This past Sunday at about 4:30pm a man, egged on by none other than God shimself, plunged into the chilly waters of New York Harbor attempting to carry out the will of the Boss Man, and make the three-quarter mile swim from Liberty State Park to Liberty Island. Unfortunately, the unidentified 29-year-old man was shown just what liberty had to offer as he was thwarted by pesky—and I guess judging the circumstances—God-hating police who according to the NY Post stated that “When we got to him he was shivering like a leaf and the tides were taking him away from Liberty Island.”

The swimmer is said to have resisted being dragged out of the water saying that he’d rather drown than give up. As Gothamist puts it:

“He said God told him to swim to Liberty Island. He said he would rather drowned [sic] than get on the boat.” Ultimately the swimmer was led astray by the wicked temptations of warm blankets and, you know, survival, and he climbed aboard the rescue craft… TO HELL. Or, as it’s known among Godless infidels, Jersey City Medical Center.

Now, I get it. When you set your mind on a task and the police step in to keep you from achieving your goal, it makes sense, you’d rather die than stop. I also don’t have any problem whatsoever in people feeling as if God, however S/he is defined by that person, has told him to carryout a task. Some people fly planes into buildings because God told them to. Others eradicate populations in the name of secular progress. It’s attachment to a particular belief system that causes the problem, not the package the belief comes in.

What always gets me, however, is when God-loving/fearing people define the limits of a plan set forth by God, as if to say God’s plan begins here and ends there, forgetting that the God of the Desert, YHVH, defines Itself as limitless, and thus any plan set forth by said God includes the obstacles, barriers, and ultimate halting of that very same plan. That is to say, God’s plan also includes your not being able to carry out God’s plan.

So my question is: Why not just get in the boat when you get tired?

For support see the Buddha: “When hungry eat. When tired sleep.” (A direct quote).