Tale From My Holy Book
So it came to pass that not being satisfied at dividing our good earth into separate nations, men now wanted to divide the Heavens into different sections also. At this God was horrified.
Yussof Condred
In the beginning, the space occupied by our Solar System was just a black immense void. A silent, ghostly void. A sheer emptiness that was devoid of the simplest form of particles or gravitational forces.
Then like an artist working on this immense black canvas, God started to paint a 3-dimensional masterpiece. First he painted in the glorious Sun and, lo and behold, there was light. Next He created Mercury, Venus and the rest of the other 7 planets to orbit around the Sun, adroitly balancing their gravitational forces to maintain a miraculous state of equilibrium. To understand this fragile state of equilibrium, imagine a human pyramid crossing a high wire in a circus act. Should a single member of the team falter and slip, the whole human formation would disintegrate and come crushing to the ground.
Of all the planets that God created, He loved Planet Earth most. That dark ocean blue orb was veiled sparsely by wisps of white clouds and plastered over one quarter of its surface with good brown earth. Planet Earth is His jewel in the Solar System, one masterpiece within another. He loved it so to put living things, vegetation and animals, on it. All species of animals that He created, He loved, from the lowly earthworm to the deer, the tiger, the ape and the man. He, in His wisdom, infused them with the basic instinct of survival that they, His precious creations, might propagate and prevail for as long as He wished. But alas that ‘basic instinct’ would act like a double-edged sword in the man. While he, armed with that instinct could look out for himself, his fellow-man-enemy would not hesitate to do away with him, when he is perceived to be a threat to his enemy’s survival.
In the early days after the creation there was just one Race, despite God painting his men in various colours of brown, black, yellow and white. There was love and compassion. No man knew what hate was. That the one Race prayed to the one God was most natural. And God wanted it that way. He wanted just one monotheistic religion. So it came to pass that He got what He wanted. He was happy. But not for long because men began to lose their innocence.
As time went by, men went forth and multiplied and occupied more and more of the ‘good brown earth’. Then they began to divide. Their ‘survival instinct ‘ started to work on them and they formed exclusive tribes based on colours of their skins to better protect themselves. They carved up the ‘good brown earth’ into separate nations and within each nation there was further subdivision based on different races and religions.
God became apprehensive when he saw His monotheistic religion being slowly and surely torn asunder. One religionist group would claim exclusively that only their followers could go to Heaven. But the rival religionist group would counter, “Nay, not so. Our followers would surely go to our Heaven!” So it came to pass that not being satisfied at dividing our good earth into separate nations, men now wanted to divide the Heavens into different sections also. At this God was horrified.
When it finally came to ‘us against the others’ men began to be paranoid with guarding their religions against perceived external threats. But they were blind to any internal threats. They swore to defend their religions with their lives. Now, at this, God was even more horrified. So He said unto them, “Thy religion serves to protect thee from evil ways. It should defend ye and surely not for ye to defend it.” And He further said unto them, “Go forth and practice my teachings sincerely, for surely that is the best way to defend thy religion.”
But God saw that recalcitrance had set in among men.
In a moment of utter despair He reached out for His artist’s palettes, dipped His paint brush with black paint and summarily blackened out Planet Earth from His masterpiece. All at once the precarious equilibrium of the Solar System began to
disintegrate, just like that human pyramid of the circus act. The rest of the planets and their mother Sun shot off on their own trajectories to the far beyond of the unknown, millions of light years away.
In the end, the space occupied by our Solar System was just a black immense void. A silent, ghostly void. A sheer emptiness that was devoid of the simplest form of particles or gravitational forces.