Lazy Summer Days

I have finished my deck, except for some trim. With a great deal of relief, last night I put away the last of the lumber scraps, and actually planted seed where dirt/lumber/tools have sat for a month killing my lawn.

Every night I came home from my employment, and worked on that deck, hoping to get one more board on, or one more section done, before the sun set, I grabbed a bite to eat and dropped in bed, only to repeat this frenzied activity the next day.

And every Saturday was spent from sun-up to drop-off (where you hit the same nail nine times and it doesn’t sink any further) with Sunday yet another repetition.

I realized that today my big plans for tonight are to turn on the spigot for the sprinkler on the new grass, and later finish up with a rousing bit of turning it off. In the meantime, I am in for a heavy bit of lounging in an inflatable in a pool, and falling in when I get too hot.

I have been hit by lazy summer days.

But this is a blog about theism, not my floating, so I could not help but contemplate—Does God get lazy?

One of the interesting aspects about my journey from theism, was to take the evidence where it leads. (I know. Very cliché.) As a Christian, I had a certain picture of God, and all evidence fit within that picture. “Evil” was a problem to be dealt with, yet maintain that picture.

After I realized Christianity was incorrect, I was still convinced there was a God. But what did that God look like? One basic premise that I have always taken within the concept of God was that the created cannot do what the Creator could not. We should not have more options available than God does.

Within Christianity, this creates the commonly known Problem of Evil, but in theism, it does not. Where does Evil come from? The same place as Good—God. In that journey, I looked about me and thought, “If I do that, so must God.” If I can be surprised, so must God. Otherwise, where did surprise come from? God would not even have known what it was, to create it.

Humans get lazy. No, I am not talking about that perpetual laziness of people that prefer to not work, or need a remote control for everything, even to recline. Even my own current state of laziness, I know that within a week or two I will pick up another project and be off obsessively pursuing it.

But each of us have an afternoon, or an evening, where we know we could accomplish a number of small tasks, and yet we sit and breathing seems like almost too much effort, and relax. We take a lazy day off. Does God?

Yes I am aware of the Christian concept of the seventh day of rest for God, but what does God have to rest from? Does creation wear out a God? What if there was an emergency on that seventh day? Does God wave it off and say, “Not today. I am just too tired to deal with it. We will have to repair the rip in the time/space continuum tomorrow.”

If we, as humans, sometimes need a moment to “re-charge” our batteries, does the entity that created us have to as well? Or is God tireless, in which case, he must be surprised at our weakness. Wait, God can’t be surprised. He knows everything.

I am told that God created everything for a reason. Free will is a common item to blame. Why did he create rest? Why do we need to sleep? Could God have created us to never sleep? Think of the things we could accomplish. What is the reason for sleep?

As I wear my sunglasses in the pool—could God have created us with an additional eyelid of UV protection? Sure, but to the theist, they must claim that either God did not on purpose, or God simply didn’t care. Humans care more about protecting sight than God. Odd.

As I go about my day: walking, tiring, drinking—I think of all the things that God did in creating humans-- that this was the best he could do?

Now I am sure a theist would tell me, “Who are YOU to question what God does? It was the best he could do with what he had to work with.” There must be some reason that God could not have improved the situation. Why not have us survive quite well with only 2 hours of sleep? Or even just 4? Why not sun-repellant skin?

And, in the end, the answer the theist is left with, time and time again is “We don’t know. We don’t know.”

Or is it possible that God got lazy, and made do with what he had put together, because he wanted to lounge in the pool?