At the end of a long hot day, when Abraham’s father, Terah, came home, he hit the roof.

“What is all this?!” he exclaimed. The floor of his workshop was littered with broken statuettes and totems of numerous gods and goddesses.

In the midst of the wreckage stood Abraham. “I’ve smashed the gods of the old ways! I’ve discovered the new way forward, a new idea. From now on there will be only one God, and guess who’ll be his spokesman! You see; I’m not as hopeless as you think.”

Terah regarded his son with abject horror, as Abraham continued speaking of his one God. After Abraham had spoken, his father tried to explain that, until now, nobody had ever followed the idea of one God because it means there must be a Devil too.

“We do not want the Devil in our world, and that is what comes with your idea of one God. That is why our gods are all a mix of good and bad, so we can be like them. Don’t you see?”

Abraham shook his head as his father continued: “Your idea of one God is nothing new, we’ve thought of it before and we don’t like it.”

“But …” The elder shot his son a look and the younger decided against finishing his sentence.

“An all-good God,” continued Terah, “means an all-bad Devil too, and that’s dangerous. People can never be all good, but should that completely damn us? And who wants a God that renders all outsiders evil, even the good souls who’ve never heard of Him? That’s just false, it’s unfair and it’s wicked. Do you want wickedness like that? Dah! It just looks like a move to attack, enslave, kill and steal from outsiders. Is that what you want? Pah! That’s the old days. We’re more civilised now, not less.”

“The world’s changing, dad,” objected Abraham. “People are getting more connected; it’s not all local anymore. You can’t have everyone doing their own little thing all over the place. Everyone needs to know the same rules or it will be chaos. If we don’t take charge now somebody else will.”

Terah shook his head. “My son the world-shaker, eh; always in such a hurry. Slow down a minute. The gods can ease our suffering, but your one God notion would make more suffering in the world, not less. This idea of one God and his adversary, one Devil, brings not just the idea of absolute evil, but its manifestation too. According to that scheme everyone is either good or bad, and you are talking about making everyone the same, believing in the same one God, right?

The younger nodded.

“If they’re all going to be the same,” continued the elder, “you do realise you can’t make everyone good, don’t you; so what’s left for them all to be?” The old man sighed. “I don’t know where you get these ideas, I told you to be careful with those medicines. Is it that? They can take you over, son.”