The Wilful Sunflower

(As suggested by Matt - in response to this, the subject of discussion here.)

One day, as the angels bowed down in worship, God looked around and realised that he was lonely.

"They don't really love me," he thought, feeling depressed. "They just worship me because they're wired to do it. If they could choose not to, would they still worship me? Would they still love me?"

See, God, being an ordinary person inside, wanted to be loved and wanted for himself, not for his kingly position or what he could do.

Deciding to experiment - after all, he had nothing to lose - God decided to create a whole new universe and place a tiny world somewhere in the midst of all that matter and anti-matter.

With painstaking care, he crafted every detail of the world, letting his creative juices flow. He put colours into it, excavated huge oceans, carved out majestic mountains, fashioned fantastic-looking animals, called forth sturdy oak trees and tiny blades of grass - both from the same earth. Then, when it was ready, he made the people.

"I'm gonna make them similar to me, so they can think and talk and feel and reason," he said. And he did. He privately thought they were the best things he'd ever made.

Proudly, he presented the gorgeous new world to them. "It's all for you," he told them. "I made it all for you. Enjoy!"

"You can do anything you like," he continued, "except eat the fruit of this particular tree."

However, curiosity and a desire to test their boundaries got the better of them, and they did what they'd been told not to do.

God was upset but he figured, "Maybe they don't know how much I love them yet." So he gave them clothes to wear and generally helped them.

But as time went on, things kept on getting worse and God couldn't stay optimistic any longer. The experiment wasn't working. God decided it was time to start over. Sort of.

He chose one family to stay on, the family that loved him the most, and killed off everything and everyone else. Then, overcome by remorse at what he'd done, he promised that family he'd never do it again.

However, history began to repeat itself; as time went on, things began getting worse and worse all over again. This time, instead of killing everybody off, God just chose one particular man and decided to work with him. That's how the man's descendants came to be known as God's Chosen Nation.

God told them, "I love you, and I'm totally committed to you. But this relationship isn't going to work if it's only one-way. I need you to be totally committed to Me, too."

From previous experience, he'd discovered that these people would need some powerful incentive to keep their side of the commitment. So he went on to outline what was in it for them: he'd give them prosperity, good health, and long lives, and protect them from their enemies. Just to make sure they wouldn't get any ideas, he told them what they could expect if they broke their commitment to him: he'd make sure they suffered, really suffered. All kinds of calamities would come, they'd be cursed, and so on so forth.

Scared stiff, the people agreed they would love only God and stay in a committed relationship with him.

But they didn't. And God realised that scaring people into a commitment wasn't what he really wanted. He didn't want them to perform all those rituals and do all those things for him out of duty and obligation. What was the point?

His long-held dream of being loved for himself still hadn't materialised. In a last-ditch attempt, God decided, "Maybe I'm too far away, and they can't identify with me. I'll go down there and mix around with them. Then they'll finally realise how much I care. Maybe then they'll be able to really get to know me, and they'll fall in love with me."

So Jesus came, and started telling people, "It's not about the rules, it's about your heart! God wants your heart!" But they didn't realise he was God in disguise, and they got upset coz he was messing up the status quo. Some militants and fundamentalists got together, decided to frame him, and managed to get rid of him in the end.

They'd reckoned without God's tenacity and foresight. "Hah! Played right into my hands!" he exclaimed with glee. "That's perfect!"

He looked at Jesus' death like a human sacrifice - you know, the kind that people used to offer to appease the other more bloodthirsty gods. It was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, coz, in case you didn't remember, Jesus was really God. There would never be another sacrificial offering quite like him.

"I'm satisfied with this one. You can stop trying to do things and burn sacrifices in order to please me. I really only want your love," God begged.

Two thousand years later, only a handful of people have gotten the message.