The Story of God Read online

  Still, it was with an amazing feeling of pride and accomplishment that God looked down upon his glorious creation. “This is very good,” he said to himself. (Gen. 1:31)

  And yet …

  Those damned dark thoughts always seemed to creep in. Where did they come from? He had no idea. He’d have eliminated them if he could—but he couldn’t seem to. “It’s a perfect creation and my two humans, Adam and woman, will be happy and content within it, as I wish them to be. They will live within their beautiful garden forever and they will love me and that will be wonderful,” God told himself.

  But he knew it wasn’t true.

  Chapter Three

  What was it, God later wondered?

  Was it insecurity that made him test them, a fear that they wouldn’t obey him? Or was it something else, something even darker? He said he wanted these two to be perfectly happy in the garden he’d made for them, but when he really thought about it—it sounded boring. Perfect happiness forever? What’s interesting about that?

  Especially when there was another way of looking at things. “What if I test them—they will fail, I already know that, obviously—then punish them for that failure by sending them out into the world, which before long they will fill up with more humans, lots more? (These creatures will love sex, no matter how wicked I will tell them it is, and I will tell them that constantly, but it will not matter.) All of these new humans will then also do bad things that I can punish them for, then forgive them for, then punish them for again!” Just the thought of this future sounded very appealing to God. So much to do. God knew himself well enough already to understand that he loved drama. Animals were fine. But he found nothing exciting about bears or robins or spiders; they were mainly here to be eaten. God was so uninterested in animals, in fact, that he didn’t even name them: He allowed Adam to do it instead, to call them whatever he wanted to. (Gen. 2:19) “I’m surprised there weren’t more creatures called ‘blaaahhs’ and ‘urrgghhs,’” God chuckled to himself and—wait—did Adam name himself? (Gen. 2:20)

  For the first time, God called on Satan, whom he had apparently created at the same time he created reptiles. From the first, God didn’t like the way Satan looked at him. There was something knowing in his eyes. He acted as if he was God’s equal, which was ludicrous. “He knows nothing, he is my employee, I created him to work for me and that is all,” God thought.

  “I want you to enter into my Garden of Eden and trick the woman,” he announced to Satan.

  Satan studied God silently for a moment, then asked, “Why?”

  “It’s a test obviously, Satan. I want to see if my humans will obey me.”

  “You don’t know if they will?”

  “Of course I know if they will. They won’t. Which is exactly my plan.”

  “Your plan is for them not to obey you?”

  Satan’s “innocent” questions irritated God. “Exactly!” he snapped.

  “But if you already know they won’t obey you, then what’s the point of testing them?”

  God stared at Satan for a second, then shook his head briskly. “Leave the big thinking to me, alright, Satan?” That blank look again. “He’s mocking me,” God thought. “I should kill him right now. Why do I need this guy? I don’t. Creating him, which I obviously did, was a mistake and I’m going to rectify that mistake right now.” God glowered at Satan and prepared to kill him—then hesitated, reconsidered. “No. I am God. I do not make mistakes. I am, by my own definition, perfect, not even capable of a ‘mistake.’ Therefore, I must have created Satan for a perfect reason. I will ignore his ridiculous questions and make him do my bidding.”

  “Here’s the point, Satan: I have commanded them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen 2:17)

  “The what?”

  “The tree of knowledge of good and evil,” God repeated, puffing up a bit, quite proud of the name he’d given the tree. “Not pretentious in the least,” he’d congratulated himself.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a tree that contains knowledge of good and evil, obviously.”

  “And you don’t want them to know the difference between them?”

  God tightened. He’d had enough of this asinine line of questioning; this wasn’t about the damned tree, this was about obedience! “Just listen to what I am telling you to do, alright, Satan?”

  Satan crossed his arms and looked at God silently.

  “As I said, I want you to test the humans, especially the woman. There is something about her that I don’t trust.”

  “That’s because you like men.”

  God glared at Satan, knowing very well what he meant. “Rise above it, Lord,” he told himself. “You are better than this, do not get pulled down to his demonic level.”

