GOD
HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR
God said, “Let Us make man in Our image …”
Genesis 1:26
Who was He talking to?
I grew up in hilly country where there were a
lot of rocks. A clever friend of mine once said: “There are two kinds of people
in the world: rock-pile-ers and rock-rollers.”
Now God is perfect, right? And He exists in a
place of perfect peace and boundless beauty, called Heaven. So I imagine one
day God got a little bored and decided he’d clone himself so he’d have someone
to talk to. …
… Big mistake!
The clone had to be somehow different than
God, of course, because if he was an exact replica of God, God would still be
bored wouldn’t he? So, God 1.0 was a Rock-Pile-er, and God 2.0 was a Rock-Roller.
How do I know God 1.0 was a Rock-Pile-er? Well, He was a Rock-pile-er the
minute he started making things. But then He made God 2.0, the Rock-Roller, and
all Hell broke loose!
Why did everything get so ‘interesting’ after
that? It’s because rock-pile-ers and rock-rollers don’t get along very well. In
fact, it turns out that they don’t even like
each other.
As soon as the rock-pile-ers get a nice stack
of rocks piled up on the hill, the rock-rollers come along and roll them down
the hill, to watch them roll and bounce and go KER-SPLOOSH into the creek.
I never said this to my friend, but I think
there are three kinds of people. Why? Because I don’t really care for piling
rocks, or rolling them. I like to think
about the rocks: What kind of rocks are they? Where did they come from? What
was there before the rocks?
Let’s apply this to physicists. The
rock-pile-ers are those, engineers really, who like to build things. Things
like the Large Hadron Collider. The rock-rollers are the experimental physicists.
They like to take things apart.
I can remember when as an undergraduate
physics major at Central Methodist, I joined the Physics Club. We met at Mac’s,
a bar about ten steps off campus, where we drank beer and waxed philosophical.
One evening, sitting around a table at Mac’s, sipping beer, the president of the
club, a senior named Newton (No, not Sir Isaac; George) said: “Hey guys, let’s
blow up something and see what it looks like!”
That was the beginning of Fledermaus, the rocket-science project.
We called it Fledermaus, German for
bat, because we met at night on the athletic field and tried to make thing fly,
by sticking explosives under them, lighting a fuse, and running for cover. It
gave us an excuse for blowing things up! But, I digress.
The engineering physicists are rock-pile-ers.
They build things, like the LHC. The experimental physicists (rock-rollers) are
the particle physicists who like to blow things up, and they both look questioningly
at physicists like me, who don’t particularly care to get their hands dirty, scratch
their heads and say: “OK … theoretical physicists, right?”
So God 1.0 said to God 2.0: “Let Us make man
in Our image …”
“OK, what do we look like? Asked God 2.0, you
haven’t made mirrors yet, you know.”
God
1.0 sighed and they trudged down the hill to the edge of the creek.
“As I was saying,” God 1.0 began again, “Let
Us make man in Our image …”
“What’s a man?” interrupted God 2.0, “Did you
just make that up?”
“He’s going to look like that,” God 1.0 said
impatiently, pointing to their reflections in the creek.
And He began to wave
his hand as they were looking at their reflections in the creek, but at that
exact moment, God 2.0 stirred the water with a stick. And that’s why we have so
many odd-looking people today.
Please send hate mail to God3point0@yoohoo.com
