I'm (finally) reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale for the first time, and a line about halfway through the book jumped out at me. The narrator is talking to God about loved ones with whom she's lost contact, and she says, "You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves."
I had thought of the development of religion in a more granular way, as being helpful in explaining natural phenomena or acting as an excuse to dominate other people(s) -- as a collection of small reasons that gradually became a larger agenda. But Atwood's words are so simple, so succinct, and frame the concept in a way that's achingly sad: we're excellent at being miserable and making each other miserable, but to concieve of being truly happy we need our omnipotent creator. We wish and hope and dream about being happy... but only when we're dead and in the arms of a god we've spent our lives trying to please but simultaneously mucking everything up because we can't agree on how to do it.
Hell we can make for ourselves. And Lord, are we ever good at it.