  “As I was saying, Satan, I want you to take the form of a talking creature of some sort.”

  “How about a reptile?”

  “A reptile, hmmm—yes, that could work. You will be a talking reptile and you will trick the woman into eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”

  “How should I trick her?”

  “Tell her … tell her that she will not die if she eats the fruit, ha!” (Gen. 3:4)

  “Which is true.”

  “Which is true, exactly, yes!”

  “Even though you already told the man that if they ate the fruit they would die?”

  “I was setting up the trick, Satan,” God explained, as if speaking to a young child, even rolling his eyes a little to imply “how dim you are.” Satan just looked back at him.

  “You are telling her the truth as part of the trick, do you not understand me, Satan?”

  “I do understand you.”

  That remark hung in the air for a moment. “Oh no you do not,” God thought to himself. Satan left soon after that and God breathed a sigh of relief. What a bad person he was, so nasty and insinuating and always with that vaguely bemused tone to his voice, as if he knew something, which he did not. “Why did I create him?” God asked himself. “To work against me? Why would I want that? Why would I want someone to undermine and subvert me at every turn? It makes no sense. Only someone who hated themselves would want that. And I don’t, obviously. I love myself!” Wait … Was it even possible? And this was a hard question to ask, but was it possible that he didn’t actually create Satan? That Satan just existed, like God? No, that could not be, because if it was, “then I would be a great fraud, falsely claiming to be the creator of everything! But I AM the creator of everything, not just some vain, fatuous, self-obsessed fool who thinks he runs the world when he doesn’t!”

  Chapter Four

  Things worked out precisely as God wanted them to. (They always did, it was a given, but still …) Satan tricked the woman into eating the fruit. She then persuaded the man to eat it too. God knew the woman was bad news, but the man’s spinelessness surprised him a little. Adam, dear Adam—what a weakling he turned out to be. He didn’t even fight it, he just ate the fruit! (Gen. 3:17) “I made him in my likeness and he has bad character. It makes no sense.” God muttered to himself.

  For a moment, God thought about starting over completely, going back to square one. But could he go back to the start, wipe all this out and begin again? The universe was massive, could he just erase it? He wasn’t sure. He decided it wasn’t a good idea anyway. “No,” he said to himself. “I will not wipe the whole thing out. I will, instead, work with what is here. I will punish the humans, I will kick them out of the garden, make the man work (wait, hasn’t he already been working?) (Gen. 2:15) and make the woman suffer when she gives birth (that’ll show her!). “I will also,” he thought, “punish reptiles by making women hate them.” (Gen. 3:15) (“It wasn’t reptiles, per se, it was Satan, possessing a reptile; why should reptiles be punished?” that critical voice asked. But God was getting better and better at ignoring it. Still—the way Satan looked at him from inside that reptile really did bother God. As if he had somehow gotten the better of things
; as if God was angry because Satan had snuck in and subverted things, rather than having been—as he had been!—instructed to subvert God’s plan.)

  God walked around the garden, looking for Adam and the woman. (Gen. 3:8) He knew where they were, obviously, but he pretended not to because he wanted to scare them a little. Which he did. (Gen. 3:10) God kicked Adam and Eve (he finally, reluctantly, had allowed Adam to name her) out of the garden, and as they trudged away, looking guilty and ashamed of themselves, God briefly felt sorry for them. He quickly killed some cows, rabbits, and goats, skinned them, and made clothes for his humans. (Gen. 3:21) They were bad, but he couldn’t help but feel a certain affection for them. “Maybe their children will do better,” he thought, then instantly knew: No, they won’t, they’ll never do any better, they are bad and wicked and evil. This plan would never work. “Is my plan for my plan not to work?” he whispered to himself. Did that make sense? Why would he want his own plan to fail? “Because you hate yourself and want to punish yourself,” came a voice from somewhere deep inside him.

