The Story of God Read online

  “Noooooooooooo!!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  God thought he’d straightened everything out with his “eat your own children” threat—but there seemed to be something almost beyond reach in many of his people. They were proud, stubborn, difficult. No matter what God said or did, they seemed … unconvinced. That made him seethe. “I chose one small group of people on the entire planet to be mine and even most of them doubt my words!”

  God felt especially bad for Moses. People had the temerity to question whether he was the only one who could talk to God! (Num. 12:2) “Anyone can claim to be talking to God,” they would say. “We can all talk to God, not just you, Moses.” Which was utterly absurd! God had chosen Moses to talk to; when other people talked to him, he ignored them. He had no interest in talking to anyone else! “I’m going to kill them all,” God decided.

  Once again, Moses talked him down: “What will people think of you? What will the Egyptians think of you?” he asked—which was, you know, always an effective question. (“Why do I care so damned much what Pharaoh thinks of me?” crossed God’s mind for a moment.) Fine, God wouldn’t kill everybody, but something had to be done. Rebellion against Moses simply could not be allowed! Even Moses was starting to feel the pressure. “Why have you laid all this on me?” he asked God (Num. 11:11), who briefly considered flying down and beating him to death for that. “I need to straighten things out,” God thought to himself, then nodded decisively. “I will appear before all the tribal elders and speak to them.”

  “How should I appear before them?” God asked himself. “Given that some are doubting me, shouldn’t I show up as a man, as I have several times before (Ex. 33:11), and prove myself to them?” He stroked his chin, then shook his head firmly. Too obvious. He would appear to the elders as a cloud. That was better, much more convincing. Should he then talk to the elders as the cloud? No, he had a far better idea than that. He would, as the cloud, excite the elders so much that they would speak in a kind of excited gibberish! (Num. 11:25)

  If God’s people were reasonable at all (which they were not, needless to say) this would have convinced them of the truth of what Moses was saying. But of course, as God knew beforehand, it would not convince them. Before long, they would be complaining again: “We want to go back to Egypt, we don’t like it here, waaaah.” (Num. 14:2–4) God decided to punish them preemptively for this whining. “I will give them a huge windfall of meat,” he thought. “But guess what? The meat will be poisoned, haha!” So God blew a bunch of quail into camp. His people feasted on them and a lot of them died. (Num. 11:31–33)

  “I cloud-inspired old men to speak gibberish and still they doubted me, so I had no choice but to kill a bunch of them, including some who were not even opposed to Moses and so what?” God told his angels, feeling completely justified in his behavior. The angels agreed with him absolutely.

  God decided to punish his people further by sending them into battle against the Amalekites. Now make no mistake: God hated the Amalekites, despised them really. (Ex. 17:14–16) He wanted them wiped out; even the memory of them he wanted wiped out, and he had vowed to do it too! But before he did that, he would use them to punish his own people. (Num. 15:43–45) “My subtlety sometimes amazes even me,” God thought to himself.

  But that didn’t work either. The discontent about Moses’ authority continued, even increased. There were four ringleaders now—Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and Om—spearheading a group of several hundred people. God was furious. He really was going to kill all of them. And this time, there was nothing that Moses could say to stop him. The only question was how to kill them. Should he burn them up? Drown them? Have them eaten by wild animals? Force them to eat each other?

  No. God had a better idea, a spectacular idea, a “home run,” he would later call it. “I will cause the earth to open up beneath their feet and swallow them,” he cried happily. And not just the four ringleaders either—God was going to kill their entire families too, little children and all. (Num. 16:30–33) “I am sick and tired of this endless carping, I intend to put an end to it, once and for all,” he told his angels, who agreed that this was exactly the right thing to do. “After the earth swallows up those opposed to my boy Moses and deposits them in sheol—well, that should do it!” he announced. God wished that “hell” was ready for these troublemakers; eternal fire was what they deserved, and it was slightly frustrating that all they’d get was sort of grey endless nothingness. But no matter. The looks on their faces as they felt the ground beneath them open up would be priceless.

  Needless to say, this plan would not “work” either, God knew that—but that was fine. As for the rest of the rebels, God shot fire down from the sky and finished them off. (Num. 16:35) The rebellion was squashed. Things were back on track.

  Except that they weren’t.

  Even after God’s astonishing “Five point plan” to quell the rebellion: (1) Appear as a cloud and cause old men to speak gibberish; (2) Blow bad birdmeat into camp to poison people; (3) Use the Amalekites to kick his people’s asses; (4) Open the earth to swallow rebel leaders and their families; (5) Fireblast two hundred others—the griping continued. The people still complained about Moses’ leadership, still doubted him, still wanted to return to Egypt. (Num. 17:6) God was stunned. “What is it going to take to get their attention?” he marveled. He decided to send another plague, which killed 15,000 more people. (Num. 17:14)

  There were moments when God almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Even after the plague, after 15,000 deaths, people still—STILL—complained. (Num. 21:5) What was wrong with them? There were moments when the old dark questions crossed his mind again: “Did I really create all this? If so, why do I seem to have so little power to influence things? What’s wrong with me? Am I inept? Am I a fraud? Am I crazy?”

