Assignment Four: Sam Clark

When I was in the business of trading money for souls, upon this passage I relied:  

“I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.”

It’s from the Bible. Ezekiel 25:17. In the business, I thought that I was the LORD and that the “them,” the “they,” the “others,” were rightfully subject to my vengeance, pawns in an infinite jest. Now I know better, or at least pretend to know better.

Before entering our line of work, my theories of life tended upon the logical, that which can be comprehended. My proofs for God were worldly and exacting, the theories of a mathematician relying upon his intellect. Take, for example, this excerpt from my early work:

“Upon our minds inescapable, fundamental limits exist. We cannot think in five dimensions, understand infinity, or comprehend chaos. Why? We did not place these limits upon ourselves, nor do we desire to be limited (as our consumeristic culture clearly illustrates) by anything at all. If gods were we, we’d gain not from limits upon our power. So the source of these limits is unintelligible, unhuman. It emerges from the numinous, the divine majesty which is God.”  

What a fool I was. My languages drips from the polished prudishness of the self-righteously intelligent. This next instance of my writing is slightly better, though it maintains its arrogant air.

“If free will exists, then it does not exist. Though it may sound like a tautology, the statement’s contradictions are its salvation. Since the choice between predestination and free will was never bestowed upon us, we cannot rightfully say that we have true freedom to pick our choices. The most vital of choices, that between free will and predestination, was predetermined. Of course, free will does exist. A determinist would argue that the world consists of scientific principles which coalesce into a so-called ‘theory of everything.’ Nonsense. If such were true, then one could plug the ‘theory of everything’ into a supercomputer to determine the future. But to work, the computer must factor in human reactions to the knowledge of the future, then modify its result accordingly. Unfortunately, this creates another, similar issue. Now, the computer must factor in human responses to the new future it created based on human responses to the original future it predicted. This creates an infinite cycle impossible to complete, rendering the machine useless and the future undetermined.”

Though better than my earlier work, this piece is still remarkably lacking, still much too pretentious. Georges (as described in my second post) prompted my thinking. His death was its culmination. I now know how to write well, how to write fully, how to live. Real writing looks like this:

“Asadhakf snmaskal mjfdsknka d akjsdnoifjsdgl agpospfkglm qkklamskf askfg lkanf teilsjkf”

Such is the true language of God.