God Is Disappointed In You (12 page)

In which God and Satan make a friendly wager, King David releases a greatest-hits album, and King Solomon teaches you how to treat a lady.

Being king affords you a lot of time to think about life and jam on your harp. Collectively, David and Solomon wrote hundreds of Psalms, which were love poems to God, set to music. Sort of the ancient Jewish equivalent to Gospel music. Solomon also wrote hundreds of one-liners and bon-mots which became the Book of Proverbs. Not to mention some sexy poetry, for which he wrote both the male and female parts. Kinky. As an artistic choice, I took the liberty of presenting that book, The Song of Solomon, exclusively from the female point of view. I hope you don’t mind.
 

An unnamed king, a descendant of Solomon and David’s, wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes, an honest meditation on the paradox and futility of life, and very possibly the first work of Existentialist philosophy.

Then there’s the Book of Job, which attempts to answer the age-old question of why the innocent suffer. On the surface, the answer appears to be that God’s got action riding on us. But in
The Guide for the Perplexed
, the medieval rabbi Maimonides offers a different possibility: Job, like the rest of us, must suffer because it means nothing to worship out of habit—praying and getting rewarded, like a dog who rolls over because he knows he’s going to get a treat. Only when the treats are not forthcoming do we question our faith. And only then do we, like Job, discover what we truly believe.

God and Satan make this crazy bet. 

Satan claims that this guy Job only loves God because God gave him wealth, respect and a large and adoring family. So to prove Satan wrong, God allows Satan to kill off Job’s wife and kids and strip him of his wealth through a series of disasters. To top it all off, Satan is allowed to give Job all kinds of sores and diseases. He even makes Job stink. His friends and neighbors begin to wonder if hanging around Job might not be bad luck, so they stop coming by his house. 

Finally, when Job hits rock bottom, he curses the day he was born. But even lonely, beaten and forced to sit in a bucket of ash all day to ease his sores, Job does not lose faith in God. Satan concedes the bet and gives God the supernatural equivalent of a twenty-dollar bill or whatever it was they agreed upon as their wager. God then rewards Job for his faith by giving him more money, smarter kids and a hotter wife than he ever had before.

“Okay, you won on Job,” Satan said. “But twenty bucks says
that
guy will totally flip you off.”

“Who,
that
guy?” God asked.

King David was the most famous harp player in history. His music is timeless. His songs have sold millions in Europe. Now, for the first time ever, all his greatest hits are compiled here in one priceless collection! At last you can have all your old favorites right at your fingertips, including songs by his father Jesse, his son Solomon, and all the King David Family Singers. Includes such classics as:

The Lord Is My Shepherd (I Shall Not Want)

Psalm 23
I’ll Feed You Honey from a Rock

Psalm 81
Weary with Sorrow (It’ll Be Better Tomorrow)

Psalm 119
Satisfy Me (With Your Finest Wheat)

Psalm 147
The Tents of Kedar (Be Rockin’ Tonight!)

Psalm 120

No artist has touched as many hearts or stood the test of time quite like King David. In this unique collection, you’ll hear the songs that span his illustrious career and celebrate the changing times in which he lived. From his early days as a gospel act, to his maturing social consciousness as a folk legend…

The Righteous Will Laugh at the Rich (I Am an Olive Tree)

Psalm 52
Listen to the Needy Groan

Psalm 12
I Stand Alone (Surrounded By Bulls)

Psalm 22
Dwell in My Sacred Tent, Live on My Holy Mountain

Psalm 15

To his heavy metal phase…

You’re Gonna Be Eaten By Dogs

Psalm 68
Teach the Children (About Death and Pain)

Psalm 78
Dwelling in Darkness (Please Destroy My Enemies)

Psalm 143

This collection even includes David’s never before released hip-hop demos…

God Be Creepin’ on a Fool

Psalm 109
Save Me, Lord (From Deez Ruthless Bitchez)
 

Psalm 86

Plus many, many more!

All the songs you see here— plus all the classics from the King David Family Singers—are gathered together for the first time in box-set form. These are the songs that we grew up to, the songs we worked to, and made love to.
Now, at last, they’re yours in one timeless collection.

The Book of Proverbs
is a collection of wise sayings written primarily by King Solomon. Much like a Kenny Rogers album, it’s mostly advice about life, money and how to treat a woman.

Some of the life lessons offered by Proverbs: 

Don’t sleep with another man’s wife. A prostitute will only cost you a loaf of bread, but sleep with another guy’s woman and you have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. You can’t carry a fire in your heart without burning your shirt.