  God forced himself to think of other things. He watched Adam and Eve exit the garden and enter the “real world” (which was, in fact, not a lot different from the garden. They acted like it was—but it really wasn’t.) As Adam and Eve departed, God spoke aloud. “Now that man has become like one of us,” he said, “knowing good and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever?” (Gen. 3:22) God stopped. Wait, what had he just said? “Become like one of us?” There was no us, there was only him, God. Why did he keep making slips of the tongue like this? It was strange and troubling; it touched on that dark feeling he’d had from the start that there were others around. No. Ridiculous. He was God, the sole creator of the universe and there was no one else around!

  But what about that last question he’d asked: “What if he tries to steal from the tree of life and live forever?” There was a tree of life? God didn’t remember planting it. Why would he have planted it? Weren’t Adam and Eve going to live forever anyway? Why would they need this “tree of life?” Was it really a tree of life, or was it like the so-called tree of knowledge of good and evil, which, in truth, contained exactly one piece of knowledge: Nudity is shameful. (Gen. 3:11)

  The thought of Adam sneaking back into the garden to eat of the tree of life bothered God enough that he decided to station guards around the garden to protect it. These were God’s first “angels.” They were muscular men with wings, dressed in short white robes, all of them quite handsome and fit. He gave them swords and also placed a fiery sword in the air, hovering over the garden, which looked quite frightening. (Gen. 3:24) If Adam tried to steal from that tree of life, God told the angels, cut his head off.

  Adam and Eve quickly had two sons, Cain and Abel. “With MY help!” God noted—not 100% sure how he had helped. (Gen. 4:1) Cain grew up to be a farmer, Abel a sheepherder. The first time they brought God gifts was a day he would never ever forget. For the first time, God smelled grilled meat. It was the most incredible thing he’d ever experienced—that rich, smoky, mouth-watering aroma. God felt gratitude to Abel for introducing him to something so wonderful.

  Cain brought him some fruit and vegetables, but God was so captivated by the barbecue smell of Abel’s grilled meat that he didn’t thank Cain, or even acknowledge his gift. (Gen. 4:5) This was, in hindsight, a bit rude, God supposed. It wouldn’t have been all that difficult to say, “Oh, and this fruit is delicious too, thank you, Cain.” But then again, he was God so it was not rude, it was perfect!

  Cain got upset, so God spoke to him. “Why are you upset?” he asked. (Gen. 4:6) He knew the answer, obviously—he always knew the answer; every question he asked was rhetorical in that sense—but he was certainly not going to apologize for liking barbecue so much. Cain didn’t respond, he just looked mad. “Sin crouches at the door, waiting for you,” God said to him, then nodded to himself, pleased. (Gen 4:7) Sometimes he said things that surprised him in bad ways (the “us/our/we” misstatements), but sometimes in good ways. “‘Sin crouches at the door, waiting for you?’ Nice imagery, Lord,” he thought to himself.

  Cain murdered Abel, exactly as God knew he would. But then—an unforeseen problem arose. There needed to be more children. Cain needed a wife, and there weren’t any women on earth except for his mother, Eve, and God thought that was a bad idea. (“His uncle would be his grandson,” he murmured disapprovingly to himself.) Could God magically create a new woman to be Cain’s companion? Of course he could do that, obviously—but he decided not to. What he decided to do instead was to magically create an entire tribe of people on the other side of the river, one of whom would become Cain’s wife. (Briefly, God regretted having killed his proto-man and woman. “I could have used her here,” he noted wryly.)

  God started to make the new tribe of people on the other side of the river, then hesitated. They seemed to already be there. That was peculiar. Had he created them at the start without realizing it? Did he not create them at all? Absurd. Of course he’d made them, he’d made everything. He’d simply forgotten when he made them, that was all. Would he create the entire universe and not one group of people? No, obviously not.

  Still, this was strange. And when Cain quickly went on to form a city—a city!—the strangeness deepened. (Gen. 4:17) Again, the thought “Am I a fraud?” flickered across God’s mind for an instant before he dismissed it out of hand. “Of course I am not a fraud, I am GOD.”

