Tears Flow From Heaven When All Appeal to a Warrior on High

God is all the rage these days.

Not since the last Super Bowl, when he was called upon to help the Baltimore Ravens beat the New York Giants, has his name been mentioned to such an extent.

I have seen signs and heard words all over town asking God not only to bless, heal, direct and align with America in its current crisis, but also suggesting that it wouldn’t hurt if he, you know, aimed a bolt of lightning up the kazoo of you-know-who.

Athletes, who are always asking God for a fastball down the middle or a three-pointer at the buzzer, seem especially inclined to mention him in various pregame, postgame and halftime interviews.

They are second only to America’s religious leaders, who have always felt that if God is listening to anyone at all, he is listening to them. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who is to Christian altruism what Moe was to the Three Stooges, went so far as to blame the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on God’s anger toward anyone that he, Falwell, doesn’t like. God, thank God, issued an immediate denial.

Meanwhile, the big guy is also being lobbied by the Osama bin Laden gang, to help them destroy us and to make sure their suicide bombers get all the virgins Bin Laden has promised them in the hereafter.

In addition to the current business, God must also deal on a daily basis with less urgent requests, such as pleas for a raise, for a new car, for script approval, for a vintage wine year and for a date with the school prom queen. It must be driving him crazy.

But then, if overwork is the price of fame, who is more famous this week than God? Not even Britney Spears comes close.

I wanted to ask God how he was holding up during all of this, but I don’t have the number of his direct line, and I was not about to sit there and listen to heaven’s menu of extensions. Dial 1 if you want Peter, dial 2 if you want John, dial 3 if you want Mother Teresa, dial 4 if you want Michael Landon ....

So what I did was call my good friend Joe Price, a professor of religious studies at Whittier College, whose current number I did have. In addition to his knowledge of God, heaven and related subjects, Joe is also famous for singing the national anthem in baseball stadiums throughout the country.

What better person to speak to in a time of crisis than someone who specializes in both God and freedom’s song?

We met at a restaurant in Pasadena where Joe talked about what he called the noble intentions of the Bible, the Koran and the Torah and how they are so blatantly misinterpreted by fundamentalists in any religion.

Those interpretations led not only to the assassinations of Anwar Sadat in Egypt and Yitzhak Rabin in Israel, but to torture, hangings and burnings in the Christian world and to the bloody terrorist attacks on the United States that push us once more to the brink of the abyss.

Then there’s that business of the 100 virgins. It is said that Bin Laden interprets the Koran as promising that number of virgins for each Muslim who dies in a Jihad, or holy war. Joe sees that image of “super-abundance” as a corruption once more of what religion stands for, or should stand for.

“Streets of gold, streets of virgins, pearly gates, angels,” he says with a sigh. “If those images are taken literally instead of figuratively, it becomes pathology.” Sorry, boys. No virgins.

We’ve created all kinds of gods through the ages in order to explain that which seems otherwise inexplicable, including rain, wind, war, death, drought, acne, television and happy marriages.

When something goes right, we thank God. When it goes wrong, we blame God. Whatever motivation humanity needs for whatever it undertakes, it manages to find in the books of God as interpreted by whoever is doing the reading.

The Crusaders slaughtered for God about a thousand years ago. The Spanish Inquisitors burned for God 500 years ago. Hitler murdered for God a half-century ago. And, scattered here and there, have been God-related killings in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Africa, the Middle East and often in our own neighborhoods.

“If we all lived by the moral precepts of the Bible, the Torah and the Koran,” Joe says, “the world would be a wonderful place. But we don’t.”

When I asked what he thought God’s reaction was when his name is used to justify violence, Joe replied softly, “God’s tears flow freely down his face whenever one destroys in his name.”

Bombs fall, missiles soar and angry words fly on sheets of flame. Blood spills in Afghanistan as it did in New York, in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. More is to come, we promise. More is to come, they promise.

And if the God we call upon to save, to heal, to protect isn’t answering our pleas at the moment, that’s understandable. He sits alone in his heaven, crying.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.