Spiritual Progress and Deals with God

I have a friend who has her head firmly planted on her shoulders. It’s what gives her the confidence to shrug so frequently while others have to make do with a twitch of the eyebrows. So when she told me she had made a deal with God, I was sure it was no ordinary deal.

At the outset, allow me to clarify that I’m all for deals with God. He’s the ideal party to draw a contract with because you can always be reasonably sure that He’ll hold up His end of the bargain. It used to bother me at first that such deals are similar to bribery. But when you think about it, it’s just payment in kind for exercising specialised skills. God is so efficient that once you’ve agreed on the contract, you can relax and be sure that it will be taken care of. You can propose a deal costlessly. You can choose your own terms, although you don’t really receive a rejection letter if He finds your terms unacceptable. But most people seem to know what would seem fair to Him. He doesn’t object to sudden modification of terms. If you don’t fulfil your obligations under the contract, you will be penalised in ways you could never imagine, the uncertainty over the form the penalty will take being a potent motivating factor to make you honour the agreement. He’s all right with performing His end of the deal first, without any guarantee or advance payment from you because of His immense power to enforce contracts. For instance if you promise not to eat chocolates for a month and you violate the terms, He can give you diabetes.

My friend, as I mentioned before, is rather smart. She formalised this whole system so beautifully for herself that I had to marvel at the religious progress the current generation is making. She decided that God’s jurisdiction should be clearly defined. For His convenience and her own, she decided that her promises are enforceable in a geographic area specified in the agreement, which conforms to existing political boundaries so that any doubts she has can be resolved by worldly authorities.

She’s also very exacting in her requirements and reduces the reward when God doesn’t show the panache she has come to expect of Him. For example if it turns out that she had merely misplaced something and she remembers where she had kept it later, then it doesn’t qualify as a miracle, so she allots credit to God on a pro-rata basis and modifies the contract accordingly.

I’ve also noticed that nearly everyone who makes deals with God appears to believe that He will reward those who deny themselves something they like. I’m not sure how this works. It’s not tenable for everyone to believe that He is a sadist. Does He consume what the devotees forgo? If so, is it correct to assume that His preferences are aligned with our own? Or perhaps He just wants everyone to have a sense of balance in life: you can only have one or the other. It helps one practice constrained optimisation on a regular basis and prevents devotees from becoming hedonistic parasites to society.

I was marvelling her ingenuity but she seemed to mistake it for sarcasm. “What do you do when you want something?” she asked, eager to know more about my spiritual inclinations. I usually convince myself that I don’t want the thing in the first place so that I’m not disappointed if I don’t get it and if I end up getting it, I do my best imitation of an Oscar acceptance speech: “This is such a surprise!” Then it takes me a few minutes to reverse all the brainwashing I’ve done to myself.

But then I wondered what I’d do if I lose something where there’s no question of wanting it. Say, I lose my passport. I suppose I’d worry, whimper and lose sleep for a couple of days and then pass the buck to my parents since I’ve done all I could in the matter. That’s probably why my parents never tell me where my passport is.