God

Did I make the right choice? I ask myself, looking down at them.

No matter when or where I turn my gaze, blood soaks the earth. On open fields and in city streets, they fight their enemies. In their homes, they hurt the ones they claim to love.

I knew this was a risk. That they’d grow restless, bored, and turn their frustrations on each other. So I gave them a whole world, a universe, to explore, hoping that when faced with boundless choices, their curiosity would be too strong to resist.

It seems I was wrong.

At first, I thought I had given them too much freedom. It had been an experiment in structure: What would they do if there was no precedent?

Maim each other mercilessly, it turns out.

So I did something I hadn’t planned on—I spoke to them. Well, to a few of them. I found the most respected among them and whispered in their ears, in their dreams.

Do no harm, I said. You are all my children, precious beyond measure. Be one, because there are no ‘others.’

It worked, for a while. My chosen few spread the message, shouting far and wide that their God had shown them a better way, a higher way.

A way of love, they called it.

The violence ebbed. They lifted up those they had oppressed. They knew peace.

It was beautiful.

Until it wasn’t.

No matter how many times I intervened, no matter where or when or whom I chose to spread my message, they could only resist their nature for so long. Century after century, I watched their tolerance decay, saw their hands curl back into fists. Clubs, swords, guns, bombs.

And worst of all, the fists they lifted in their own homes.

I refuse to believe this is all they are. There must be something else. Some remnant of the goodness I once saw in them.

So I search.

Ah—there.

A clean-cut man in a police uniform. He strikes an imposing figure, tall and muscled, but his face is soft, his voice gentle as he leads a young woman from a building. She is bruised black and blue, her clothes torn, her lips bloody.

I've seen it too many times to count. Brutalized women are as much a constant in this world as war.

I watch as the officer helps the young woman into an ambulance, riding with her, holding her hand. He soothes her, stays by her side at the hospital. I watch him well into the night, taking comfort in this rare glimpse of kindness.

Then he goes home.

He steps through the door, taking in the pile of half-folded laundry, a bottle of formula abandoned on the coffee table, and the woman slouched in a chair. Her hair is greasy, dark circles rim her eyes, and there’s spit-up on her sleeve.

The gentle giant who held a stranger’s hand is gone in an instant.

The shift is small at first. His jaw tightens. His shoulders stiffen. Then, in two quick strides, he’s towering over her, gripping her arm, hauling her out of the chair before she’s even fully awake.

"Do you think I want to come home from a hard day of work to this?" he bellows.

Spit lands on her cheek as she turns her face away. The baby wails. His hand cracks against her skin.

I close my eyes. I can’t bear to watch anymore.

"God, help us!"

The cries rise from all corners of the world I made for them.

"Please, help us!"

I sigh. "I wish I could," I whisper, though none of them hear me. I really do. But I made my choice. I gave them agency, and the only way to ensure they truly had it was to take away my own power to intervene. Occasional whispers, an existence that could be felt but never proven—this was all I could allow myself.

Another voice joins the billions of others. I don’t need to open my eyes to know who it belongs to.

The woman.

The one whose noble, uniformed husband saved women by day and brutalized his own by night.

She doesn’t pray for herself.

She prays for her child.

"Don’t let my baby grow up in a world like this."

A pause.

"If there really is a God, tell me—why would He make a world so cruel?"

For a long moment, I say nothing.

Then, I reach for her—not as a voice in a dream, not as a prophet’s whispered command, but as the quiet, unshakable knowledge that settles deep in her bones.

A truth so soft, she will never be able to explain it.

A certainty so fierce, no one will ever shake it from her.

I press it into her, gentle as a mother’s kiss to a sleeping child.

He didn’t.

She exhales, not understanding. Not yet.

One day, she will. 

A mother always recognizes her own.