Hundreds or thousands of years ago, somebody cooked what
they imagined was a simple dinner and shared it with someone they loved. The
two of them sat down to eat it, toasted each other, and took their first bites.
God, watching this, got on His megaphone and pronounced to all the Earth, “Hearken,
my children! It’s taken four thousand years, but you have found pasta, garlic,
olive oil, parsley, and parmesan cheese, and combined them into a dish both
humble and divine. Having found this Secret Dish, and shared it with another in
a moment of peace and love, you have brought about the end of this experiment.
It’s time for you all to join me in Heaven where we will live together forever –
every day peace and love from beginning to end – and we will have pasta just
like that every day and you will never get sick of it or get fat. What do you
say?” Only no one heard Him, because the Devil, in his first and only act since the
apple in the garden, had taken the batteries out of the megaphone. God looked over
to Jesus, who shrugged and said, “Let’s just keep watching and see what they do,”
and now here we are, cleverer than what’s good for us, clevering up all kinds
of suffering worse than what God ever thought we could, and Him and Jesus and
the Holy Ghost are all hovering around the TV, watching us and biting their
nails.
