God stays in heaven because... / Torquemada

About a month ago I was going through some old newspapers when I spotted a column by Liz Smith from October 27, 2002.  The rest of the paper has long been recycled, but I've carried around the first part of the column ever since. She asked for the source of a note she wrote to herself:

God stays in heaven because He fears what he has created here on Earth.

I figured a web search would yield the result.  A couple of pages of links later I can say that many variants exist on the web.  One link lead to "Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams" on IMDB: "Do you think God lives in Heaven because He too lives in fear of what He created?" 

Maybe "God stays in heaven because ..." can be as popular as "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Of the chicken crossing the road jokes, my favorite variants have various personalities offering explanations.  Of these my favorite still remains:

"I don't know, but give me 30 minutes with the chicken and I'll find out. - Torquemada

(If you follow the link to the chicken crossing the road jokes you'll see that in that version Torquemada estimated only 10 minutes to get to the truth. It was 30 minutes when I first heard the joke so I tell it that way.)

I once told the joke to some college students who found it funny even though they didn't know who Torquemada was.  They were stymied because they couldn't spell his name. I suggested that they look up the Spanish Inquisition.