“It’s raining this morning, Jesus, and it’s made me realise something about myself.”

“Good.”

“That most of my life I’ve thought of rain negatively, as a pest: the rain that fell persistently in the Glasgow of my youth, a yellowish rain due to pollution from the ironworks, the rain that spoiled so many of my climbs in the highlands, the rain that ruined the BBQ. But lately, with heatwaves due to global warning, I’ ve realised how much it’s needed, what a blessing it is.

“ I often forget what a city kid you are!”

But of course you were not a city kid, that’s why you were aware of rain as a blessing….

“I was?”

“‘ Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, then you will be children of your father in heaven who makes his sun rise in the good and bad alike and sends rain on the just and the unjust.’ Don’t you remember what you said? You made the a-morality of the weather a sign of the love of God for everyone.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“Of course you were thinking of old-fashioned weather…

“How’s that?”

“BGW weather, Before Global Warming. Before weather was a thing to be feared.”

“Yes, in my day, there were storms, floods, droughts and so on, but they were the exception. Now, I understand why you’re afraid of the weather. It would be impossible now to attribute it to God; it’s the weather you’ve made.

“Me and humanity over the past 300 years. But if God didn’t make the weather, surely he did make humanity, and therefore…

“Therefore it’s God’s fault after all? He should have known what humanity would do?

“That’s what it says in the book of Genesis.”

“You’ve lost me there, “

“Of course it says that. Here’s this daft God who makes creatures that are almost Gods, they’re made like him for goodness sake, and he expects them to behave, and they don’t so he kicks them out of his garden, but they get worse so he sends a flood to wipe out most of them but thinks the ones he saves will be good, but of course they go bad again so eventually he gives up humanity and befriends the Jews! What a mess! Of course he’s just as much blame as his precious humanity.”

“St. Augustine and John Calvin didn’t interpret Genesis that way: they talked about original sin.”

“Original incompetence of GOD, more like!

“If God had the power to control the universe, that would be right. But the book of Genesis is trying out pictures of God and showing how wrong most of them are. In effect it says that God has to guide his universe to perfection by persuasion only, like he does with the Jews. It rejects the picture of God losing his temper, sending a flood then feeling sorry afterwards. I like Genesis.”

“Proper teachers say that you can’t have favourite books of the Bible. They’re all equally the word of God.“

“I’ve never been a proper teacher.”

“In any case I like the rain a lot more than temperatures of 35 degrees plus.”

“We know that the excessive heat comes from the climate’s reaction to excess quantities of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. God is opposed to the de-creation this causes: so many creatures dying, so many species becoming extinct, but her only means of opposition is to persuade humanity to change. In that light you could say that the excessive heat is one of God’s means of persuasion.

“You said ‘her’ means of opposition!”

“Sometimes I like to think of God as our mother. You got something against mothers?”