and Christians must have thought so by some of the ways they portrayed God. The book of Job is a case directly on point. Bird poop on the forehead is precisely the kind of thing one might expect from a mischievous God.
Of course, it is always possible there is no God. The only difference between this possibility and the last is that human tragedy and natural disaster could not be caused by a nonexistent God, but must be the result of randomness in a universe that never had a manager of any sort. We would be alone in a sort of well-regulated universe—except for the occasional glitch. Such a situation accommodates regularity, natural disasters, and bird poop on the forehead.
The five possibilities for explaining bird poop and divine management of the universe boil down to this: do you choose to believe in an uptight micromanager, a lax general manager, a God gone missing, a mischievous deity, or in no God at all? One could choose to ignore human experience (which the Bible is), and fashion a God of one’s own choosing. I suspect that is what most of us do!
✿
The issues addressed in this section are provocative enough to raise the more basic question about God having a future, particularly in the light of the numerous Gods worshiped through recorded and un-recorded history. Persons even slightly familiar with the history of religions would be unusual had they not in more reflective moments pondered the question: Does our God have a future? I know it sounds like a really dumb question. How could God not have a future? If anyone or anything has prospects surely God does! From the perspective of world history, however, the question is obvious, for history is littered with decayed temples dedicated to obsolete Gods whose religious communities did not survive the passage of time. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, and modern popular imagination, all other Gods are “false” or imaginary Gods, created in the minds of ignorant and misguided people. In their heyday, however, these other Gods were powerful and controlled the lives of many people for many years. They were loved, feared, and their grace invoked through prayer just as devoutly as the God of *Abraham, *Isaac, and *Jacob is today. Those who believed in these now obsolete Gods were as convinced in their faith as devout believers of the Judeo-Christian God are today.
Every religion assumes that its God has eternal prospects. But the idea that “our God is eternal” is simply wrongheaded, as history shows. The character and personality of a particular God exist principally in the mind, apart from any existence the God may have as an “objective” reality. For example, the *Protestant God did not exist before the sixteenth century. He was conceived and born along with the *Protestant Reformation. The Roman Catholic God was very different—and still is. God as he exists in the minds of Episcopalians today is essentially different from the God of Protestant *Fundamentalists or Unitarians. The Gods of these groups have different views on required ritual, ethical values, sin, forgiveness, and the future—provided we assume (as each group tells us) their teaching derives ultimately from God. If tomorrow, Fundamentalism (for example) ceased to exist, the God of Fundamentalism also ceases to exist—I mean this: since no group would exist to serve his interests, his rites would no longer be available in the marketplace of religions. To be a force in society he would need to be rediscovered all over again. So it is with all religions and Gods. All Gods share a potential for obsolescence. *Apollo and *Zeus are no longer invoked in the warm language of faith as once they were. Their *oracles are silent. The *Hellenistic Gods, *Mithras and *Dionysus, once possessed the keys to eternal life and graciously bestowed that gift throughout the ancient world. Nevertheless, their altar fires are now cold ashes, their ruined temples are hollow shells, and their rites abandoned. Yet in the day of their popularity, their believers would have been shocked at the idea their God would one day be obsolete.
How answer the question: Does our God have a future? Clearly belief in a God has a definite future. If history shows anything, it shows human beings as “incurably religious”—even to the point of superstition. Human beings likely will always have a Greater Power they worship and serve, for too many mysteries exist in the universe and our scientists have been unable to answer them all. Yes “God” has a future—although the God we serve today may well not have a future. Only so long as a God has believers will he influence society. Thus a God without temples and worshippers to remember his holy days does not exist—at least not in any practical sense. And this observation raises a more annoying question: Does the demise of even one God foreshadow the eventual demise of all Gods?
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