God Leads a Pretty Sheltered Life, author unknown

At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain
before God's throne. Some of the groups near the front talked heatedly==not
with cringing shame, but with belligerence.



"How can God judge us?" "How can He know about suffering?" snapped a joking
brunette. She jerked back a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi
concentration camp. "We endured terror, beatings, torture, death!"



In another group, a black man lowered his collar. "What about this?," he
demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. " Lynched for no crime but being
black!"



"We have suffocated in slave ships, been wrenched from loved ones, toiled
till only death gave release."



Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint
against God for the evil and suffering He had permitted in His world. How
lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where
there was no weeping, no fear, no hunger, no hatred. Indeed, what did God
know about what man had been forced to endure in this world? "After all, God
Leads a pretty sheltered life," they said. So each group sent out a leader,
chosen because he had suffered the most. There was a Jew, a black, an
untouchable from India, a battered wife, an illegitimate, a person from
Hiroshima, and one from a Siberian slave camp. In the center of the plain
they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their
case. It was rather simple: Before God would be qualified to be their judge,
He must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God "should be
sentenced to live on earth-- as a man!"



But, because He was God, they set certain safeguards to be sure He could not
use His divine powers to help Himself.



Let Him be born a Jew. Let the illegitimacy of His birth be doubted, so that
none will know who is really His father. Let Him champion a cause so just,
but so radical, that it brings down upon Him the hate, condemnation, and
eliminating efforts of every major traditional and established religious
authority. Let Him try to describe what no man has ever seen, tasted, heard,
or smelled -- let Him try to communicate God to men. Let Him be betrayed by
His dearest friends. Let Him be indicted on false charges, tried before a
prejudiced jury, and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let Him see what it is
to be terribly alone and completely abandoned by every living thing. Let Him
be tortured and let Him die! Let Him die the most humiliating death--with
common thieves.



As each group leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of
approval went up from the great throng of people. When the last had finished
pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence..... No one uttered another
word......No one moved.......For suddenly all knew........God had already
served His sentence.