Uncontrollable

Jerome had to sell a certain amount of crack cocaine to live. That was his life in a nutshell. He took crack, he sold crack, and when he wasn’t selling crack, he was doing every menial job he could find in order to have a decent life. He never allowed himself a day off, because if he was lucky, he could make enough money to support his old mother and his comatose aunt.

That week had not been lucky for him. He had made $300 that week, and after he had paid the people giving him a vehicle and subtracted the amount he paid for living in some other guy’s house, he had about $200. He shuffled to the house in which he lived, trying to think of how at least he wasn’t a freeloader, and at least his mother and aunt were proud of him.

Then he heard a bang. Suddenly, he was on the floor, and he couldn't move. He knew he was going to die, and with the last of his strength, he closed his weary eyes.

When he opened his eyes, Jerome was wearing clean clothes in a small room which was hazy at the edges. His eyes were drawn to the center of the room and to a judge standing in the center.

The judge was dressed in plain clothes as Jerome was, and his skin was the same shade of ebony. His face was craggy, a face seemingly capable of great joy and great anger. He reminded Jerome of his father, when his father’s face hadn’t been wreathed in the toxic smoke of the opium poppy.

Jerome knew the judge had to be God, but it didn’t feel like he was any more powerful than Jerome. He felt at ease, like he was alone in a church where no one was looking at him.

But Jerome knew where he was going. Why would God send someone like him to Heaven? He fed people’s addictions for cold hard cash. He just wasn’t the kind of person who would go to heaven. All the same, he didn’t want to anger God. He just felt like giving God a piece of his mind.

“Sir,” he started in English, “I know where I’m going, so I just want to say some things and ask some questions.”

The judge spoke in Jerome’s mother tongue as he said, “You don’t need to speak to me so formally.”

Jerome, somewhat startled, continued, now in his mother tongue. “I don’t understand why some people have more choices than others. Some people can blow billions of dollars, yet I don’t have enough money to pay for a fancy lamp. My life doesn’t have any reason to be like this other than how I was born.”

“Also,” he continued, gaining steam, “I feel like my family gets the short end of the stick too much. My uncle went to jail for crack before I was born. Now I’m dead, and he’s still in jail. I’m pretty sure my aunt and mother will die soon, because they need my money to survive. Too many people in my life overall have died younger than they should have. I don’t know why that should be the case.”

“Thinking about it, my family is downright lucky. No one in my family, as far as I know, has perished in a tornado or a hurricane. No one’s gotten killed by an earthquake. Some of us have died of diseases, but none of malaria. I don’t understand why my life is bad, but I really don’t understand why innocent people need to die in those situations.”

“Finally,” Jerome thundered, “I don’t feel like I should go to Heaven. I have harmed people by giving them crack and opium, as well as maiming those who attacked me while I did this. However, I don’t think I should go to Hell because of those things, because if I had been born somewhere else, I probably wouldn’t need to sell drugs, or, on the flip side I might have died at age five in a hurricane.”

The judge was looking at him without smiling. Jerome was afraid of what would come out of his mouth. Finally, the judge’s voice boomed forth. “Jerome, you have not done the evil you may think. Your soul is kind. Even as you question whether my plan is right, right in front of me, when you think I will punish you and you have no real incentive to praise me, you don’t curse my name or call me evil. There are some people who do not go to Heaven, but you are not one of them.”

There, he was sent to heaven, a land filled with books and scholars. In this land, Jerome learned purposefully, poring through increasingly complex texts on philosophy and theology in an attempt to know the right questions to ask what God’s plan could possibly be. Finally, when he felt he had learned enough, he set out in search of God, and immediately bumped into the man who had judged him.

“Hello, Jerome. I believe you’re looking for me. Sadly, I don’t have a satisfying answer for you.”

“I don’t understand why that should be. You are the Almighty, omniscient and omnipotent.”

“But you are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. I could try to show you my plan, but it would be impossible for you to understand it without changing your fundamental nature.”

“I’d still like to try.”

“Very well.” God boomed.

Jerome felt some intrinsic aspect of himself slip away, and then his mind was flooded with God’s plan, a monstrous document detailing the universe and the afterlife in minute detail. This new creature that had once been Jerome was able to understand the document, but when Jerome blinked back into existence, he wasn’t able to recall anything about it.

“I understand that was underwhelming.” God’s voice was soothing, but Jerome still wanted to know about God’s plan.

“Can you at least tell me why my family suffered, now that I’m in heaven?”

“Your family suffered because of people.”

“But couldn’t you have stopped them from suffering?”

“If you were in my place, how would you have stopped them from suffering?”