Don’t be a liar. A lie might taste sweet at first, but it’s just a matter of time before it turns to gravel in your mouth.
 

Also, don’t be one of those smug, entitled jerks who looks down on people who aren’t as lucky as you are. When you belittle the poor, you make fun of God. But when you give money to the poor, you are lending it to God. And you know he’s good for it. If you laugh at the misfortunes of others, God will give them a chance to laugh at yours. So be cool.

Never miss a good opportunity to shut up. Smart guys don’t feel the need to jabber all the time and dumb guys are only mistaken as smart when they aren’t talking. An idiot is a bomb and his mouth is the fuse.
 

It’s okay to be wrong once in a while. How stupid you look when you’re wrong is directly proportional to how certain you were that you were right. A wise man will always consider the possibility that he’s wrong and he will welcome a second opinion. Only an asshole thinks his first guess is right every time. 

Work hard and save up for hard times. An ant doesn’t need to be told to work hard by his boss or the government, and neither should you. At the same time, don’t knock yourself out trying to get rich. Money doesn’t do you any good if you’ve wasted your whole life getting it. Money is a bird: just when you think you’ve got it cornered, it flutters away, making you look like a real prat as you jump after it. 

If you are rich or powerful, don’t drink too much. It will make you lazy, oppressive and forgetful. If, on the other hand, you are destitute, miserable or dying…drink away. You probably need to do some forgetting. 

A nation with corrupt rulers is a country always in rebellion. But deal honestly with the powerless and your throne will never be in danger. Putting a corrupt man in power is like releasing a bear in the town square. A dishonest man is always on the run, even when nobody’s chasing him. But a man with integrity can stand his ground, even when all are against him.

Finding a good wife is better than discovering buried treasure. Marrying a trophy wife without any common sense is like finding a gold ring in a pig’s snout.
You might get the gold ring, but it’s not worth whatever you had to do to that pig to get it. A good wife is hard-working, smart with money, and keeps the house running smoothly. A good wife will make you look better than you really are. And guys, if you have a wife who makes you proud, the least you can do is let her know what she means to you. 

A woman will forgive a lot of bullshit if you aren’t cold and uncaring.

Speaking as your king, and as a descendant of King David, I hope you will indulge me if I philosophize a little. I’ve been around the block and have seen just about everything, and let me tell you: it’s all horseshit. Everything you do, everything you’ll ever accomplish, your life’s work, your kids’ life’s work: horseshit. I mean, none of it matters. 

The world will keep humming long after you and everything you’ve ever done is gone and forgotten. And nothing you can possibly do will change any of that. What can a man possibly hope to accomplish in the brief moment of sunshine that is a life?

Hey, that goes for me too, and I have a palace filled with naked concubines. I’ve got massive armies of soldiers and the wisest men in the world, just hanging around, eating my pineapple. Doesn’t matter. The day will come when all that will be gone, I will be forgotten, and everything I ever did with my wealth and power will not have made one donkey turd’s worth of difference to the world.
Everything’s temporary. There’s an occasion for everything you can think of. A time to be born, a time to die. A time to cry and a time to dance. A time for war and a time for peace. It’s all happened before and it will all happen again. There’s nothing new under the sun and nothing you do can change the heaving tide of history for more than a second or two. The world is nothing but a huge fad.

So if you can’t change the world, you might as well make yourself happy, right? Nope. That’s pointless, too. Gorging yourself with food just makes you gluttonous, filling your head with knowledge just makes you aware of your own ignorance, and hoarding money just makes you greedier. Service to God isn’t a bad idea, just don’t expect any reward for your efforts. 

It doesn’t matter how great you are, or how much of a legacy you think you have created for yourself, when all is said and done, you will die like everything else and that will be the end of you. It is better to be a living dog than a dead lion. 

Trust me, it doesn’t matter what you come up with to do with your life, in the end, it all turns to dust. You can’t even take solace in knowing the truth.
 

The truth is that it’s better to cry real tears than to fake laughter. Better to be a sinner who surprises himself with goodness than a righteous man who disappoints himself with sin. Better to be condemned by a wise man than praised by idiots. How is anyone supposed to make sense of the truth?

It’s enough to make one cynical, I know, but don’t give in to cynicism just yet. For I will let you in on one more secret I’ve discovered during my long and meaningless lifetime: 

Just because life is pointless, that doesn’t mean you get to sit around all day moaning about it. There’s still work to be done. You should still help the oppressed, take care of the abandoned, and make each other happy if and when you can. Just because there’s no point to any of it doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.