I never met my father. He never writes or calls me. He was not even there when I was born.

My neighbors keep saying that my father loves me, although they never met him either.

I read that if I obey what people say he wants, he will reward me by moving in with him at some point and finally meeting him.

If I don’t obey, some of his helpers will bring me in the basement of his mansion and torture me forever.

I apparently have a choice: obey or be tortured forever.

The catch is that I can never have a straight and simple answer on what it means to obey my father. The book people say was written or dictated by my father has 613 rules. Some rules forbid me to have bad thoughts to any degree; some other pertain to not mixing some types of fabrics. Some people say it has 10 main rules, which I see people break all the time.

According to my father’s book, if I break some of those rules, my neighbors have to kill me.

Those rules don’t mention that I have to be 18 to be killed. This means a baby who break some of those rules has to be killed too.

What kind of father would torture his children or order people to kill them if they break even the silliest of rules?

I must be a different kind of father because I never thought about stoning or torturing my children…