This is Me, y’all, so put away your toys and listen up. Right now I am an unhappy camper, and you know from experience that can be a problem for you. Ask Noah. Or Old Pharaoh. Remember them frogs and the locusts? So listen up when I say listen up if you know what’s good for you.

Some folks say y’all created me in y’all’s image. Other folks say the other way ’round : that I created y’all in my image. I can’t say about that. I have no idea what was here before I came, if there was a “here” before I came, so how could I know? But when it comes to this business of image, whoever’s it was to start with, we have now come to share pretty much the same one, and that’s what’s concerning me today. That it’s the same one. If either of us — y’all or me —  does something to tarnish that image, we are damaging something that’s common to both of us, and I don’t feature having my image tarnished by y’all’s mistakes, if you get my meaning. So we’re going to have to get some things straight.

Over the years I have sent you word from time to time about how I want you to behave. Start with Moses. He was my main man back then. But even before Moses. I read somewhere that the old Jews had to perform 613 different mitzvahs to be on the safe side — to be considered good people when the Judgment Day came. I don’t know where they got that many. Not from me. No way I could dream up that many. I have always said that there is only one thing you need to remember to be a good person — just treat everyone like you would like to be treated. But some prophets have staked out their turfs with different rules. Would you believe that when Moses originally came up the mountain he had a list of more than 100 things he wanted to put on those tablets? All kinds of stuff about what to eat, what not to eat, when to pray, which way to face — I mean it was a real meshuggenah mess.. I told him, Moishe, there’s no way you’re going to fit all that on those two little tombstones. Boil it down.

Well, it took a while, but we finally worked the hundred down to just ten. Unfortunately even ten turned out to be too much for some folks. They kept finding loopholes. Some wanted to go back to the original 613. I sent them word by way of several Popes and rabbis to help them sort things out, but the new prophets turned out to be as stubborn as Moses and I was busy with other things. I tried again later with a fellow named Muhammed. Had him up here for a nice visit and we reworked some of the biggest problems. We got it down to five major commandments and about a hundred nitpicks — he called them suras. But then I discovered that he had started making up new suras on his own to deal with some of his personal problems — like the four wives bit. I tried to persuade him that the Five Pillars would be all he needed, but he insisted, so I let him keep them both as long as they didn’t contradict each other too much.

As far as the story with the Popes goes, that fellow with his 95 theses pretty much nailed it five hundred years ago. He was so right and they were so wrong that they finally had to throw him out of the church altogether. They got the throwing part right, we had precedents for that with the money lenders in the old days, but it was supposed to be the bankers who got thrown out, not Luther. The popes didn’t see it that way. Well, Luther’s people went back and resurrected Moses’s original ten, and we pretty much wound up back where we started.

And now we’ve got some new of self-anointed prophets. The most straight-laced and uncompromising so far. No use for thinking at all. Just do what we say. No questions. Seems as though they’ve got it all boiled down to one method for dealing with questions — you might call it the Queen of Hearts method — “Off with their heads!”

So I’m going to say this one more time : All you need is “Do unto others…”. All this other stuff about skin color, the shapes of noses, who was your grandfather, who were the original natives and who were the invaders, promises I am said to have made, brains I am said to have handed out unequally, the hereditary rights of kings, the sanctity of private property — all that stuff is diversionary garbage. Just “Do unto other as you would have them do unto you” and that’s it. You don’t need anything else.

You want to see those locusts again? More fiery hail? Boils? Lice? I know how to do all those tricks, and I can also do volcanoes and earthquakes if you provoke me. Three days of darkness was just a taste but as I recall it really got your attention. So listen up. And shape up. The end may be nearer than you think.

This is Me talking, so pay attention. you hear?.