But this story has a happy ending. He has recently faced His limitations, and this has brought Him closer to us. Studying our details from His heavenly outpost, He began to understand that His subjects are entirely capable of empathizing with His position. Everywhere He looks He sees positions of strange credit: parents who seed a child’s life but have limited control over it; politicians who briefly steer the ship of state into the dimly lit future; enthusiastic lovers who marry without knowing where the commitment will lead. He studies the accidental co-locations that initiate friendships, inventions, pregnancies, business deals, and car accidents. He realizes that everyone is knocking over dominoes willy-nilly: no one knows where it leads.

In the afterlife, in the warm company of His accidental subjects, God now settles in comfortably, like a grandfather who looks down the long holiday table at his progeny, feeling proud, somehow responsible, and a little surprised.

Graveyard of the Gods

Because the afterlife is a form of justice, we may think that it cannot include animals, who are not held responsible for their actions. Thankfully we would be wrong. It would have been a lonely afterlife without animals, and we have discovered the pleasant truth that the hereafter is full of dogs, mosquitoes, kangaroos, and every other creature. After you arrive and look around for a while, it becomes obvious that anything that once existed enjoys a continued existence.

You begin to realize that the gift of immortality applies to things we created, as well. The afterlife is full of cell phones, mugs, porcelain knickknacks, business cards, candlesticks, dartboards. Things that were destroyed—cannibalized naval ships, retired computers, demolished cabinetry—all return in full form to enjoy and furnish the hereafter. Contrary to the admonition that we cannot take it with us, anything we create becomes part of our afterlife. If it was created, it survives.

Surprisingly, this rule applies to creations not only material but also mental. So along with the creations that join us in the afterlife are the gods we created. Lonely in a coffee shop you might meet Resheph, the Semitic god of plague and war. The head of a gazelle grows from his forehead; he gazes wistfully out the window at passersby. In the grocery store aisle you may bump into the Babylonian death god Nergal, the Greek Apollo, or the Vedic Rudra. In the shopping mall you’ll spot gods of flames and moons, goddesses of sexual acts and fertility, gods of fallen warhorses and runaway slaves. Despite their incognito clothing, they are typically detected by their gargantuan size and such characteristics as lion heads, multiple arms, or reptilian tails.

They are lonely, in large part because they’ve lost their audiences. They used to cure disease, act as intermediaries between the living and dead, and dole out crops and protection and revenge for the loyal. Now no one knows their names. They never asked to be born, yet they find themselves ensnared here for eternity. Only rarely is there a local resurgence of belief in an old god, a small clumping of fans, but such bursts are always short-lived. The gods recognize that they are stuck here with their dealt hand of cards: a vengeful personality, fire for eyes, dysfunctional kin, and eternity on their hands.