if he doesn't exist, or is unwilling to co-operate, the result is going to be a fiasco. How does he co-operate?
If one goes through the Gospels with a toothcomb, one finds fourteen or fifteen occasions on which Christ said to his disciples, “Anything you want, you can have. God will give it to you”. Sometimes he said it directly; for instance, “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”. Sometimes he spoke of the invincible quality of faith. Now he was a man who by and large expected people to take him literally. If he said to a man, “Go”, he clearly expected him to go. If he said, “Follow”, he expected him to follow then and there. If one is a Christian one has very little option but to believe that God is of much the same disposition as Christ. He too expects himself to be taken literally - at his word - and he too extols the invincibility of faith. It is quite clear too from the Gospels that Christ was not suggesting that God sometimes rewarded faith, and sometimes didn't. He was saying God always rewarded faith. He may have been wrong; but that undoubtedly was what he said; for example, “For everyone that asketh, receiveth; everyone that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocks, it shall be opened”.
Furthermore, if one looks at the situation from the psychological point of view, one is driven irresistibly to the same conclusion. God wants men to trust him completely, the Church teaches. Very well then, if a man does trust God completely, God must give the man anything he asks for. It is no good if God sometimes gives the man what he asks for, and sometimes not, for then the man will become hysterical like one of Pavlov's dogs. If the man is to continue to have absolute faith in God, and if the man is allowed to ask for anything at all, then God must give it to him. Of course it works the other way round as well. God must have absolute trust in the man that he will not ask for improper things. If the man does ask for improper things, God's absolute trust in the man…