Why Can’t I Vote for God?
In case your French isn’t good enough to read the strip above:
“If God were democratically elected by all the faithful; if his income were taxed, and if he had to retire at age 65, I might become a believer.”
That touches on something I find odd about the Abrahamic religions: their holy texts seem to see monarchy as the highest—indeed, only—form of government. I suppose there’s a dalliance with communism in the book of Acts, but that society isn’t expected to last long. Where does the Bible, to pick the example I’m most familiar with, advocate democracy?
As King Arthur might have told Dennis, the constitutional peasant, “You don’t vote for god!” But why not?
The idea of a human doing God’s job seems ridiculous, not simply because of the limitations of flesh and blood—presumably the duties of the office involve telepathically telling peope where their keys are, or magically removing someone’s tumor, or causing an earthquake to kill a bunch of unbelievers. But presumably the office comes with the wherewithal to do these things—but also because God is usually presented as being so much better than us in every way: wiser, kinder, omniscient-er, and so on, that there can be no comparison.
Okay, so why not have an election? If God’s all he’s cracked up to be, he shouldn’t have any trouble winning an election.
Now, maybe people would vote for someone else, what with the heart of man being corrupt and his every thought being evil, the sorts of things that got caused Noah’s flood, that sort of thing. But what’s the worst that can happen? Assuming there’s an election every ten years or so, how much damage could a human do to the universe in that amount of time? Especially if the Catholics are right and there’s a celestial bureaucracy in charge of making sure things run smoothly.
It’d be the Bush years on a cosmic scale: we’d fuck up, it’d pass, we’d elect someone better (God, presumably), and we’d try our best to forget all about that other guy.
But if he’d rather remain a dictator who never shows himself, I suppose that’s his business. But I can’t help wondering what he’s hiding.
Plus, of course, that whole “supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony mere raw strength” thing.