I am a huge fan of the PREACHER comic books as created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. Pitch me, homie. A preacher coming from a nightmare childhood plays host to a primordial force and decides God has frakked up creation and goes on a quest to bring God to justice. Sidekicks are his hitgirl girlfriend and drunk, ne’er-do-well Irish vampire. And what happens when Reverend Jesse Custer finds God?

Quit readin’ now if you don’t wanna know. This here blog post is chock full of spoilers. Ye have been warned.

And if you are easily offended, yeah, there are better and more interesting things out there on the internet to suck away your time.

Back to the PREACHER. In the end, after tales of dysfunctional families, sodomy, torture, true love, serial killers, castration, and meat packin’, the preacher hires the Saint of Killers to murder God. Which the Saint is happy to do so he can get vengeance on God for killin’ the Saint’s wife and daughter. Hang ‘Em High meets Albert Camus. Or The Outlaw Josey Sartre.

Now, more spoilers, but ye gods, where have you been livin’? Under a rock? In the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, God is also killed. To me, all of this points to the conclusion that God, as some understand him, needs to die.

In the PREACHER comics, God is a love addict. He sets up creation, creates man, then makes life unendurable so people have to turn to God. Which, in some mainstream Christian thought, is exactly how it all works. If you are sorrowful and hurting, turn to God, love him. But if God planned your life for you to miserable, that makes Him a manipulator, or a monster. See my Holocaust reference below.

Garth Ennis was bright enough and brave enough to document this theology in a violent, graphic, R-Rated comic book. God love him.
But see, this type of needy, diabolical God needs to die. The idea that God has any sort of human characteristics is just Greek mythology re-done. No, God needs to be bigger. In fact, God needs to be so big, He envelopes nothing. God is nothing. God does not exist. God is nowhere, nothing, nix, nihil, empty set. A void in the abyss. A unuttered whisper.

From Karen Armstrong’s brilliant, A Case for God, these are the apophatic aspects of God. Unknowable. Holy. Holy. Holy.

Holy is translated as divine, or sacred, but originally it meant simply other. Holy, holy, holy, God. Other. Other. Other. Unknowable. The Jesuits told me that trying to intellectualize God is like trying to pour the ocean into a thimble. Sit back and ponder that bit of prose, pardner.

If God created the universe, and God is anything like us, that would mean God planned the Holocaust. Which makes God a monster. No, the new God didn’t plan all of that. God’s job is not planner.

I deleted my paragraph on free will here. Free will is the escape hatch for all talk of God, and I don’t want to go out that way.
I maintain that God’s primary job is as a sustainer. Human beings are in an impossible situation and we don’t need some judge in Heaven, we don’t need a monster creator, and we don’t need a love addict. We need a sustainer, someone to help us through, something beyond, that we can hang our hopes and dreams upon, that won’t let us down because no matter how bad it gets, there is always hope. Roll away the stone. The tomb is empty. There is a God. Tim Tebow lead the Broncos in a victory over the Pittsburg Steelers. After something like 22 drives without a touchdown. A resurrection.

God’s job isn’t to stop our tears. It is to cry with us and be with us, in us, speak through us, sustain us.

Any other God that cannot or will not provide love and comfort needs a 45. Caliber Colt Killer bullet, right between the eyes.

I reckon.