#ineffable plan vs great plan
Let’s talk about God in Good Omens.
“…God does not pay dice with the universe. I play an ineffable game of my own devising. For everyone else, it’s like playing poker in a pitch-dark room, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules and who smiles all the time.“
I feel like we don’t give God enough credit for telling us exactly who she is with this line. Yes, it’s funny and said in a breezy Frances McDormand voice, but it’s also kind of terrifying. That game does not sounds like a fun game for anyone but God, for whom it’s probably hilarious. And I think this really sets the tone for God in Good Omens (the TV series, at least).
Good Omens opens up the possibility that God is cruel. She is, at the very least, indifferent to a lot of human suffering, and is sometimes in the business of causing it. Her punishments are harsh, indiscriminate and irreversible. This is a God who drowns children to make a point. She admits that her creations fear her, and does not seem to have a problem with that. She’s capricious with damnation and forgiveness. (Crowley fell for asking a few questions and hanging out with the wrong crowd; Aziraphale straight up gives his flaming sword away and that’s fine.) She doesn’t seem to mind that her angels behave horrifically, from mundane bullying up to summary execution.
She is not merciful. She provides no answers, not even to the faithful. She does not come to the aid of those who call on her. Crowley tells Aziraphale that he shouldn’t count on God to come and fix things, and he’s right. At times, God seems downright sadistic. (Think about the plant scene as some kind of traumatic reenactment of Crowley being cast out of Heaven. Then think about the fact that God herself is narrating this scene in a tone of detached amusement. That’s fucked up!)
One of the reasons that Crowley is such a sympathetic character is that he asks the same questions that any person who has both faith and compassion would ask. (The idea that a demon is the moral center of the story is a think for another post.) If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, why is there so much suffering in the world? Is God actively causing the suffering? Why? Does she just not care? Why doesn’t she make it stop?
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@inthroughthesunfroof reply: You said what I’ve been thinking, just, much more beautifully. I don’t know what Pratchett and Gaiman’s religious beliefs are, beyond both having a strong humanist streak. Good Omens doesn’t read like an athiest work, it reads like someone wrestling with the fundamental question that all Christians run into: Given an all-knowing and all-powerful God whom we are told literally is love, why does suffering exist? Why does this suffering exist? How can our God be so cruel?
It’s a question that has broken many people’s faith, including mine. Good Omens doesn’t pretend to answer why, but it does answer so now what with a resoundingly humanist perspective. Whether or not God loves us, whatever that means, the only reasonable way for us to live is to love each other.
It’s a surprisingly biblical answer. Matthew 22:36-40:
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a]38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
If the God of the Bible is real, I don’t know if They’ll forgive a loss of faith. I hope They won’t be too disappointed if people who fail to follow the first commandment hang onto the second.
@ilarualreply: This is such a good post, and really articulates a lot of the thoughts that serve as the backdrop for basically all my readings of the lead characters of GO (both the immortals and the humans). The point is not: is God there? will God save us? Instead, the point is: it is imperative that we assume that there will be no divine intervention, and that it is up to us to work our own interventions.
It’s interesting to me that the human characters do not seem to give a fuck about God. Adam and the Them care about their world, and they care about protecting it regardless of what anyone, divine or otherwise, has to say about it. Anathema, likewise, isn’t interested in anyone’s guidance but Agnes’s. As for Tracy and Shadwell and Newt… they’re just along for the ride, they’re not worried about big theological questions. They’re just humans, messy, lovely, ridiculous humans who are just Doing Their Best when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. And all of them have no truck with any Great Plan, whether it’s God’s or anyone else’s— the human characters just want their planet left in one piece. Humanity’s responsible for wrecking it, and humanity’ll be responsible for fixing it, thank you very much. It’s only Heaven and Hell who have any real investment in what God wants or doesn’t want. Squabbling children who are still, after millennia, vying for Mom’s attention no matter how silent and indifferent She may be.
And as for our show-stealing leads…
Obviously Aziraphale’s entire journey over the course of the story is about finally giving up the ghost and accepting what he’s known to be true, in his heart of hearts, for awhile now: God isn’t coming to help you. God isn’t going to tell you what the right thing to do is. You need to do for yourself, you need to speak for yourself, you need to take action, because if you don’t, then who will? Aziraphale’s story is about recognizing that maybe God really does have a plan for all this, but maybe it’s cruel and unjust. And, not knowing what the plan is, if there is one, it is imperative that we step up and act with radical kindness, because to do otherwise is unthinkable.
Crowley… well… OP said it all. Crowley understands this. He is the only character in the entire series that actually addresses God directly, and we know She hears him. She sees, She hears, and there’s a distinct possibility that Crowley and Aziraphale were Her answer all along, but whether that’s the case or not, She’s not telling. And that indifferent silence? Crowley knows that’s cruelty, and that’s why Crowley so thoroughly rejects the false dichotomy of Heaven and Hell. He knows, has known for millennia, that it’s all bullshit. And he knows Aziraphale knows it too, it’s just a matter of getting to admit it.
In the novel, we’re left with absolute silence from God. Maybe God is there, maybe not, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter because we’ve got to take care of each other regardless. But in the show? God is there, God is watching, and God is a smug asshole.
