That’s right, it’s 2:00 AM. I haven’t the slightest idea how this got started, but while I was an undergrad, John (my roommate for three years) and I would occasionally start thinking deep thoughts about God, the universe and whether those little Listerine strips will still freshen your breath if they get stuck to the roof of your mouth. Like I said, deep thoughts. And this would almost always happen sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning.
So now I’m sitting here during the God Hour and wondering just how we all work. I don’t want to shit on anyone’s religion here—I consider myself a Christian—but evolution sure makes a whole lot of sense when you consider how things have changed over the span of so many millennia. But if you think the universe has only been around for a couple thousand years, consider this: maybe God put all those fossils in the ground when He created the universe just to see if you really believe. Or maybe He’s playing you for a sucker.
Or maybe He got hammered while resting on the seventh day, then woke up for work when the sun rose and drilled holes into the back of His skull, saw Adam and Eve spoiling their appetites with apples, kicked them out of the big garden, time started progressing and then things started evolving around Him. “Shit. That’s not how it was supposed to work. Guess I’ll have to tell everyone that was part of the master plan, too.” Just a thought…
But when I say “how we all work,” I meant how our bodies function. (“Can you feel my aorta pumping now? Good!”) Things work so smoothly together, it’s mind-boggling. You put food in your mouth, your jaw chews, your throat swallows, your stomach digests, your intestinal tract absorbs, your colon poops. (Sorry if I missed or misidentified any steps in that process, but you get the idea.) Each organ works individually, yet they all work together to perform one job that eventually leads you to plop down on the can and end up having to wipe with the cardboard roll because someone didn’t replace the toilet paper.
And things work below the organ level—you get down to individual cells that make up your mouth, your throat, your stomach, your sphincter… somehow, all of those things work simultaneously to produce a functioning human body. And most of it runs on automatic—if you’re unconscious, your lungs breathe for you. If you’re cold, your muscles shiver. If you’re asleep, your bladder stays clenched. Usually.
All of that can bring us back to the big question: was God really hammered when He woke up on the eighth day? No, wait, that wasn’t it. Here’s the big question: did we grow up from itty-bitty cells that now cooperate on such a huge scale or did we just get put together with spit and chewing gum by an all-powerful being who can watch everyone in the world while we’re in the shower? (I was going to write “masturbating,” but good taste prevailed.)
This doesn’t come even close to wondering about how brain cells function as one unit to make us laugh, make us cry or make us pissed off when our brothers are giggling because they’re the ones who didn’t change the roll of toilet paper. So once again, the God Hour doesn’t provide answers, just more room for speculation. And perhaps it’s time for me to start speculating about how warm and toasty I’ll feel when I’m curled up in my bed and eventually drooling all over my pillow while I’m unconscious. I just hope my bladder remembers to stay clenched.
