Theology

So there he was, on an idle afternoon, around 4.7 billion years ago, The Supreme Being, bored. Nothing to look at and supper a long way off, picking his cosmic nose and kicking at empty space, wishing, wishing that there was just a little bit of matter to mess with. “If wishes were horses then beggars would ride,” his mother had said in that dismissive tone of voice that made it clear that she was not going to tell him what a beggar was, or a horse either for that matter. Then all of a sudden it came to him that he was The Supreme Being and he could do anything he wanted. He could make a beggar to play with and it would be whatever he wanted it to be. Abruptly his mind cleared and he thought and thought about what a beggar should be – so many possibilities – he would try a couple of ideas and see if he liked them, but first things first.

“Let there be light!” he cried, and clapped his hands so hard that a spark flew out and grew and grew, spinning and spinning. Then it started breaking up into lots of lesser sparks and he watched entranced as they spun around like a huge pizza, although he had no idea what a pizza was at the time, growing and sparkling until he was surrounded with them.

After a billion or so years this grew tedious, and he didn’t think this is what a beggar was anyway, although he was pretty sure this was matter and should be fun one way or another. So he took a closer look and found that there were little bits of dust between the sparks. He gave one a little poke and it flew apart. “Oooh!” he cried in childish delight and did it again. But after another billion years or so this too grew tedious, so he kicked back and looked at his little universe while he thought what to do next.

He whiled away another billion years perfecting volcanoes and oceans and continental drift. He launched a few comets and set up some magnetic anomalies, lit off some supernovas and watched some stars collapse.

Then idly, he stirred up a little ocean and noticed that there was some stuff there that he hadn’t ordered. Cross, now, he thought it would be amusing to make some trilobites to eat this stuff. “Let there be trilobites!” he cried, and there they were crawling around the bottom of the sea, lapping down the presumptuous crud. Then he added some mollusks and worms and brachiopods and sponges and jawless fishes and some nice oozy plants, some jellyfish for pretty and some echinoderms for fun, all the while looking for something that might be a beggar. But nothing looked just right, so he just sat back and watched it all for a while, and before you knew it another billion years had passed.

Crossly, he wiped out most of his little creatures to make room for new ones that might be beggars. Then he noticed that there was nothing on dry land. Lots more space to make things on so he started filling up both land and sea. He made bugs and toads and cycads and mosses and starfish and lungfish and sharks and kelps. But none of them were beggars, so he wiped them out again and again and replaced them with new ones. Magnolias and lizards and spiders and tree ferns and clams and salamanders and plesiosaurs and brachiosaurs and tyrannosaurs and mosquitos and rats.

He liked the rats so he got rid of a bunch of stuff and made some bears and bats and seals and tigers and antelopes and rabbits and horses (at last a horse) and weasels and mastodons and monkeys. This was beginning to look more and more like a beggar. So he made lots of monkeys and lemurs and apes and lorises and marmosets and baboons. Finally, in a whimsical moment, he made a big naked ape with an oversized head and watched while it multiplied and played with matches and worshipped itself and wiped out his other creations. This would have annoyed him a lot more than it did were it not that he knew at last that he had his beggar. So he just sat back and watched, and laughed and laughed at the idea that this preposterous creature should think that it looked like him.

He had completely lost track of time when he heard his Mother’s voice shouting “What have you done? I leave you alone for a little while in a nice clean void and look at the mess you’ve made! You clean that up right now and come in for supper!” And so he turned for one last look at his funny little ape strutting and swaggering, and regretfully raised his hand…