I'm white, upper-middle-class in the richest country in the world-what need have I for God?

Cooking, preparing simple meals for myself always leads to thought. The motion of the knife through the flesh of the still-living, barely-sprouted potato is meditative, much more so than any deliberate stilling of the mind. The balding white man dressed in finery speaks upon the TV, praising his Aryan Jew.

This is not yours. I want to say. What need have you for a shepherd, you who lords over the world in your very existence? You have almost no hope of ever experiencing poverty, hunger, or the other ills of the world. What is it about the next life that concerns you? Your heaven is here and now. Your clear complexion and filled cheeks reveal just how little your need is for this salvation.

He continues, and any "you" I use is, in truth, a "we". The spoils of the world are gathered at my feet, waiting to be sampled, regardless of my intent.

You have pillaged it. I want to say. You have seized it and made it your own, like so many other things in your ancestors' time. You have taken from it what you wish and re-molded it, re-molded him, in your own image, as successful as any Social Darwinist could hope to be.

Next into the pan comes the oil from a country which I could reasonably see this very year. The means are available to me, not only to buy this luxury, but to traverse the distance to nearly anywhere I would wish, economic conquerers visiting their colonies.

It is not your fault. I want to say. You did not ask to be born a king, you did not entreat your forefathers to do every thing within their power to ensure your happiness. It is difficult to blame our ancestors, those alpha males following their guiding instincts to new riches.

But I cannot understand your love of this God, to whom you have no relation, save perhaps one- you are as powerful as he. Maybe more so, in this world. How is it that you can actually read that book, those hymns, and not fall into a sort of cultural dissonance? With whom in the whole tome can you identify? Your place, yours is of a similar nature to that of Ozymandias.

What need have you, have I, for a savior of the underdogs? We are those who feast at the expense of the world, born into our beautiful privilege, held captive by our advantageous lifestyle. You who can never hope to know the true miseries of the deprived, what succor do you find in the God of the lesser?

You are nothing.

An innocent white lamb left to stagger and cry on the rocks, far away from your mother as the dark wolves come ever closer to their dinner.

For I have dark skin, little one. I work for my place in this world, and come from the poorest country in the world. And I will devour you, at my leisure.

Why would I do such a thing you may ask? Take your beauty, your innocence from the world?

I am hungry, my eyes will reply.

You made me hungry.

And now I will feast.

Me and a colleague of mine were sitting in a small cafe one day, talking about nothing in particular. Somehow we'd gotten onto the subject of God. I'm not a heavy theist (frankly I think people on both sides of the debate take it all too seriously), but at some point my colleague happened to mutter the title of this node, with an incredibly austere face and complete seriousness in his tone. He considered himself a king- a god in fact, with all his riches and the content nature of his life. What need does he have of God?

Oh my friends, if only you could realise how humorous this all was. I literally fell out of my chair with laughter. I rolled all over the floor with tears on my cheeks. Threw my head back, took in deep gulps of air, laughed till I felt dizzy and faint.

I mean at first I thought he was pulling my leg. Keeping a straight face to make me laugh even longer. Eventually after my lungs stopped hurting and I'd calmed down, I realised he was serious. Which was really strange- if you're lucky in life, have opportunities, are successful, then that really only begets one important question.

I explained this to him "You've asked the wrong question- what you should really ask is this:"

"What need does God have of you?"

He didn't understand what I meant and I left it there, because I'd confused him by asking him strange questions and knew it'd take him so time to work out what I'd meant. But for you happy people, I'll elaborate:

My friend seemed to believe that God is for paupers, that he could offer him nothing. But he only saw God as something to fulfill material desires. A lot of religious people will disagree with him on that point.

The real belief, the stuff people spend their lifetime's questioning, wondering about, suffering for- is the search for something intangible that can't be fulfilled by material possessions. Or at that's what I believe anyway.

I mean call it whatever the hell you like. Personally I think part of it is searching for meaning to you own life and the meaning of life in general. A question that God answers when he creates you, although there's a lot of debate about that.

I asked him whether he considered these questions at all and it was at this point that he decided to leave.

If God gives you gifts what do you do with them? Do you be charitable to others, extol virtues? Do you help the world according to your own morals? Do you even think about whether your own morals could be right or wrong? Something to think about certainly. My situation is of course similar to his. I was born in a lucky place.

I'm a king with all the power to do as he likes. And I'll prove it. I'll Change the world. Do something that matters.

And there's other people as well, a whole society that tutored me, a family that gave me shelter and of course all those "underdogs" the people who grew my food, made the clothing I wear, delivered my mail, do all the invisible unseen tasks that keep life going- what do they demand of me?

And thinking about it, I don't even care if the answers is that there is no meaning of life, because at least then I'll have asked the question. You can't get out of this by being existentialist.

In the end I suspect a lot of people are here for the same thing. You may call it God, you may call it Allah, you may (not) call it Buddha. You may call it life. But inevitably, you should be asking the same question.

Thanks go to golFUR who helped make this more then it was.