Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy, and Fairy Tale

p. 64

“We might say God is like the great physician with a cure for every ill. He is like the good president whose Oval Office is always open to even the humblest citizen. But Jesus says something quite different. He says God is like a man who, when his friend comes knocking at his door at midnight, says, ‘You’ll wake the children. Drop dead,’ and who only after his friend goes on leaning on the doorbell finally staggers downstairs with his hair in his eyes and his bathrobe on inside out and gives him what he wants just to be rid of him. Jesus says God is like the crooked lawyer with the book he is writing about his involvement with Watergate so much on his mind that he couldn’t care less whether the woman wins her suit against the power company but finally tells her secretary to show her in anyway just so she won’t keep bugging him.”