Bathroom Monologue: When you grow up, you trade in "imaginary friends" for "characters"

"This is why you're so bad at reading the Bible, John. You feel bad for the Jews. You feel bad for the Christians. You think God should do more, especially if He's a Trinity. Then you turn from the full book to your empty notebook, and you feel bad for not helping your characters. You want to be a better god than God. It's cute, but it ought to give you more sympathy for the creator. Think of all the authors out there. How many of them don't kick, stab, rape, addict, orphan or otherwise savage their protagonists? And always the protagonists! Think of all the vile characters in literature that only suffer at the climax of the fiction, while the virtuous have a tough time from the opening. There are thousands of terrible gods walking the earth, raining down a perverted justice called "realism" on their fiction. How many souls would be sympathetic to God if when they died they found out He only did this to seem realistic? As a professional character let me say, I'd much sooner live in an unrealistic, poorly-written Eden than an edgy, sharply-detailed crack alley."