Followers

“What in the hell is wrong with humanity?!?” 

Justin stared disbelieving at his laptop screen. Eleven days ago, his Instagram account boasted 600,000+ followers. Tik-Tok uploads of assorted domestic hijinx featuring his girlfriend Sophia, and Woody, their five-year old St. Bernard Mastiff, reliably scored 250,000 hits with every post. Since he went Instagram official with Sophia three months ago, both their profiles felt the positive surge. With his comedic flair and her addictive looks, their whole was clearly more lucrative than the sum of their parts. 

But had he overplayed his virtual hand?  Last week he uploaded the first of several forays into current events. With virtually no political leanings but an overactive sense of humor, Justin decided the time was right to take aim at domestic politics. Epstein, Alcatraz, Musk, bulging veins….I mean, who can stay out of that big, beautiful, comedic foray. He’d worked on a Trump impression for a few days and believed he had perfected a unique take on his voice and facial contortions. 

Talk about misreading the room. While those posts put himself, Sophia and his closest friends in stitches, they fiercely divided his followers. Within a week, he’d been abandoned by over 350,000 people. In the last 24 hours alone, 72,000 more clicked unfollow. Sophia too reacted to the backlash, the statement she posted to her IG publicly disassociating herself from her boyfriends’ content cut Justin like a hot knife. Her late-night text added insult to injury ….stressing to figure out if we have a future 🥺.

Hemorrhaging all of his followers or losing Sophia? Justin didn’t know what was worse. But both outcomes, almost unfathomable a week ago, now seemed inevitable. 

Staring vacantly at his computer wasn’t making it go away. He was a good person. How could this be happening? Would a God, if there was such an entity, endorse this? He was a good, kind person, raised in the church for chrissakes. He gave to charity. He believed. Why was the world doing this unthinkable thing to him? 

He thought about eating, or calling someone, or posting something, but nothing seemed an appropriate response to this crisis. His aching heart kept coming back to God. 

“Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?”  If only he could talk this out with the Almighty. 

The paralyzing refrain repeated over and over until time slowed, and then stopped, and consciousness shifted, and Justin suddenly sensed he was moving down a path lined by a grove of exotic, sweet smelling flowers. A tall, rustic cabin with a massive wooden door appeared right in front of him. As he arrived at its entrance, the door slowly opened.  

Skylights beamed radiant sunshine down a corridor of hand-crafted hardwood floors, the walls covered with artwork. Overwhelmed by anticipation, Justin noticed a presence in the main living space, a tall, substantially built man in workclothes, his back to the cabin’s entrance, hunched over something just out of Justin’s sight.

“Welcome, my son. I’ve been expecting you.”

The man’s face was a revelation. Kind, empathetic eyes trained lovingly on a rotating potter’s wheel, strong hands shaping and smoothing wet gray clay as the wheel spun at the careful command of his right foot. 

“I understand you’re troubled.”

Justin stood frozen in awe at the scene. The unfamiliar artist seemed to know him intimately, yet barely looked up as he greeted him, continuing his work. A strange combination of elation and unease came next. Into where exactly had he stumbled?

“How do you know me?  And…what exactly are you making?”

The large bohemian man with clay-covered hands smile was dazzling. “I’ve wondered if you’d ever come. I’m so happy you have.”

“So how exactly do you know…”

“You’ve lost over three-hundred thousand followers recently. I’m sad to hear that.”

Justin’s heart burned hot, but his cynical mind pushed back. “Who exactly are you? And where exactly are we?”

The artist grabbed a towel from a table and wiped himself clean, then deflected sweat from his brow with a muscular right forearm. His massive hands found Justin’s smaller ones. “Ahh, let me look at you.”

Justin’s heart won the debate with his mind, and he offered his hands, submitting himself for inspection to the compelling stranger. He couldn’t ignore the sudden stirring in his soul which drew him closer to this unknown.

“I remember the day I made you.”  

Justin trembled. “You…made me?”

“It was a beautiful day, much like today.” The man beamed with pride. Justin began to comprehend what he had just walked into, and while he still didn’t fully grasp it, he couldn’t ever remember feeling more elated, safe, full of joy. He struggled for words, but didn’t feel compelled to form any. Several moments passed silently.

“What do I call you?”

“Call me Eli.”  He released Justin’s hands, showing him to a chair near his work space. “My son, this is my office hours. I make myself available to every person that calls for me. I’ve been patiently waiting for you. What a pleasant surprise.”

Justin gazed around the space in complete amazement. “I’ve never been an art guy, but this stuff…it’s amazing. Where did you get it?”

Eli nodded to an easel across the room from the potter’s wheel. “I paint a little. I also dabble in photography.” He gestured to one particular photo. “ What do you think of this one?” Billowing textures swirling along a pathway, the colors and shapes not something Justin had ever seen in the natural world.  

“Wow..I get the strangest feeling. Where is that?”

Eli smiled. “It’s the path you move through when your soul ascends to heaven. I thought it would be cool to frame it. Neat, huh?”

Justin stared forward, his mouth agape. There were no words.

Eli turned back towards him. “So why did you lose all those followers?”

“How is it that you know…”

Eli waved his hand, and another easel suddenly transformed into a telescreen. It flashed a graphic trend of Justin’s followers over the last several months. Several adjacent screens then appeared out of nowhere, a colorful representation of the downward spiral of Justin’s recent social following. Justin speechlessly absorbed it all.

Eli anticipated his next question. “We’ve got great tech people up here.”

“Man, that’s an understatement.”

“So you’re sad about losing all those followers. Why? To where exactly were they following you?”

Justin found the line of questioning naive, and frankly, a little annoying. “Do you have any idea how all that data impacts me financially?” 