  Chapter Five

  Several thousand years passed and they weren’t pretty. First, angels started sneaking down to earth and having sex with human women, creating half-human, half-angel babies, which God did not approve of. Some of them grew to be absolutely gigantic. (Gen. 6:1–4) Thankfully, most of them had heart problems and quickly died off. But that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was this: Humans were bad. They were wicked and evil and did awful, nasty, lawless things. (Gen. 6:11) (“Wait. Can they be doing ‘lawless’ things when I haven’t given them any ‘laws’ yet?” crossed God’s mind, but he ignored the question.) Also, they lived close to a thousand years, far too long. “Eighty years is plenty,” God muttered to himself.

  God decided he’d had enough; he’d given the humans a chance and they had failed (as he knew they would, obviously), and now it was time to wipe them all out. He probably should have killed Adam and Eve and started over back then, he now realized. He’d been a patient, tolerant father for a few thousand years, but that was over. “I’ll kill everything,” God thought to himself.

  But how to do it? He could burn them all up, that would be quick and easy—but it was a little too quick, he felt. He wanted the humans to suffer a little for their wickedness. Suddenly, he had an idea. “I will drown them all!” he cried out, a broad smile crossing his face for the first time in a long time. “I will make it rain for forty straight days and nights and they will all slowly drown.” (Gen. 6:17) It was a simple, elegant plan and God loved it.

  But a problem came to mind: How do you drown fish? Not to mention aquatic birds, reptiles, and mammals? Could he drown everything and then, later on, “electrify” the water and fry all those annoying seals and penguins and octopi? In a way, God realized, he would be giving aquatic creatures a huge amount of free food by killing everything else. Why should dolphins be rewarded for the wickedness of mankind? He didn’t like the idea one bit, especially when he reflected on the fact that water had been there from the start. What, was he scared of water, intimidated by it, offering up a massive sacrifice of sorts to the giant sea monsters that he knew lurked in the deep?

  Nonsense. That was not it, not at all. He simply liked the idea of drowning everything in the world, watching their panicked faces as the water covered their noses and eyes for the last time. And if sea creatures had to benefit in order for that to happen? Well then, so be it. He didn’t like it, but he could live with it.

  But what about after? God thought to himself. “After I’ve drowned e
verything, then what? Should I create two more humans and start over again? Or am I content with a world where sea otters are the most interesting things?” Definitely not. Otters had no ability to love and obey him; they literally didn’t even know he existed. Also, he found them aggravating. “Too saucy and full of themselves!” he growled.

  God realized he had to leave a few people alive to restart human life. He had to find one good man, that was all. A man he could trust to carry out this most important mission. A man of great strength and character—a truly good man.

  After a bit of a search, God found a man named Noah who fit the bill perfectly. Noah’s father, Lamesh, had killed a child for bruising him, which God heartily approved of. (Gen. 4:23) Noah and his sons Ham, Shem, and Japheth, along with all their wives—God had no idea what any of the women’s names were, nor did he really care (Gen. 7:1); he still didn’t much trust or like women—would be the survivors of the flood and relaunch life on earth.

  God’s plan had gotten off to a rocky start perhaps, but now things were about to get a whole lot better. Yet another benefit of this plan: It would put that annoying meddler Satan to work by giving him lots of souls to punish in hell. Or—well, actually, it was called “sheol” at this time, and it wasn’t much to talk about, just kind of a grey nothingness—but Satan had recently presented a gorgeous plan, a magnificent place of endless punishment for those who did not love God. For now, sheol would have to do, but before long Satan would get a huge influx of souls that he would have to attend to and maybe for once, God thought, “he’ll be busy enough to stop irritating me.” (A question crossed God’s mind: What would happen to the souls of all the animals who died in the flood? Wait—did they even have souls? How could he not know that? “Because I don’t care, that’s how! Animals don’t care about me?—well, guess what? I don’t care about them either.”)

  God began to flood the world, dumping huge amounts of rain as well as unleashing giant underground fountains that he had conveniently set up at the start, apparently for this very moment. (Gen. 7:11) It was a glorious forty days: Watching things drown was wonderfully satisfying and, by the time it was over, God had the clean slate he wanted. (Gen. 7:21–23) All the evil and wickedness of mankind had been wiped out. With Noah, his one good man, he could start over, set things straight.