It would be easy to confuse omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence with perfection. But God, it is said, created humanity in Her own image, and if you look at what humanity is like, capable of both extraordinary good and extraordinary evil… well, I think that says just as much about God as it does about us.
#god is human but on a cosmic scale #is basically my praxis both within the context of GO and within the context of just like… religion in general #either god is imperfect & fallible or god is unceasingly cruel #it’s up to the individual to decide which interpretation they can live with
@pisces-atdcomment: also worth noting the somewhat humorous line in the end of the series, in which gabriel states “god does not play games with the universe” and crowley responds “where have you been?” crowley and aziraphale have been living on earth for so long that they’ve SEEN things. think about it: they were the only ones actually THERE right before God literally drowned everyone except for Noah and his family. they’ve seen the type of things god is responsible for. every time aziraphale says “god’s plans are ineffable”, crowley is right there to jump in and ask “why?” which honestly is probably what got him thrown out of Heaven in the first place. eventually, aziraphale stops saying that. he never truly turns his back on heaven, not until the very end, but that’s not because he LOVES heaven or even god. he keeps his foot in the door out of fear. and crowley never truly aligns with hell, but he’d rather be on his own side with aziraphale than ever go back to heaven and work for god again. being on earth for so long, crowley and aziraphale side with the humans more than anyone else. they question hell and heaven, and more importantly, they question god. there’s literally a scene in crowleys office when he’s talking upwards, toward god, and asking “why? why does it have to be this way?” the angels and demons never ask, because for the most part they don’t CARE. the ineffable/great plan is just about a power struggle to them. also worth mentioning that god, in this situation, is about as chaotic as a 13 year old angsts fanfic writer. loving the beauty of suffering for the sake of the story, loving the heart wrenching plot twists, loving to panic and fear and chaos caused by her “ineffable” plan. fine in writing, evil when playing with the lives of real beings. but god has never seen it that way, in the same way angels and demons don’t value human life. I mean, they don’t really give a shit about killing 7 billion humans (not to mention the plants and animals) and of course, to mirror the scene in crowleys office where he’s speaking towards the ceiling to god, there’s a scene later where aziraphale literally calls god and asks to speak with her directly. both of them asking the same thing: “why? does there really need to be a war? can we stop this?” in conclusion: god is cruel and aziraphale and crowley are the only two on either side who understand this concept.
@no-gentle-stormsreply: Sir Terry in a nutshell. See: Small Gods.
theniceandaccurategoodomensblog:
Bus bench scene…
There’s something about how Crowley throws out that line: what if the Almighty planned it like this all along? that is just so empathetic and caring and selfless… He knows that Aziraphale has had the ground ripped out from under him, he’s lost all faith in Heaven, he’s literally lost Heaven in fact, he will have to discover what exactly being on his own side with Crowley means (Crowley has been on his own side for a very long time now I think, not so much has changed for him). But Crowley sees there’s something that could make it easier. Aziraphale could retain his faith in God herself choosing to believe that it was all God’s plan, including Aziraphale and Crowley forming their own side. I don’t for a moment believe Crowley actually thinks that’s likely (possible perhaps but not likely) or even particularly cares in a sense (he does what he thinks is right, he follows his own compass and doesn’t need to be told it is in the plan to be alright with that). But he gets where Aziraphale is and he just offers this up as a gift, says it casually like it is no big deal and let’s the seed take root. Like he could have tried to get Aziraphale to see it all as he does but he doesn’t, he helps Aziraphale to make his own peace with it all, to figure it out in his own way. Wow, even here he’s the ultimate defender of free will isn’t he?
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@fuckyeahisawthatreply: Oh interesting! I like this interpretation because this has always seemed like…not a very Crowley line to me. (So much so that I had convinced myself it was Aziraphale’s line until I went back and watched the scene again.) But I really like this take on it!
@amuseoffyrereply: Here’s a thing, though: Crowley does believe in God and he questions Her so many times. This is such a him thing to say because when we saw him yelling at Her in the privacy of his own home, he said “You’re testing them, I know you said you’d be testing them”.
To me, this line reads as him realising that humanity wasn’t the only thing being tested. God was testing her angels and demons and everything else in between. She planned it all like this, knowing Aziraphale and Crowley, the only morally grey, imaginative, enthusiastically loving creatures of Heaven and Hell, would be there. She let them share the gift of free will that humanity had and watched them run with it knew they wouldn’t let her down :)
@theniceandaccurategoodomensblogreply: I definitely think God is testing the angels and the demons too and that Crowley realises that, yes. I personally, don’t have faith that God’s plan is all for the ultimate good, that she ensured it would all specifically end up as it does (rather than just testing and seeing the results which is quite different I think). I don’t think Crowley has that faith either, but he’s ok with Aziraphale having that faith as it helps him. The whole “believes in” thing doesn’t really apply. Crowley knows God exists. He believes in God like we believe in the ground under our feet. He is incapable of being either an atheist or a theist in any human sense. The only faith relevant is faith in the plan, faith that God doesn’t just exist but is to be trusted, is a force for the good, is actually in control. I don’t read Crowley as having that personally. He doubts her the whole damn time.
@here-for-analysis-and-squeereply: It echoes his doubts in the garden “what if we both did the wrong thing”, and questioning the God’s plan back then, all the way back