COMMENTARY: And on the sixth day, God installed the drywall

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Robert Kirby is a Mormon humorist and regular columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune.) (RNS)-I’m building a family room in my basement. Thus far, it’s cost me three months, $5,000, a thumbnail, and every speck of my pride. I’ll bet God didn’t have this much trouble creating the world. Then […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Robert Kirby is a Mormon humorist and regular columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune.)

(RNS)-I’m building a family room in my basement. Thus far, it’s cost me three months, $5,000, a thumbnail, and every speck of my pride. I’ll bet God didn’t have this much trouble creating the world. Then again, maybe he did.


Christian theology holds the belief that it took God six days to create the world. Six days means that God didn’t just blink and the world was there. It means that the creation was a process, going from A to B to C, etc.

Given that God is omnipotent, you’d think he could get from A to Z in under a minute. But the fact that it took him six days suggests that someone else was involved, someone to whom the process and aesthetics were probably important. Someone like a woman.

People who build stuff know that women are very important in the creative process. One thing my family room taught me is that the image of whatever a man is creating changes in direct proportion to how hard the man has to work to get it. That and not to get latex caulk in my ear ever again.

Because I was the one doing the work, it was therefore up to my wife to never lose sight of our original goal-a comfortable family room with furniture and electrical outlets. Four weeks into the creation of our family room and I was ready to settle for milk crates and an extension cord.

Although it isn’t in the Bible, when you stop and think of all the billions of picky things that went into the world, it pretty much stands to reason that God needed the help of a woman. Somebody had to remember why the world was getting built in the first place.

And Woman said:”You can’t make parakeets eleven feet tall, for crying out loud. The PEOPLE are only five feet …” I certainly made more mistakes building my family room than God made creating the world. Purists will, of course, argue that God is perfect and therefore technically incapable of making even a single mistake. But how else can you explain things like eggplant and the French government? I don’t even try. Stuff like that makes my crooked door seem not so bad.

Besides, God made up for any possible production goofs by creating lightning, hot fudge, blue jeans, dogs, the Milky Way, Chris Izaak and hockey. Oh, and the ’69 Boss 429 Mustang.

If I could know any creation secret in the universe, I wouldn’t want to know how to make oceans or mountains. I’d like to know what God said when he missed a swing with a hammer and hit his thumb. When it happened to me, I said (deleted) and (deleted). I’m not saying God cussed, but it could explain all those black holes out there.


My favorite part of the creation story is:”And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.”Hmm, a union job?

Unfortunately this is also the part of the Bible that suggests no women were involved in the creation. From my experience, there’s no way God would have gotten a day off.

And Woman said,”Hey, when are you going to finish the …?”

MJP END KIRBY

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