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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked that very question. I sit, hunkered down behind the rusted-out shell of what was once a candy apple red Mustang GT, and gaze at the throng of once-humanity that shuffles past. A shot to the temple would drop any one of them in an instant, but what would be the point? The rest would turn and come right after me. I’m a good shot, but not good enough to get all of them before they get me. I could outrun them, but again, why bother? Assuming the shot didn’t draw more of them (the living dead are too stupid to avoid the sound of gunfire—to them it’s a dinner bell), I’d run for a while, find a new place to hide, and it would start all over again. Like I said, there’s no point to any of it.
My life has no purpose.
I used to believe in God. I’m not a freak or anything. I never put on a white button-up shirt and black slacks and rode around on a bicycle trying to talk people into marrying their own cousins. I never stopped anyone on the street and asked them, “If you died tonight, do you know for sure that you’d go to Heaven?” I never joined a cult or a Young Life group. I just figured that somewhere up there, God was hanging out, occasionally taking time out of His busy day to see what was happening down here, and maybe lending us a hand every so often. Now I’m not so sure.
I don’t have a problem with bad things happening in life. I mean... well, I do have a problem with it, but I never blamed it on God. Bad stuff happens, and you can’t be protected all the time. I remember the emo kids at school whining about how “a loving God would never permit so much suffering.” I thought about suggesting they sell their iPods and send the money to charity if suffering bothered them so much, but I’m not the kind of guy that even the emo’s notice. I get plenty of notice nowadays, though. From the buggers. Of course, they look at me the way I used to look at bacon.
Where was I? Oh yeah, suffering. Anyhow, I’ve tried to imagine a world in which God didn’t permit suffering, and I didn’t like the picture that came to my mind. It would be sort of like this kid I knew, Andy McMillan. His house sat on a busy corner, and his mother couldn’t bear the thought of him accidentally getting hit by a car, so put him in one of those harnesses people use to keep from losing their kid at the mall, tied a rope to it, and staked him down in center of their front yard.
While the rest of us ran around having fun, Andy ran in circles. Sometimes we’d try to include him in our games, but mostly we just threw stuff at him. His life sucked. He never got to take a chance, or try something risky and enjoy the reward. He just...existed. That’s how I imagine a world where God protects us from suffering. Like Andy, we’d be safe, but not free. So that’s not why I don’t believe.
The reason I stopped believing in God is simple. There is no longer a purpose to being alive. I, and anyone else left with a heartbeat and a consciousness, spends all our time in an unending quest for food, shelter, and safety. We eat. We hide, or fight, if we have to. We sleep. The next day, it starts all over again. Do our lives have any more purpose than those of the mindless freaks that meander through each day, doing nothing more or less than searching for their next meal?
Why are there people at all? Is this all God intended for us? If there’s a God out there, why didn’t He put a stop to the bug back when it first started? Would it have been too much trouble to give just one scientist a light bulb moment, and put a halt to this thing? Is this really all there is? If there is a God, and this is His purpose for our lives, He’s being a real douche.
What’s that? What happened to Andy? His life had a happy ending of sorts. One day, he finally summoned up the courage to defy his mom. It was the ice cream truck that did it. We could all hear the bell ringing from two blocks away, and we dashed to the corner, our mouths watering for Bomb Pops and Banana Fudgesicles. Andy had two dollars in his pocket, and he’d already missed out twice that week. He tugged, twisted, and wrestled the fastener until it finally snapped. Liberated from the bondage of his harness for the first time in his life, he dashed after us, ready for his first ice cream as a free man. Problem was, the ice cream man, thinking we were all safely on the curb, didn’t see Andy trailing behind us.
No one wanted a Bomb Pop that day—the red looked too much like the goo pooling around the truck’s front tire—so we all went for Banana Fudge instead. How is that a happy ending? At least he didn’t live long enough to see the human race, if there’s anyone left besides me, reduced to this purposeless existence.
Some life, huh?