The Biblical God Is A Strange Dude

The Biblical God Is A Strange Dude

The Holy Bible is full of narratives, many of which are meant to guide readers toward wholesome living.

It also features some stories are just… odd.

Although God is always just and good, he has definitely been vain, indifferent, and even successfully tempted.

Anyone, regardless of religious affiliation, should be at least mildly alarmed by these tales, which show the lord who works in mysterious ways is also kind of a weirdo.

 

*ABRAHAM*

In Genesis 12, God instructs a pious guy named Abraham (formerly called Abram) to pack up and move to an undisclosed location.

Abraham obeys without question and establishes Canaan, an important founding point for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Ten chapters later, God orders Abraham to kill his son Isaac for no obvious reason.

Abraham is understandably hesitant but decides to go ahead with the plan because God is always just and good.

Before murdering his son (Isaac), Abraham must convince him to hike for three days up a mountain, where he would incapacitate the boy.

With Isaac tied helplessly to a rock, his father raises a dagger. A split-second before he thrusts the blade into his defenseless son’s body, an angel appears and tells him not to do it because God was only testing his loyalty.

In current times, God would have texted Abraham something like, ‘OMG DONT KILL UR SON I WAS JK LOL’.

God then provides a ram for Abraham to sacrifice because going through all that with no death to show for it would be ridiculous.

Had God stepped back to see that the man who obediently uprooted his whole life for him was already loyal, this heart-wrenching test done in the name of vanity could have been avoided and innocent Isaac wouldn’t have been scarred for life.

 

*LOT*

Between Abraham’s introduction and attempted filicide, we meet his nephew Lot, a devout man who lives with his wife (named Lot’s wife) and their two daughters in the sinful city of Sodom.

God, who is always just and good, plans to destroy Sodom and the neighboring Gomorrah.

But before that happens, Abraham convinces him to spare Lot and his family.

Lot is told about his impending evacuation by two visitors, who rouse attention from the city’s men so much that a large crowd of them forms outside the house and demands to rape the guests.

Instead of allowing that to happen, Lot boldly offers his young daughters to the mob, which becomes insulted and enraged. The visitors, who are actually angels, save the day by making every person in the mob blind.

The angels tell the Lot family to vacate Sodom quickly, but they refuse and must be forcibly removed without the daughters’ boyfriends, who are convinced the whole thing is a hoax.

Upon leaving, the family’s only instruction is to not turn around and watch the cities get obliterated. However, Lot’s wife gets naturally intrigued by the commotion behind them, looks back, and is immediately turned into a pillar of salt.

(It has been argued that the people of Sodom learned about the visitors because she asked neighbors for extra salt, hence the curious punishment.)

To be fair, the angels did say not to turn around.

But that’s not all…

Lot and his daughters soon seek shelter in a cave.

Somehow convinced they are the last people on Earth, Lot’s daughters get their father drunk and take turns raping him to get pregnant.

Keep in mind that God, who is always just and good, has time to transform a woman into seasoning for being intrigued by explosions but is too busy to stop her daughters from raping her widower.

If there is a moral to this story, it is unknown to me.

 

*JOB*
(pronounced with a long O as if it’s spelled Jobe)

Job’s story is arguably the least-understood part of the Old Testament, puzzling in superficial and philosophical ways.

In the Book of Job, we meet Job, another virtuous guy who is doomed for reasons beyond his control.

Job is a healthy man with a large family full of good people and a profitable farm that sustains them and others in a land called Uz- a place not mentioned in any other part of the Bible.

One day, God is boasting about Job’s devotion to him. Satan- who is not yet the devil- claims Job would denounce God if the good things in his life are taken away. God accepts the challenge and tells Satan he can do anything to Job’s life short of physical harm.

Satan uses this God-given power to kill Job’s children, servants, and livestock. Again, God, who is always just and good, permits this to happen.

But Job does not denounce God for his new-found misery.

Whiny as ever, Satan then complains about not being allowed to physically harm Job, so God authorizes that as well because he is always just and good.

Satan puts boils (small, painful lumps) all over Job’s body, causing him so much misery that his wife and friends encourage him to give up and die.

Still, Job praises God.

After winning the wager-less bet, God praises Job’s piety by giving him twice as many animals and servants as he lost and a bunch of beautiful daughters.

If the beings who create a horrible situation give a version of what things used to be like afterwards, does that justify it?

…

So yeah, God is a strange guy.

Whether these events happened or not, their seemingly pointless descriptions should give you nightmares.

In addition to these things, God sends bears to murder 42 children for poking fun at a bald guy named Elisha (2 Kings 2) and spends three days making the universe in the dark even though he is obviously able to create light (Genesis 1).

…

A well-rounded belief system includes recognizing the good, the bad, and the strange.

If you accept these stories, perhaps you should look in the mirror to see another weirdo.

Just be a good person. And stay on God’s good side. Remember, he did these things to people he liked!

 

 

SOURCES
google.com, britannica.com, jwa.org, biblegateway.com, gizmodo.com