The God of Ignorance

“For a time, those who sought an audience with me did so to ask questions. About the nature of the universe, about myself, and sometimes about those they held dear. Perhaps that is why you have come.” None of those were the real reason that Hamilton stood before the Almighty Creator, but now he was feeling self-conscious about not having anything prepared.

“There are some things I’ve always wondered,” Hamilton admitted. “But if you’re as omniscient as they say, you know what I’m going to ask before I ask it, right?”

“I can peer into the future if I wish. But I do not.”

“Why?”

“Because the future is either fixed, in which case my knowledge of it will not affect its outcome, or it can be changed, in which case any foresight I may have is no better than a guess. Besides, when you have observed the principles of cause and effect for as long as I have, you rarely need clairvoyance to know how things will turn out.”

“How do you mean?”

God closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he reopened them, they were fixed on Hamilton, yet they somehow seemed to look through him rather than at him.

“Macau, China. A man who lost his job three months ago and his girlfriend eight days ago has just placed the remainder of his savings account on the number fifteen in a game of roulette. It was the age he had his first kiss at, his lucky number. The odds are thirty-five to one. Greensboro, Alabama. A white-footed field mouse is making its way across a local farmer’s property while an barn owl waits in a nearby tree. It is night time, and the mouse is returning to its burrow to sleep. London, England. Two young women are leaving a downtown bar. They have been celebrating a mutual friend’s birthday. One decides to walk home, while the other chooses to drive. Both are inebriated and well beyond the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle. The gambler watches the wheel spin as he contemplates what he might spend his winnings on. The owl notices the mouse and takes flight. The inebriated woman pulls out of the parking lot onto a busy street. The wheel lands on twenty-seven. The owl swoops down on the mouse. The woman swerves to avoid a pedestrian.”

“Okay, you’ve made your point,” said Hamilton, no longer wishing to hear the outcome of these unfortunate vignettes.

“The man is now penniless,” God continued, “And alone in a foreign city. The mouse is slowly dying in the talons of its predator. The woman…” God hesitated, though only in his speech. His face was impassive as ever. “The drunk driver made it back safely, but her friend who decided to walk never made it home. Would you like to know the details of what happened?”

“No.” said Hamilton. He had heard enough.

“Neither would I, and yet I do. Do you see now why I prefer to ignore the events that unfold on earth?”

“But you have the power to make things better. Just because the bad seems to outweigh the good, you can’t ignore it all because you don’t like to look at it. Why not fix the problem instead of turning your back on it?”

“That may be valid advice for dealing with a leaking roof, but we are talking about the human race.”

Hamilton shifted in his seat, uncomfortable disagreeing with the creator of all things.

“Forgive me, but the human race is a leaky roof for you. You're all powerful, aren't you?"

“You are wrong,” God stated in a manner so absolute it brooked no argument. “You say that only because your experience of humanity is limited. True, you have lived a full life, but you have only seen it through your own eyes, and in your time. The past is something you've only experienced through textbooks and documentaries, presenting an overarching bird’s-eye view of what truly happened. But the most pivotal events on earth cannot and should not be comprehended through either the facts alone, or one person’s perspective. History is stories. Personal, biased, and unrefined, but truer than any collection of facts could ever hope to be. A war is not a list of battles and skirmishes with one side eventually being declared the victor, any more than love is a meeting followed by marriage and death. War is horror, misunderstanding, redemption, and glory, just as love is fear, trust, risk, and reward. Both are many things to many different people and the tragedy of it all is that nobody can hope to understand what either truly means while they are bound to their own perceptions. I am not bound by such principles, and in that, I am alone.”

A twinge of sadness lingered on God’s last statement. The worst kind of sadness, centered on a truth that cannot be helped, so all that can be done is to console the afflicted. But how, Hamilton wondered, do you console a God?

"You cannot" said God quietly. "You can only forgive me for looking away.

"Please forgive me."