I’d Like to Give the Glory to God

I try to keep myself amused. Un-amused, I’m apt to shop online or obsess about the ways in which my body is freckling and/or taking on extra pigment. These spots, what do they mean? I didn’t used to have freckles on my knees – or did I?

So I was watching TV the other night (you know, while between getting the cats to try on their Halloween costumes and alphabetizing my canned goods) and came across a quick shot of P. Diddy – or whatever we’re calling him, when we’re calling him, these days – holding up an award, accepting it with the words “I’d like to give the glory to God”.

Hold on there, Tex!

He’d like to give the glory to God.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there is a God. I’m not saying there isn’t. I’m saying I don’t know. But let’s say there is. Now why in the name of all that’s fattening would He need Sean “Puffy” Combs giving him “the glory”? Isn’t the glory already His?

Ah, the hard-partying piety of the P. Diddys of the world. This kind of stuff amuses me. When they're not being arrested for brandishing firearms in a crowd, evading the police, or settling paternity cases, they're offering up the glory. We’ve got football players dropping a knee in the end zone, crossing themselves, kissing their fingers and gesticulating towards the sky. “This one’s for you, Jesus!” Um-hmmmm. Because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost have chosen sides, and guess what? You’re their favorite!

This is the stuff that passes for amusement in my neck of the woods: conversations and/or arguments with myself, because I’ve learned that even those that really seem to like me eventually get tired of hearing me scoff aloud.

For instance – and this is prime scoffing material for me, people – the couple that’s just undergone fertility treatments, spent months in the hospital, delivered six or more children, and then proclaim it to be “a miracle” or a “gift from God”.

No. It was not a gift from God, nor was it a miracle. It was brought to you courtesy of the grants that allowed for intense study, the folks who did the studying, those that became scientists and physicians, those who gave you what wasn’t going to happen naturally.

If there is a God – and again, I’m not saying there isn’t – but if there is, I doubt that he is involved one way or another with who wins what game, what the election outcome is, or whether or not you pick up Best Picture, Most Useless Celebrity 2008, or the dirty clothes off your bathroom floor.

He has bigger fish to fry, I’m sure.