“Well, I suppose that’s something that happens in the…”

“Eli, there’s a lot about the world today that you might now totally get.” Justin felt his initial euphoria turning into something different. “I might lose my girlfriend over this.”  

Eli returned to the potter’s wheel and pressed the pedal as the small clay object rounded itself into the distinctive shape of a newborn infant. “I’m so sorry to hear about all of that.” His hands worked the clay as he nodded to the opposite side of the room. 

Another data screen appeared out of thin air, and Justin stared silently at a graph of God’s global followers over the past 100 years. What appeared to show maybe six billion followers at one point in time had dramatically cascaded to something near 2.2 billion souls that believe in God today.

“How can you be sure of this?”

“I know everything, Justin. Everything.” Eli spoke like a patient father. “I created it all, so I suppose having to bear the burden of all of it should lie with its creator, no?” Eli’s hands splayed carefully around the oblate head of the rapidly forming infant shape, his eyes stayed focused on his work.

“Justin, I share your sadness. I get it, I truly do. That data is what is in every human’s heart. That, I know. Call it a perfect poll, perhaps.” Justin just stared at the artist at work as he continued to process his ethereal surroundings. Silence between them persisted. 

“Well, son. This is your time, but it’s not infinite. Well….not yet, anyway.” Eli smiled. “Ah, afterlife humor. I should have my own YouTube channel perhaps. You reached out, so ask me anything. How can I help?” His fingers were meticulously crafting the nose and lips of his work in progress.

“Did you really make every living creature on earth, one at a time, just like that? Right here, in this place?”

“Right in this very spot. It’s where everything starts.” Eli lifted the clay figure, inspecting his handiwork. “Started with all the living creatures. Made two of each. It was interesting, creating each unique species. I set’m all loose and they roamed about. They multiplied. Some survived, some didn’t. Some evolved into different kinds of living beings.”

“So you didn’t control that outcome…how they evolved, what they became?’

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t control everything, Justin. I just create it. I set it in motion, and it does what it will. All of it.”

“Is it the same with humans? Do you just mill us up and send us into the arena, like the animals, to do to each other whatever we will?”

Eli smiled, holding his latest clay figure. “Oh, no, son. You’ve come at the perfect time. I will show you.”

Eli took the fully formed infant into both hands and held it to his breast. And then He kissed its forehead lovingly, His pursed lips breathing something mystical into the child. As Eli completed the long kiss, the child suddenly wiggled and became animated in his arms. 

“Justin, I made the animals just once. I made them for you, for all of you.” Eli proudly held out the child for Justin to observe. “But human beings…I make humans for Me. You are the human representation of Me on the earth, and I make every single one of you, right here, each unique in its own way.”  He held the child out, inviting Justin to hold her. The clay had now become flesh. A pair of beautiful brown eyes opened for the first time.

“The secret sauce, as you might call it, is this one special ingredient. I breathe into every person a deep capacity to Love. And that is what makes all of you so important. So powerful.” Justin listened as he held the tiny girl in his arms.

“But there is one problem. A big one, actually.” Eli rubbed his eyes, lamenting. “This capacity to Love…it’s a bit like the air pressure in a tire. It leaks out of people. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes quickly. It’s the problem you asked me about this morning.”

“What problem did I ask you about?” Justin appeared confused.

“You called out, and I quote, “What in the hell is wrong with humanity? And then you begged to know why I had forsaken you. That’s what got you here so quickly…same day appointments are rare, but we accommodate based on the urgen-”

“Eli, I thought you knew everything. How come you can’t stop that from happening?”

Eli smiled, carefully taking the child from Justin. “My son, I created everything, and I know everything, but I don’t control everything. A common misconception.”  

The Creator then turned his attention back to the tiny baby, looking into her eyes as he held her. “Got a really good feeling about this one. Her mom and dad have waited such a long time.” And with that, he raised her upward toward the skylight, and in a flash of light she disappeared from the room.

Justin’s eyes welled as he gathered himself. “Wow! Just….Wow!”

Eli had already moved across the room toward a crate of raw clay and broke off another batch with his bare hands. “I tried to seal her very tightly. But I can’t control what this world will do to her.” He frowned. “Once it leaks out entirely, the human being is no more special than all those animals I created millions of years ago that mindlessly roam the earth, instinctively eating and mating and fighting with each other just to survive.”

“That sounds a lot like the world I know today, Eli. A lot of leaks out there. ” 

“I tried to invite you to follow me last week but you rejected me.” Eli nodded to another idle easel that sprang to life, the online profile of someone named Elijah Gabriel. No photo. No followers. Nobody following. “Don’t you remember?”  

“I’m so sorry. I don’t.”

“Humans have become far more interested in being followed than following really important things.” 

Justin nodded, deep in thought. “Somewhere in that equation are the leaks you’re looking for.”

“How’s your mother, Justin? You know she’s up here quite often. She thanks me every time for making you. In fact, she only ever asks me to guide and protect you. Never asks me for anything else.”

Justin pondered this revelation. “Oh man, do we have a lot to talk about.”

“Well son, time’s up. I’ve got a full day.” Eli chuckled. “I suspect you do, too.”

“When I get home I’m gonna get online and follow Eli Gabriel.”

Eli chuckled. “Don’t forget to check in on your mom. And that Trump crap just isn’t that funny. I’d take it down. Might help your cause.”

“Done!” Justin blinked and Eli and the cabin vanished. His smartphone’s FaceTime was ringing. He touched it, and his mother’s face appeared.

“Honey…can you hear me?” Overwhelmed, Justin could only stare at his mother’s smiling face studying him. 

“You’re back!”