I wrote this about 25 years ago. Forgive me if it has, like its author, aged.
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In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And God saw what he had done, and said, “Oops. Sorry.”
And God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
And the man said, “God, do you really expect me not to eat of that forbidden tree? Then why the Hell did you put it there? What, do you think I’m stupid?”
And God saw what he had done, and said, “Oops. Sorry.”
And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
And the woman called to God, and said, “You idiot! Do you realize what you’ve gone and done? You’ve just initiated the inequality of the sexes, the subjugation of women! Do you realize that because you were too short-sighted to create us both at the same time, I’m going to have to suffer the consequences for ten thousand years?”
And God saw what he had done, and said, “Oops. Sorry.”
And Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. One killer, one killed. And God saw what he had done, and said, “Oops. Sorry.” And history marched inexorably on, and each step was another mistake (the flood, the Tower of Babel, the golden calf, the broken tablets). And at each step, God saw what he had done, and said, “Oops. Sorry.” And truly, God was sorry, for he never made the same mistake twice. But what about all the other mistakes out there, just begging to be made?
And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” And thus our histories are like the history of the universe: an eternal series of mistakes from birth until death. At every step we take, we look back and say, “Oops. Sorry.” And at the end, we ask ourselves, “Where did I go wrong?” We answer, “Everywhere.”
And then we ask ourselves, “Have I ever done the right thing?”
Sometimes God, too, asks himself that question. And then he remembers creating the trees, the birds, the flowers, the rocks. And he looks back on what he has done, and exclaims, “What joy I brought to the world!”
And sometimes we do the right thing too, and then we look back on what we have done, and we also exclaim, “What joy I brought to the world!”
But then we think about what we have just said, and we say, “Oops. Sorry.” And we rest our heads on our pillows and sleep fitfully until dawn.