God's Ego

I got to work Monday with a very clear objective: keep my head down, do as little as possible, get through the day.

When I was twenty or twenty-one, a college dropout, working full time, I decided I had to start a band. Immediately. Work, I had quickly discovered, was a crock of shit. Not at all for me.

As Frying Pan Jack once said (I think; and I paraphrase here): "I learned when I was a young man that the only true life is the life of the mind. And if the only true life is the life of the mind, what sense does it make for me to turn that mind over for eight hours a day for someone else's use, in the vague hope that it will be returned to me at the end of the day in an unmutilated condition?"

Exactly. Couldn't have said it better.

That band, though, turned out not to be my ticket out of the work force. Nor did the next one. Or the next.

So, twelve years later, there's me. Tired. Really not at all enthusiastic about a pile of forms ready to be filled out, payroll sheets ready to be submitted, phone messages in urgent need of a reply. Wanting, as I say, to just get through the day. Nothing special or important on the calendar. Another day at the office.

Around 9:30 my boss called and asked me to schedule myself for a 10:45 meeting in a nearby town, about a thirty minute drive from the office. She had found herself suddenly unavailable and wanted me to take her place.

I wasn't thrilled. The meeting would involve talking. Thinking. But I said "sure, fine, no problem," wrapped up the work I'd started and, a few minutes later, was driving through the hills outside of town, enjoying what had turned out to be an absolutely perfect morning. The sun was out, the air was warm, the roads I took gave me a perfect view of the changing leaves for miles and miles.

On that drive, I had a chance to listen to my very favorite radio talk show, The Diane Rehm Show. Not the whole thing. There was, after all, that meeting (mercifully brief), and I had to make a number of stops on the way back to the office (for a bag of jalapeno potato chips, to drop off some mail). But I caught a lot, enjoyed it, was glad for the drive, the chance to relax.

The second hour of the show was an interview with Elizabeth Edwards, wife of the guy who almost got to be Vice President a couple years back (wouldn't the world be a better place?). She said a number of interesting things; you can listen to them here. One line, though, caught my attention more than others. When the conversation turned briefly to faith and spirituality, Elizabeth Edwards explained that she belonged to a Methodist church, but then went on to say that she would make a "bad evangelical" because she was very open, willing to let her children find their own way to God. "I don't like a vision of a God," she said, "that is so vain that he particularly cares what name you call him..."

From that point on, my mind wandered.

My mind wandered to a person I occasionally work with. Steve (not really, but, you know, confidentiality and all).

Steve is a guy with Down Syndrome who attends two of the day programs (including one of the programs that I oversee) at my agency. Steve is hard to understand. His speech is slurred, he tends to focus on things that really excite him and repeats them over and over. He doesn't use a lot of verbs or adjectives; a typical sentence might be "DayHab Monday," meaning "I'm going to DayHab on Monday." Steve and I get along pretty well. He's been angry with me a couple of times, but he's usually pretty happy to see me. He calls me over whenever I'm in the area, he always wants to fill me in on new events in his life, tell me about staff in the other program, show me a new hat or t-shirt or pair of sneakers.

I like Steve. A lot. He's a good guy. And I don't say that in a paternalistic "isn't he sweet and cute and retarded" sort of way. I like Steve. Steve is a good guy.

Steve thinks my name is Mike.

My name's not Mike. My name is Jim.

Steve doesn't accidentally call me Mike. It's not a slip of the tongue, something that he forgets and then quickly corrects. And he doesn't confuse me with a guy named Mike. He just thinks my name is Mike. It doesn't matter how many times I remind him that my name is, in fact, Jim. He might remember for a minute or two minutes after I've reminded him, after he's said it back to me a couple of times. Next time he sees me, though, he's going to call me Mike again. I don't know why. And I don't particularly mind. I like Steve. Steve likes me. He's just not so good at remembering the name (actually, correct that; he remembers fine; he always calls me Mike, not Joe or Bob or Andy or Greg; he just remembers the wrong name).

It has never occured to me to poke Steve in the eye for calling me Mike. It has never occured to me to turn my back on him, walk away, and never speak with him again. It hasn't really occured to me to take it personally. There are a lot of things that I just don't get, but I very much get the fact that Steve and I are on different levels, that Steve is doing his best, that Steve likes being around me, and that there's no reason for me to feel insecure or slighted over the name thing.

And I'm not that great a guy. I'm not necessarily a thoroughly bad guy, but I've got my issues. I'm a long way for perfect.

And so I've often wondered why, if I, a pretty flawed individual with a fragile self-esteem, can handle that sort of thing, so many believers insist that God can't.

Why is it that we want to attribute to God an ego so fragile that it can't tolerate well-meaning believers getting a few facts wrong? Why is it that we believe that God's self-worth is so conditional that mixing up some of the biographical information is a sure way to earn his wrath?

Working on the assumption that God is smarter than us (I'm smarter than Steve; I think we can assume that the difference between me and Steve is nowhere near the difference between me and God) and just all around better than us, I'd have to assume that, when it comes to the details, he'd be willing to let a few things slide.

Steve thinks my name is Mike. I can live with it. Steve may also believe that I live in Canastota. I don't. But I can live with that too. He probably doesn't quite comprehend my job description and may assume that I walk through his work area for reasons that never even occured to me. I'm alright with that too. I know a number of people who have all those details down correctly and are just plain old assholes.

Why, when it comes to God, do so many people want to convince me that what matters isn't the desire you have to grow closer, isn't the effort you make to conform to his will, isn't the openness you have to faith and love, isn't the compassion you feel for his people, but is, rather, your ability to call him by the proper name, your assent to certain historical details as fact and others as fiction.

I don't get it.

For some reason, randomly (maybe in an effort to show off all that book learning), I'm reminded of a quote from a Meister Eckhart book:

"All those who want to make statements about God are wrong, for they fail to say anything about him. Those who want to say nothing about him are right, for no word can express God; but he expresses himself in himself."