I was reading a story about Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood, the writer bemoaning Chris’s “enigmatic” status as Detroit’s latest sports pinata. Any mistake, the fans are on him; then, when he blows their minds by coming through big-time, they boast about the faith they always had.

So, with increased ability comes a smaller margin of error. I got to wondering about such things. It occurred to me that there is an incredibly huge margin for an enormous amount of errors in general. With some exceptions where errors are life-threatening or, in financial matters, where an error only occurs when money is lost by us, we give ourselves plenty of room to mess up.

Our heroes, though, don’t know that luxury. We constantly hold them up to ideals we cherish, even as we defend our right to fail in reaching them. “Sure we make mistakes, but that’s what makes us human.” We’re constantly justifying why it’s okay that we screw up so much.

Until someone comes along who does more and screws up less.

Wait a minute – you can’t make a mistake. Anywhere. Ever. Period.

Rock stars, athletes, actors, cotton-candy makers, dirigible repairmen – all living under an increased pressure to be perfect all the time. This is the one of the main reasons we don’t see abundances of casual celebrity appearances all over the place. (Or many working dirigibles.)

I eventually pondered on why we apply the ultimate margining – No Room for Error.
Then it hit me.     ….When I came to, I realized:

    This could explain why there are so few visible manifestations of God.

Usually, a person must be considered quite holy, sacred, or blessed to have a one-on-one with the Supreme Being, we assume. It’s rare because it’s special.

Well, considering the level of VIP we’re talking about, it could be entirely possible that God has things to do elsewhere. Maybe we’re just not on the casual list. Maybe we see the Big Boss simply because we’ve done something and now God “has to come down here”.

Just maybe, though, there’s a third reason why God doesn’t want to stop in as often.

Maybe we just put too much social pressure on the Ol’ Supreme Being.

Look at it from God’s point of view:
 
Perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and a snappy dresser – a fairly high standard to maintain socially, and our expectations are very high.

Since we have free will, we can choose to interpret God’s will and actions as wrong if we don’t like them. Or if they don’t fit in with our plans. Or if they forbid something we like. Or if we don’t like the way the rules are written out. Or if there’s a game on TV.

Now, since God is perfect and we can’t argue with that, we’ve taken to boasting about our imperfections in retaliation. “To err is human” and we are really, really human in that regard.

So, every once in a while, God comes by and says “Hey, don’t be proud of screwing up. And don’t be too embarrassed about it either. Just try to learn without hurting each other, OK? And I’ll get back to you later.”

And then, everytime, some wahoo goes and invents a religion over it and starts telling people how to live perfectly even though they are imperfect in God’s eyes and therefore can’t.
 
“But if you follow my new rules it will happen anyway. Now, here’s the 723 things you can’t do. First, no paisley M&Ms.”

If people did that to you, would you visit them any more than you absolutely had to?

Of course not.

You’d search for other things to do. “Oh, a new baby star being born over in Andromeda nursery – gotta run.” “Sorry – left the black hole running at home.” “Can’t drop by today – Mah-Jong Tourney on Betelgeuse 7.”

When you look at the way we’ve behaved “religiously” over time, you can just imagine God inventing things to do elsewhere just to keep away from us.

To God, we’re that really polite neighbor that acts like your best friend immediately and then rips on you to everyone else until he needs something. Then he starts praising you all over when he needs something that’s out of the question, and doesn’t even know why the bad rap starts again.

And so our social cycle with God continues to decline. God rarely checks MyFace or SpaceBook or posts a status update. God’s Twitter account is still unactivated. Even the answering service in Kansas City confirms no messages retrieved since 1957.

It’s our fault. We put so much pressure on God to be human, that we forget to allow God to be, um, God.

God should be able to run free, creating galaxies and planets and moons with lovely green space go-go-dancers. (Ok, I may be in the minority on that last one.)

And if God thinks a galaxy is untidy and wants to run the black hole for a while, who are we to judge?

Creating life, performing miracles, writing a billion years worth of lesson plans for 80 trillion lifeforms – it takes it’s toll. God even had to work overtime on our job, and that was not at time and a half. The lunch truck wasn’t even out and the jobsite was flooding. This was no picnic in the garden. (At least, not until Monday.)

So, if we put ourselves in God’s place, and we do so constantly, would we want to be misquoted, lied to, betrayed, and manipulated while being praised, thanked, and worshipped by murderers and terrorists? Wouldn’t we blow our top the first time we heard that “so-and-so told me you said to do this or I’d fry”?

You’d be hopping mad, wouldn’t you? Probably want to throw a few galaxies around to blow off a little steam. Who could blame you? After all, it’s not your fault – you’re the Supreme Being. Actually, by definition, nothing is God’s fault.

But that damn pesky free will. The right to choose, balanced by the learned wisdom to know which… Oh, wait, that’s in the lesson plan for after lunch. Darn!

So, we know we can choose, but we don’t know why, and God can’t make us choose or it blows the whole free will thing, and God can’t call us on our tomfoolery because we always claim “we’re your creation and you made us perfectly like you so we’re perfect and mistakes are normal. Some shifting of contents may occur.”

So maybe we should cut God a break and admit that we’re Bozo’s and it’s not God’s fault. Go – run through a nebula! Have a Mint Julep on Rigel 5. Dip your feet in a comet’s tail. Enjoy your universe – you earned it!!!

Maybe we can learn to appreciate perfection relatively on a deeper metaphysical level than ever before, unveiling the secrets of the universe and the wisdom to do that which we could only imagine but never conceive.

And finally, someday….

We could learn to cut Chris Osgood some slack.