If This is God's Plan, then God is a Jerk

(Note: this piece is satire.  It is not an attack on anyone's beliefs.)  

Everything happens for a reason.  It's part of God's plan.  God works in mysterious ways.  These are things people say to cope when something bad happens.  Sure, it helps lessen the pain to think there's some Greater Purpose behind it -- but not if you take a look at what such words really mean.

If God has a plan, why doesn't He just get on with it?  Why the games, the subterfuge?  Does he enjoy His Cosmic game of cat and mouse, swatting us with His paw as we struggle? 

And what of these Mysterious Ways?  If the idea is that we just don't understand because we are peon humans and He is a god, well that has some merit -- but then why is He so much like us in other aspects?  Is He our Heavenly Father,  or a mysterious, unknowable Being?  Not that God can't have a multifaceted personality, but if your human father subjected you to blind obedience to a plan he refused to reveal to you, you would resent it. 

Which makes God kind of a jerk.  At best He's an autocrat; at worst He's a sadist on a power trip.  This isn't all that inconsistent with the Old Testament -- God was indeed vengeful and ruled with an iron fist in those days.  But I thought He was supposed to have mellowed with age and fatherhood?  Wasn't the whole point of Jesus to usher in a new era, one of forgiveness and love?  If so, then why these Old Testament games?  Maybe Old Dog God is having a hard time learning new tricks.  Maybe He's a crotchety old geezer set in His ways.  Wouldn't that make Jesus His apologetic son?  Is God the cantankerous Grandpa we tolerate but mostly ignore on Thanksgiving?  Feed him turkey till he falls asleep and shuts up?

Now, I'm all for the idea that struggle makes us stronger, that something crappy that happens today can make us better prepared for something else down the road.  But to say that God intentionally subjects us to such trials?  If a parent did that to a child, it would be called abuse.  A god that subjects me to endless tirals in the same of some Mysterious Purpose doesn't really earn my respect.  And if that's the way God rolls, then I'd rather go to Hell.  At least you know where Lucifer stands on things. 

Whether God made us in His image or we made Him in ours, the idea that "shit happens" as part of His grand scheme is childlike at best.  What kind of god gives his creations such big, fabulous brains only to demand that they shut them off in blind acceptance of his "plan"?

Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius expressed it well:

If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. 

A god that subjects me to the recent events of my life as part of some grand plan is pretty unjust in my book.  That's not the kind of god I want to believe in.  So, I refuse to believe that it's part of some mysterious scheme.  And if I turn out to be wrong, well, then I guess I'll be hangin' with Marcus in hell.