In Which I'm Still Not Smited (Smote? Smitten?)

I can only assume a few things at this point.

1. Someone's praying against my smiting.
2. I'm being set up for a last-minute, unexpected smiting.
3. Nobody's there to smite me.

Now, I could go through the whole mental gymnastics of "maybe it's XYZ".  I'm sure I could make up speculative conclusions all day long, if I had nothing else to do on my day off.  But let's just work with these for now.

Possibility #1: Someone's praying against my smiting.

I know that I have friends and family who are of various flavors of belief, from the dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist to the lax and liberal.  And they're people I really care about and I like to think care about me.  Therefore it's not altogether unlikely that one or more of them may be praying that their god NOT smite me.  That I get delivered from smiting, I guess, would be a particularly prayer-ful way of putting it.

If such is the case I envision it going something to the tune of, "Dear Lord, please show her the error of her ways [or that you're merciful, or that you exist] and show mercy on her by not smiting her.  She knows not what she says; forgive her her boastful ways and let her instead see thy love, Amen."

Here's the problem I have with that.  OK, there's more than one actually.   First off, if your god has a plan for each and every one of us, as many believers of various flavors are fond of saying, then really why ask the guy to change the plan at all?  Isn't that suggesting that the plan, by being alterable, is somehow flawed?  And that you have a better idea than the Big Guy of what the plan should be?

The other problem is this: "Prove you're up there by doing nothing" just isn't good enough for me.  Doing nothing is just as sound proof that there was nobody there to answer the phone in the first place.

So, God, if you're up there, if you're checking your voice mail, whatevs, then please do what you do best and ignore their pleas for mercy.  I think many readers here will agree that I got this coming to me.

Possibility #2: I'm being set up for a last-minute smiting.

Well that's just kind of cheating, isn't it?  I mean, we all die.  What's it prove if that smiting is years or decades in coming and doesn't happen until I'm old and withered?  What's it prove if it could be interpreted as anything else, such as old age, another person's malice (we have free will, right?  Believers, you agree with me on this one?), another person's bad driving, etc?  If this is going to be a prove me wrong type smiting, it really needs to be an absolutely crystal clear, no-false-interpreting-about-it smiting.

"Tamino" proposes a deadline, though I'm not so sure I'm the one who can be making such a decision.  But he suggests that since God was able to make everything in the space of seven days according to scripture, then a week seems like a reasonable amount of time to pull off a smiting.  Now, if we go by that, you'll note that the counter at the bottom-left portion of this blog puts me at about 3 days and change at the time of this writing.  But I'll keep it going, even after a week, just to see.

Possibility #3: Nobody's there to smite me.

I'm still leaning to this one.  Occam's Razor states that all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is the likeliest one.  And this one's about as simple and likely as it gets.