Thou Shalt Have No Other
It's not easy being God. Gods have to know, gods have to be certain. They have to bring down their wrath upon the people and hand them hope when all hope is lost.
People expect so much from their gods, they look for signs and significance in everything they do. They want so much.
When former slaves sang for deliverance from intolerance, they asked a deity to reach down and set them free. They asked that the people of the Earth be shown the truth and the guiding light. But God didn't end the segregation laws. It was men and women, walking, fighting and dying in the streets that did that. It was sheer, awe-inspiring, human dedication. We set ourselves free. If they knock you down, you stand up and keep going, and some day the walk will be over.
We did it all ourselves. Humans, reaching out and saving one another.
I've managed to live my life without a god. I never asked to become one. I didn't fall to my knees in front of an alter and ask to be touched by the divine. All I wanted was to do the best I could with what my genotype and my phenotype had given me.
The hardest thing in the world is being someone else's hope.
When she looks at me, with all those ideas of what I am and what I can accomplish for her people, I feel ice forming in the pit of my stomach. I can't act the way she wants me to, I can't favour one people over another. I don't want to. I don't want to embody someone else's ideals. All I want is peace.
"I'm not a god, Nerys," I tell her, and she smile in that self- assured way and says;
"No, you're the Emissary."
And I hate her. Just for a second, a brief, angry moment. When she takes my hand and tells me with utter confidence that I am deliverance, I have to fight back the urge to reach out and snap her neck with my bare hands.
I can't do everything. I can't just shut my eyes and hope for the best. I have to walk, I have to think. If I was a God I could snap my fingers and everything would be perfect; there would suffering, no hunger, no loss.
If I was a God I wouldn't be here, fighting a war that I don't know how to win.
If there was a God, none of us would be here, and this war would be a passing thought, lingering in the mind of a contented man sitting on a beach with his wife and his son.
If there was a God...
I'm not... I'm not a god. I'm not infallible. I'm human, and weak, and I make mistakes. People put too much faith in the unseen. They ignore the options placed in front of them, close their eyes to beg assistance from something they've never even touched. Alien beings living in a wormhole are too much like real life. People always look for more.
Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I see the Bajoran security personnel staring at me, drinking me in. I know that they think themselves blessed if I brush against them in the doorway, I know that they rush off and gamble a month's pay on the dabo tables if I smile and say "good morning." Lights, dancing in their eyes.
I'm sick of people staring at me. I'm sick of being expected to save them. How can I? What can I do? I'm nothing. I'm just a man. I can't raise my arms and part the Red Sea, I can't climb onto a rock and ascend to the heavens.
Prophets are supposed to know, aren't they? They're supposed to believe. When Mohammad started shaking in a cave he had no doubt that he had spoken to the Almighty. I've spoken to... aliens. Powerful, enigmatic aliens, but living and thinking like any other lifeform. They can't be infallible ö how can anyone be infallible?
I'm not without faith. I believe in the good that lives in all of us. I believe in dreams and hopes and altruistic ideas. And I know that all those dreams are possible, if we stop looking up at the clouds and start looking at the people who walk beside us.
I don't want to be a god. I want to be a man, a human, a father. I want to put things right with my own two hands, hands that once grasped the branches of tall trees, hands that lit a fire and reached out to touch the stars. I want to... I want to...
I don't want to be a god. I just want to be a man.