An atheist was walking through the woods one day, admiring the beauty of nature all around him.
“What majestic trees!” “What powerful rivers!” What beautiful animals!”, he said to himself.
As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look. He saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charging towards him.
He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder & saw that the bear was closing in on him.
He ran faster, and then looked over his shoulder again, & the bear was even closer. He tripped & fell on the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw & raising his right paw to strike him.
At that instant the Atheist cried out, “Oh my God!”
Time stopped…
The bear froze…
The forest was silent…
As a bright light shone down upon the man, a voice came out of the sky: “You deny my existence for all these years, teach others I don’t exist and even credit creation to cosmic accident”. “Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer”?
The atheist looked directly into the light, “It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask You to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps You could make the BEAR a Christian”?
“Very well,” said the voice.
The light went out…
The sounds of the forest resumed…
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brought both paws together, bowed his head & spoke:
There’s a similar Borges short story. A man who is a writer is about to be executed by a firing squad. He asks the Universe (call it God if you insist) to give him time to finish the story he’s working on. Miraculously, the bullets are stopped about 3 inches from his head. He’s able to stand in frozen time long enough– for what? a year? months?– to complete and revise the story to his complete satisfaction. When he’s done, he says he’s finished. Then the bullet finds its mark.
Tonight I find this more humorous than usual, because I have a friend who in fact has a bullet lodged in his head. That’s a long story already told by a few others. He asked if I had one in mine because I have a scar near my third eye. Anyway, he said that the bullet made him enlightened when it hit him in the third eye. I told him that to me it seemed like a painful way to be enlightened, could he suggest something less painful?
Those so-called Christians are a blood-thirsty lot.
The again, he could have asked for a Yogi Bear. 😉