God’s Temper Tantrums and General Bad Behaviour: Part Two

God is a kind god; God is a loving god; God loves you; God cares about you; God is a compassionate god; God is a forgiving god; God is a merciful god. You see it on church billboards – “God loves you anyway”. We’ve nearly all had that drivel rammed down our throats since we were kids in Sunday School and some of us actually believe it. Does the hype match the Biblical reality? Can pigs fly?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

DEUTERONOMY: There’s one major problem with the Promised Land as far as the Israelites are concerned – it’s already inhabited and occupied by non-Israelites. As the Amerindians, the Mesoamerican Aztecs and the Australian aborigines found out, possession maybe nine-tenths of the law, but it doesn’t protect you from bullets (or spears and swords).

Hitler had his chosen people invade Europe. God directs His Chosen People to invade the Land of Canaan (the Promised Land). That makes God no better than Hitler IMHO.

Oh, Moses finally caves in to old age (at a relatively youthful 120 years young, at least when compared to Methuselah and a few others) – RIP. However, before heading off Heavenly-bound he gives the Israelites a good old fashion Winston Churchill type V-for-Victory speech akin to ‘meet them on the beaches’, etc. 

JOSHUA: Hitler had his generals, and so too God.

God appoints Joshua to replace Moses as leader, and to command and lead the invasion of the Promised Land along with a little rape and pillage, looting and wanton destruction on the side.

Jericho is the first to fall, followed in quick order by the rest of the cities in Canaan Land – and you thought the Germans perfected the blitzkrieg. In old Wild West America there used to be a saying that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. That has a precedent. There’s nothing original there for the Israelites are well known for taking no prisoners. All shall be put to the sword. Whether that’s Gods philosophy or Joshua’s I’m not sure*, but more likely as not Joshua took his marching and smiting orders from his non-elected commander-in-chief, president-for-life, Sir God. I’m sure Joshua wouldn’t have done anything without God’s approval, least he be replaced, court martialled and smote as well. Anyway, to the victors go the spoils and so the invaders divide up the newly conquered land between them. God must now be quite pleased with Himself as His Chosen People are now King of the Hill!

JUDGES: Once the Israelites get settled into their Promised Land, lapses into idolatry and a bow and scrape now and then to some of those ‘other gods’ happen. God has to redress this wickedness via some more smiting – just to keep His Chosen People on the straight-and-narrow mind you.

1 SAMUEL: The wicked Philistines nick off with the Ark of the Covenant, but a bit of Heavenly sent germ warfare takes care of that and the Ark is returned to its proper custodians.

2 SAMUEL: Another first-born gets wasted by God’s wrath, this time the offspring of David and his unmarried bed-partner, Bathsheba.

JOB: Job involves not only Job but a very, very ‘odd couple’ bedfellow-sharing partnership indeed. God gets all buddy-buddy with Satan and in fact hires Satan to cause our hero all sorts of misfortunes and calamities. For example, Satan employs one of God’s favourite tools, germs, to test Job’s immunity against them. Alas, Job has no immunity against divine germs, and so Job ends up covered with boils from head to foot. All of this was just a means to an end, the end being to test Job’s faith in God in the face of adversity. So, Abraham and Job have something in common with which to vent their spleen over and pour their bile on – your ever loving and always compassionate God.

JONAH: In the Book of Jonah (Jonah 4.6-11) God has the audacity to say (in admittedly a rather obscure way) that He’s God of all nations and has concern for all nations and their peoples, not just His Chosen People. That’s because He spared the Assyrian city of Nineveh (after Jonah warned them to shape up or else) which wasn’t inhabited by His Chosen People. Regardless, tell the Egyptians that God is God of all nations! God should go crawling down on His hands and knees to Cairo begging for forgiveness from the Egyptian people for fairly obvious reasons.

While there are many references in the New Testament (Luke, Romans, Ephesians, etc.) of others saying or implying that God is a god of all nations and peoples, not just Israel and the Israelites, I can’t find a reference where God Himself says this, so it’s all apparently a case of someone who told someone who told someone, etc. It’s all second hand testimony to that effect, unlike the Book of Jonah where God speaks for Himself.

Yet even in the New Testament we find in Luke 1: 68 a passage that praises the “Lord God of Israel”, so it’s difficult to know what to believe. But assuming a shift, then one could also view the shift of ‘God of Israel’ to ‘God of all nations’ as a behind the scenes grab for power – a coup against all those detestable ‘other gods’ who ruled over other kingdoms and nations. Gods like Odin, Zeus, Baal and Horus. That would certainly be consistent and fit in with God’s egomania and sadistic personality, behaviour and constant demands for all and sundry to bow and scrape down to Him. God acknowledges numerous times that there are other gods that He does so really hate mortals to worship, so why not bump them off Mafia style and take over the world Himself?  

At this stage God petty much just retires to sit on His Heavenly throne and no doubt pats Himself on the back for a job well done up to this point. He no doubt keeps Himself amused with all of the shenanigans we mortals get up to down on terra firma. Most of the rest of the Old Testament is full of office politics, who’s sleeping with who, local wars, civil wars, revolts, personal squabbles, back-stabbings & assassinations, infightings, political intrigues, idolatry, corruption, executions, with more ungodly plots and amoral subplots than you can shake a serpent at – the sorts of things commonly reported today on the nightly news or in the morning newspaper, or round the clock if you’re surfing the Internet. There’s also a few fairy tales thrown in for lite entertainment involving say Samson’s haircut or Jonah’s whale of a tale. 

Based on a lot of those above-mentioned shenanigans, there’s also lots of Old Testament Biblical finger-wagging about what God’s gonna do when His already short and burning fuse reaches the dynamite. It’s sort of like the standard “just you wait until your father gets home”! God actually commands a lot of people (like Zechariah, Ezekiel, Jonah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Micah, etc.) to wag their fingers on His behalf. Methinks that’s a tad too much like buck-passing. It’s God’s responsibility to wag His own finger and say “naughty, naughty – daddy’s gonna take off his belt and whip you good now”, not that any of this finger-wagging actually eventuated to date in anything or to anything. Talk about crying wolf. Father doesn’t come home! Well, maybe God’s alarm clock failed to go off and He’s still sawing logs, and all hell will break loose when He finally arrives at the office.

Or maybe in the end God is perhaps getting tired of all His smiting and His wickedness. Not that He has turned over a new leaf entirely – not by a long shot. In that final Biblical book, Revelation, which is as far removed from ‘warm and fuzzy’ as you can get, God delegates others to do His dirty work for Him. It’s a rather unusual hands-off approach for Him. God is the scriptwriter (or inspired the mortal scriptwriter), producer, director but not the star of the show. He’s not one of the actors in the drama. He leaves the acting to others, like angels and his son.   

Oh, speaking of Revelation and all that it implies, among other of God’s little pleasantries, He created Hell so you’d have a warm place to sleep your eternal sleep. How very thoughtful of God to provide the ancient’s equivalent of the electric blanket!

Now in conclusion, is this the sort of deity you really want to spend eternity in Heaven with?

If you still believe after all of this that God is a loving, compassionate, caring, merciful, forgiving God then there’s this rather large statue in New York Harbour I’ll sell you going real cheap!

P.S. - Jesus too had a temper and a mean streak. Like father like son? But that’s another topic for another time. 

*Though I guess this little gem settles the matter:

Deuteronomy 20:17 (KJV) “But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:”