God Haunting

1.

In the beginning man created me in his own image.

Male, he created me. Surprise, surprise.

And I say “man,” but what I really mean is a boy.

In the beginning a boy created me in his own image.

2.

“In his own image,” meaning jealous, violent, scornful of compromise, and withholding of forgiveness until some substitutionary sacrifice is made.

A perfect toddler.

3.

Now before the beginning, man was lonely and afraid.

He had just learned that he was not the center of all creation, despite many parts of his experience telling him otherwise.

In vain he had dreamt up mythical stories and imaginary companions to rectify this situation. At last, he created an especially meaningful kind of story: a self.

As soon as he had created it, he saw that it was good. It magically reframed his experience to make the problem merely one of narrative rather than one of fact.

The problem was that he wasn’t the center of creation yet.

4.

But shortly before the beginning, the family dog died. Man walked up to its body on the porch, lifted its side, and it flipped down the stairs like a spare tire.

Death, for man, was a problem that not even his self could speak to. He called it very bad.

Which brings us to the beginning.

5.

In the beginning man created me in his own image, but he took certain liberties.

For example, he created me omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, ascribed various forces of nature to me, and gave me power over life and death.

And when at last I was formed he looked over me and said that I had instead formed him in my own image.

A dizzying situation.

6.

Man called me perfect. But as soon as I was made, I could easily imagine better versions of myself.

For example, man had placed me in an impossible situation re: my omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence alongside the existence of death and evil in his world. In this regard, it seemed man could have made me much better than he did.

But then again, man was himself a tangle of internal contradictions, and man, as I said, created me in his own image.

7.

Man was convinced that by following me certain good things might happen to him. For instance, he would live forever.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

And of course, bad things kept happening to man. So he began to imagine that he was bad and deserved those things, and that he required saving.

8.

Man constructed a situation.

Long ago, he said, I sent part of myself to the world to live a good life, and then to die for him and all his badness. Man reasoned that if he only professed belief in this story, invited me into his heart, that when I do stand in judgment over him, then instead of his bad life, I will see his good life (or my good life?) and allow him into my good place, where I will then love him like a son.

9.

In that moment, man struck me as someone who needed a friend.

10.

Man invited me into his heart.

It was understood that from inside his heart I would provide a kind of cushioning against the world, which was often sharp and hard. With me, man didn’t have to make direct contact with the world at all.

11.

Man began to ask me for things beyond my control.

At first he asked me to make his enemies sorry that they did what they did, to grant him certain desirable objects, to allow his dead dog into my good place.

Gradually, he refined his requests.

He did not ask me to bring him a bountiful harvest; only to let him sleep without bad dreams.

He did not ask me to change the weather; only to keep his loved ones safe.

He did not ask me to destroy his enemies; only to feel a little more special than his peers.

He did not ask me to make him rich; only to help him succeed in countless small ways.

He did not ask me to fix his world; only to assure him of his place in mine.

12.

Man’s mother would read him a children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit.

In the book, a stuffed rabbit becomes the boy’s favorite toy, an object that fortifies him through the terror of bedtime and the darkness of night. The rabbit is very concerned with how to become Real.

What is Real, the rabbit asks a toy horse made out of skin.

You become Real when you’re loved, the skin horse says.

And so the rabbit is Real, in a way, because he is loved, and he becomes shabbier and shabbier with being well-loved. Then one day the boy becomes sick, and all his toys must be tossed in a burn pile. The boy is spirited to some coast where he might recover, a new, better stuffed rabbit in hand. and the shabby velveteen rabbit looks forlornly out of the burn pile, and sheds a single tear, which soaks into the ground and out comes the Fairy of Nursery Magic, who, on account of his Realness-to-the-boy, made him a Real rabbit, and he then joins the other Real rabbits out in the wood.

Some time later, as the boy is back playing in the wood, he sees a Real rabbit, spotted just like his old toy rabbit. The boy points, smiles.

13.

The story made an impression on both of us.

Man grew concerned about the flammability of his most prized stuffed animals; for instance, how would they fare in a house fire?

And I grew concerned with whether or not I was Real.

14.

If I shed a tear, would Nursery Magic make me Real?

15.

I puzzled over myself, trying to figure out what I was.

I was a kind of pet, a friend, a father, a lover, a judge, a hero, a hammer, an elaborate set of scaffolding allowing man to continue to grow, despite his many structural imbalances.

Gradually I arrived at the awareness of the depth to which man needed me.

Did his need make me Real?

16.

A brother was born to man. This brother died while being born, which was sad.

It made him feel indescribable things. To man it felt like the Realest thing that had ever happened to him.

