days. Like I said, even though the things you were doing back in the Old Testament were mostly destructive and murderous, at least they were interesting and spectacular. Just with Moses alone, you were a burning bush, you sent 10 plagues on the Egyptians, you sent an “angel of death” to kill the Pharaoh’s first born son…ok, like I said, mostly horrible and murderous, but regardless, you were active. I’m not saying you should send an “angel of death” to kill people’s first born son if they don’t have lamb’s blood on their door (a reasonable criteria for keeping your son alive, obviously), but I am saying you should do something cool or interesting. A lot of evangelicals in America try to pretend that you are the one sending hurricanes and tsunamis as judgement against people, and obviously we have enough scientific knowledge these days to know that’s not the case, but I honestly suggest doing something kind of crazy like that for real. But let’s make it something that helps people rather than your usual “murder miracle” style. Like, miraculously cure every cancer patient in the world or something. That would be very cool.

But don’t worry, these are just a few pieces of feedback to help you out. There’s no need to redo the whole universe- what’s done is done. Mistakes were made. But moving forward, you can stop allowing billions of babies to die, get rid of some of the stupid creations (make spiders less horrible and make the ocean freshwater, would be examples of two things you could get started on), and do some spectacular, non-murderous miracles (I shouldn’t have to specify “non-murderous”, but I read your book and I know the way you get sometimes).

Other than that, keep it up! Not sure if you’re even going to read this, but I guess since you have complete foreknowledge of all things, you probably saw and read everything in the universe already. And, as you know, I’m not convinced that prayer really works to change practical things in the world, so I’m not sure when I will speak to you again, but I’m sure I will have more constructive criticisms for you by then.

Thanks, David