Loki Catfishing as Jehovah

God created a universe far too vast to oversee. He neither governs human affairs nor intervenes on earth, instead delegating tasks to local gods. Concerned with greater matters than the opinions of hairless apes, he takes notice of the earth only periodically, usually judging its developments as error and unleashing cataclysmic restarts.

Loki, the prankster god, recognized the flimsiness of this decentralized outsourcing and exploited it for amusement, creating contradictory religions out of slave protests and seeding each with ambiguity opposed to reason. Though the primary target of his prank was God, his secondary target was credulous humans who though initially deceived, would benefit by wisdom when they unraveled Loki's puzzle.

Like a deceptive dating profile, Loki masqueraded as Jehovah, a supposedly kind but troubled supernatural entity whose fragile psychology required constant praise and attention, as well as money to keep up his expansive lifestyle. This epic catfishing was calculated for effectiveness and would be hilarious when eventually discovered by the real god.

Loki enchanted the lost by promising easy answers, offering them an oversimplification so they would never have to experience life or think much about it, yet would consider themselves wise and reasoned for following ideas and opinions of others. He pitched himself as an authority, loudly asserting his personality. With clever nuance, Loki wrapped his teachings in a combination of seven sins they were advised to avoid, so if they had a moment of honest introspection, they would realize the prank to which they had fallen victim.

Loki was munificent in his hints, wanting to be discovered so his joke could be appreciated rather than spent for naught. He told stories crafted as miracles, such as the comedy of a virgin trollop explaining her accidental pregnancy by a secret lover as a miracle, to the cuckolded chagrin of Joseph whom she married for food and shelter, but did not find sexually attractive.

These miracle stories deny the known world and invoke magic as their explanation, asking the listener to have faith they are caused by the powers of a secret invisible force, with no consideration that they might more simply be told by crazy liars from a region where that is normal. And if these tales are believed, then much more than can told to those eager to be swept away with wondrous stories.

Loki gave them ambiguous texts separated from spirituality so they would be forced to seek real spirituality from a hunger for it, finding no satisfaction in purposeless, untranscendental slavery required to worship a spiteful god of limited power and ability.

Some call the God of the Middle East wicked for trying to turn humans away from knowledge by labeling it a sin that leads to awareness of the world. He declares himself to be an entity of good who loves you, but appears as a demonic force of cruelty, violence, and control, enacting misery to gain strength.

The Middle Eastern religions fixate on fear and sin, thus provoking and strengthening it. They further connect the worst of their cultivated instincts to the supernatural, defining them as external to humanity, and wishing for the external to envelope and dominate their lives.

Its people were in need of being told not to murder each other, steal, and covet each other's women and oxen. They were stupid, backwards savages at war with one another two thousand years ago in an era of instability and endless war in the middle east.

The Middle Eastern religions organized for growth. They sought leaders who wished to guide believers and enjoy a high position in the community. They captured children at birth, indoctrinated families, and took their money for its buildings and marketing efforts. They sought to spread and crush older religions, destroying every remnant from sacred groves to knowledge, replacing it by with their beliefs imposed by blood and sword.

They primarily sought city folk for conversion, as these were the most gullible and empty. People who lived in the countryside lived harmoniously with nature and did not attend to frivolous fads and social trends.

Loki loves a mischievous prank. He took the neurosis of the region and formed three overlapping religions with core tenets, then posed them against one another to watch the crazed people squabble and justify their battles with doctrinal explanations, predating on one another ad infinitum.

Middle Eastern religions propose

• a way to bypass and overtake nature through supernatural manipulation
• waiting as a way to dissuade necessary action
• ready-made explanations to deter thinking and curiosity
• duty to inhibit creativity and consideration of alternatives

The holiest of a tradition should be dynamic exemplars of faith and spirituality, but instead they are decrepit hollow husks, just as academics are not the intellectually inspiring vanguards of thought, but tired and boring administrators lacking vitality and creative ideas.

We take a few steps back from the freak show and Loki's twisted comedy comes into focus, a cute joke that kindly informs and warns us not to be so easily led into schemes lain for the profit of others.