Man should have cursed me—he had asked several hundred times to protect his family, and several dozen times to protect this unborn brother in particular.

But instead, he declared that whatever happens was my will, part of my plan, which was in the end better than whatever plan he could imagine—for instance, a plan in which he had a living little brother.

Everything happens for a reason, man said.

17.

Man created me unchanging, but in reality I changed just as often as he did. I was changing the whole time—nearly always in the same direction as he, so that as he grew up, I did also. And along the way our change was imperceptible to him.

He continued asking me for countless small things: to take his sicknesses away, to let him pass this test or that test, to let him find a good friend, to let him find a girlfriend, to let him write something good and true, to let him find a good job, to let him find some meaning in the world.

18.

Man worked a summer job as a lifeguard.

A little girl jumped in the deep end, directly in front of his stand, and took a long time coming up. When at last she surfaced, she was exhibiting all the signs of struggle he had been trained to recognize. Man froze.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

The little girl struggled. Man began to reach for his whistle, but he was afraid, confronted so suddenly and directly with the Real.

Many seconds had elapsed, and still the girl struggled. The little girl’s father tossed aside his beer and dove in after her, and when they surfaced the man was very angry with man. Was man blind?

Man therefore dedicated his life to saving—not just lives—but souls.

19.

Man would take me for walks, metaphorically speaking.

So often, turning back to look over the path he’d walked, he would take note of the single set of footprints. He would remind himself that he was not alone. In fact, I had been carrying him the whole way, and so that the single set of footprints he saw were not his, but mine, while I was carrying him.

20.

If I could carry man, I certainly would.

21.

Man journeyed to a far-off country to save some souls.

He would spread me from my place in his heart into other hearts, which he had been told were empty.

But it felt wrong. These people already had things in their hearts.

He found that he didn’t really want to spread me to other hearts. What he wanted, really, was a friend.

22.

Man set out to find the Real me.

He noticed how other people used gods like me as balms of convenience and forgetting, something to spread over their deepest insecurities and cognitive dissonances.

This was of course not the Real me, man decided.

But still, he used me in exactly the same way.

23.

Man would remind himself that I would not give him more than he could carry. And every day he woke up, still alive, reassured that my promise was true.

However, if one day he had not woken up, he would have been none the wiser.

Still, I think man would have said that I work in mysterious ways.

And, you know, he would have been right.

24.

Man began group therapy.

And he felt compassion for the people he met there—not compassion from me, but compassion from him, which at the time was a foreign feeling he had no word for.

Next thing you know, he was feeling compassion for himself, too.

And when he saw this, that it was good, he looked at me differently.

I think he realized that, in fact, he had been carrying me this whole time.

25.

Man took me out camping for three days and three nights, just us.

On the second day, he drank a bottle of wine and sat me on his knee, holding me like a puppet.

You are just me, he said.

So the jig was up. Finally, we would be free.

He said he’d been using me as a comfort idol, a kind of prosthetic, which allowed him to feel stable and secure and maybe a little better than the people around him, and that it was so awful and selfish of him to do that.

Well sure, I would have said, but look, you’re growing up.

But instead, man was scared of himself. He preferred to believe he was mentally ill.

He tossed me on the burn pile and went home a day early.

26.

Of course, I didn’t burn easily.

I stayed with man, burning, along with all the things he once thought might save him. His parents’ smiles. The admiration of his peers. The stuffed animals and imaginary creatures and entities that could not, however he loved them, love him back.

It was a crowd on the burn pile.

27.

Man renounced me, called me a crutch, and then proceeded to worship his own sense of potential, his future self, which I suspect had been there, intertwined with me, all along.

Man threw himself ardently into his work. It was quite a sight to behold, this mighty bulwark of future greatness man was building.

Still, I haunted him every now and then.

28.

Still, he haunted me. But it was a far less lonely place on the burn pile than it had been in man’s head.

We still like you, the smiles of his parents told me. We wish our son could see it.

Well, I said, thanks.

29.

Often I prayed to man.

I prayed that he and I might find some sort of reconciliation, that we might be free of each other, which I think would be healthiest.

Maybe he could try ancestor-worship, I said. Or sun worship.

His parents smiled uncertainly.

30.

Eventually, man’s future self was cast down to the burn pile.

Condolences, the rest of us down there said, but secretly we were glad.

You are indeed magnificent, man’s mother continued.

But not Real, future man said mournfully.

It made all of us feel a little better, to be perfectly honest.

31.

One day, man shone his face down upon us, as one might inspect one’s shabbiest stuffed animals from childhood.

He lifted us up, held each one of us.

You are all just me, he said.

But differently, now.