An Argument

As I was eating the dinner I prepared for myself last night (a plate of Spanish rice, two over-easy eggs, and a few tortillas,) my father started sermonizing at me. He is Roman Catholic. And when he gets some booze in him, he becomes the thirteenth apostle. (Oh yeah, there was a thirteenth apostle. Recently uncovered evidence suggests that he was probably Mexican. Experts arrived at this consensus after reading the passage that describes, in detail, him bussing the table after the Last Supper.)

So I was eating and he was talking about his beliefs. At one point he proclaimed, "God works in mysterious ways!" I looked up from my meal. I finished chewing, and swallowed.

"(Gulp.) So what does it benefit God to be so mysterious?"

"God makes no mistakes!" he countered.

"Okay, so God makes no mistakes. God is the creator of all things. God's will is inseperable from the will of everything in creation. That is, unless it's possible for a lowly, sinful human to subvert the will of God. That's impossible, isn't it? Nothing can go against God's will.

So, everything that happens to me is because of God. If I die at 22, or have brown eyes, or don't believe in God, it must be the case that because it is so, it is as God wills it to be. If I don't believe in God, it's because he doesn't want me to."

My father was thought about it for a second. "That doesn't make any sense!" he finally argued.

"God works in mysterious ways!" I replied, knocking a piece of rice off of my face that had been stuck there the whole time I had been talking. "And if you're a fan of things that nobody can understand, I've got some poetry that you would probably love."