My friends, I have to confess: I’m having a crisis of faith.
You see, as an atheist, I’ve always maintained that if God were real, he would communicate with us clearly and directly and wouldn’t leave human beings to guess blindly at his wishes. Well, honesty leaves me no choice but to admit it: my prayers have been answered. Just the other day on Facebook, I saw a link to this Twitter account, The Tweet of God. Perusing it, it was inescapable that God Himself was reaching down to humanity, in the form of 140-character text messages, to make his almighty will plain. My eyes have seen the light! Amen and hallelujah!
But as I read on, basking in the glorious divine wisdom revealed therein, I felt a horrible worm of doubt insinuate itself into my heart. It was probably some lingering remnant of my fast-fading skepticism, but I couldn’t help feeling it was just remotely possible that this wasn’t the Twitter account of the true Lord and Savior. Blasphemous though my doubt was, I had to have proof.
I did a Google search, hoping to turn up some evidence, and got a horrible shock. On the very first page of my search results was not one, not two, but three other Twitter accounts, all claiming to be the sacred tweets of the Creator – just like the one I’d initially found!
My head awhirl in confusion, I sought desperately for an anchor in the chaos, something solid and dependable that I could believe in. Then it hit me: Jesus! As we atheists all secretly know (though we deny it in public), Jesus Christ is the only Son of God, the risen messiah and the one true light of the world. It was so simple – I could put my faith in Jesus! Surely he wouldn’t lead me astray.
But what happened next, I’m afraid you can already guess. Confidently, like the pilgrims of old, I set out to search for Jesus’ Twitter account – and once again, I found a a myriad of contenders, each one claiming to be the way, the truth and the light. (I also found the Twitter account of Odin, but I suspect that one might be a hoax.) I was hopelessly confused.
And here I am still, spiritually adrift without an anchor. I’ve got to say, telling the one true deity apart from his Twittering imitators is a nightmarishly difficult, near-impossible task. I’m certainly glad we don’t have to face any such dilemmas in the real world!