Are Humans Worth Saving?

Jesus sits in his high house looking down on the world. His Prime Minister, Satan, stands by. Jesus speaks.

"Such a wretched place. Why would anybody want to live there?"

"You know, You could intervene. Send an envoy? Establish a diplomatic mission? Maybe if we had a cultural exchange we could lift them up."

"Epcot Center? I don't know. They seem so... I don't know. So backwards? So evil? They are made of clay and they seem determined to grind each other back into clay again."

Satan paused. And thought. And then he spoke.

"I have an idea. Say we go to them. Say we give them a choice. You can either be clay in the ground or you can be stars in the sky. Your choice."

Jesus thinks.

"You'd go down there?"

"Sure. I'd talk to them."

"And tell them what?"

"Well. Pick and choose. Which do you want? Here or there? Good or evil?"

"That's fucked up brother. Clay? Choose?"

"Ya, well. What are we gonna do?"

"Nothing, I guess."

"I suppose. Dad won't be happy."

"So, if we go down there and interfere with their lives, what good will it do?"

"I don't know. We won't know until we try."

"You are just so sentimental."

"Ya, so? You are just so spiteful."

"What do I care about..., what are they called? Carbon creatures? Mud people? Isn't that what shit is made from?"

"And trees. And kittens. And people."

"Whatever. Why do you care, anyway?!"

"Because they do. Have you ever stopped to hear them sing? Or pray? Or make love to the day?"

"Like I would bother."

"Well, I've bothered. And I want to bother some more."

"OK. So what do you want to do about these human carbon singers? They’re just automatons."

"I don't know. You're right. There's not much there. I just can't help feeling that there is more there there. Or should be. Or could be."

"Wait. You’re being sentimental again. Really? They are just mud creatures! Barely alive! And hardly aware. You know they are just autonomous creatures, right? Robots? There is no there there!"

"I suppose you're right."

"Of course I'm right. Let's just plow under the whole clay swamp down… ‘there’ and be done with it, eh Stan?"

"Still..."

"What...?"

"Still, what if? What if we gave the clay people a chance? One chance to be? To be a living, breathing and thinking, feeling creature? Capable of love and laughter and light AND awareness, too?"

"And how do you propose to do that? They're just dirt!"

"I don't know. Go down to them? Pick out two. Set them aside. Maybe in a perfect setting. And give them a perfect choice. Give them a test. You can have this perfect knowledge. But to do so you will lose this perfect bliss. Choose. Go back to clay. Or come here to perfection. You stand in the middle. The road backwards or forwards is long. And both impossible. But so is standing still. Choose."

Jesus pondered these words.

"Nice speech, brother. And what part will you play?"

"The one I always play. The one with the awkward questions. The one who asks why and why not."

"You were always an iconoclast."

"I never saw an icon I didn't want to clast!"

"OK. I'm in. What do we have to lose? Two clay blobs vs. infinity. Bring it on!"

"OK. So, you up for a little wager?"

"How so?"

"If I get those clay creatures to come alive, you take them up to us. Here. In our world."

"Like that's gonna happen. And if you lose?"

"Pffttt. I don't know. I'll eat them all?"

"Deal!"

"Deal!"

"You already lost."

"How do you figure?"

"They're roaming around, mindless."

"Except those two. Here. I will take them. And put them in a garden. I will call them Adam and Eve. And the garden will be Eden."

"So? What good will that do?"

"Watch. I will make a garden of absolute delight. And a tree. Two trees! A tree of knowing and a tree of forgetfulness. Two trees of fruit and the fruit of the tree of knowing gives one an idea. An idea that one is mortal. That one is not divine. Not part of the eternal. One is a creature of time. But it leaves, in its aftertaste, the desire to be those things. And the other tree? The tree of forgetfulness? Its fruit tastes of timelessness. Of not knowing past or future. Me or thee. Only now. Only everything. Only eternity. But without any knowledge of consequences. No knowledge of death. No knowledge of mortality. No realization that there ever was a time when you were Not, nor that there ever will be a time when you are Not again. No desire to be better. And I will tell the clay people that they must not eat of the tree of knowing, for it will break them away from their dumb existence of animal clay that does not know the difference of day to day and that does not anticipate the future and knows not of its own death. Choose. Bliss of ignorance or horror of knowing!"

"And if they choose?"

"Then you will guide them."

"Where?"

"Here."

"How will I do that?"

"Improvise! Make it up as you go along."

"If I agree to do this."

"Which you already have."

"If! What's in it for me?"

"You can create the next world."

"Deal!"

"Deal!"

"Brother Satan. You were always the clever one."