  God took a deep breath, calmed himself. None of those things were true. He was all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. The problem, as he had already noted on several occasions, was with humans. They were bad, disobedient, and proud. They deserved more punishment, and he would give it to them. (Fuck it, he loved giving it to them.) “If the plague that killed 15,000 of them didn’t stop the complaining, then I will send poisonous snakes—possibly fire snakes—to bite them!” he thundered. (Num. 21:8)

  This time, however, as God watched his people moaning in agony about their snake bites, he took pity on them. “I have punished them enough for a while,” he told his angels. “I will be merciful now.” He instructed Moses to build a big copper snake which would cure the bites. (Num. 21:9) Was he being inconsistent, God wondered. After all, he had condemned “false idols” over and over again, it was basically his second commandment (Ex. 20:4), and now he was having his people more or less worship a big copper serpent. Was that odd at all? “I work in mysterious ways,” God told himself, enjoying, as usual, the way that sounded.

  God’s people did behave better for a while. They took the town of Bashan, ruled by King Og (the name made God laugh every time he heard it. “I am King Og!” he would snort to himself), and per God’s instructions, killed everyone in it. God was amazed how little the deaths of nonbelievers mattered to him. Old women impaled? Babies dashed on rocks? Ho hum. (Num. 31:15–17; Isa. 9:17; Isa. 13:18) For a moment, God began to think that maybe—maybe—his people had finally learned their lesson.

  How wrong he was.

  Not long after taking Bashan, the men—his men—God’s men—started having sex with, to be blunt, whores. (Non-Israelite women, that is. God called any woman who wasn’t an Israelite a whore, which she was. Many Israelite women were whores too, to be honest. Most women were whores, when you got down to it.) And that wasn’t even the worst of it; the men also started flirting with the whore’s god, who happened to be … Baal! (Num. 25:1–3) “What is the point of all this?” God began to wonder. “Why do I waste my time with these people? They’re hopeless.” This was never going to work, ever. He should pull the plug on the whole thing and move on. Ma
ybe start over on another planet somewhere. There were plenty that would support life, God knew that. Why not do it? “I should, you know—I really should. I should just kill them all, send them to hell—which is nearing completion—and move on. That’s the sensible thing to do.”

  But he just couldn’t get himself to do it. As much as God hated humans—and he did, they were awful—he couldn’t help but feel … what was it? Not love exactly, he definitely didn’t love them … but attachment. He felt attached to them. He’d created this whole thing for them. They’d been through a lot together. He wasn’t ready to throw in the towel on the whole thing. “I can still make this work,” he told himself. “I have lots of ideas I haven’t even tried yet—big ideas, great ideas!”

  Also, he didn’t claim to have “perfect self-understanding”; he was God, he was complicated, multifaceted. If, for whatever reason, he needed his plan to fail utterly for a very long time—well, he must have good reason for wanting that! “The satisfaction will be all the greater once I decide I want things to go as I say I want them to!” he told himself.

  God had all the men who were involved in worshipping Baal impaled: Problem solved. (Num. 25:4) Things got back on track again for a while. His people attacked the Midianites and defeated them. At first, they wanted to spare the women and children, but God straightened them out. “Kill everyone except the girls, then divide the booty,” he told Moses. (Num. 31:27)

  “Was that a crude way of putting it?” he asked one of his angels. “Did I sound like a pirate or something when I said ‘booty’? Would it be like the Buddha (who was a fake, needless to say, but just as an example) saying, ‘Kick the shit out of that guy?’” The angel assured God that he’d expressed himself perfectly—as God already knew he had, in truth.

  Chapter Fourteen

  God’s people were on the verge of success now. He had led them to the River Jordan and they were poised to take the land that was rightfully theirs from the people that lived there. God thought it was funny that other people thought this land was “theirs.” That was ridiculous, of course; the land belonged to his people and they were just about to take it. The only problem was … his people didn’t seem to want to fight. (Deut. 1:26) God commanded them to go take their land, but they refused.

  God stood there with his hands on his hips for a moment, staring down, speechless. These people were unbelievable. God had intended to help them defeat their enemies, but now he changed his mind. By the time Moses finally shamed them into fighting, God had decided he didn’t want to help them anymore. Yes, he wanted them to take their land—he’d led them a long way to do so. But their laziness and cowardice infuriated him. He would let them lose. (Deut. 1:42–44) “Maybe that will teach them,” he told himself (knowing as he said it that it would not, that nothing would teach them; that they would never ever learn.)

  God’s people fought and, exactly as he wished, lost. Moses then spent a long time trying to inspire them to fight again. “Good luck,” God thought, annoyed. “My people drive me crazy,” he told some angels. “I brought them to the brink of success and they still don’t listen to me, it’s galling.” God wondered if he should take a look at other parts of the world to see if there were other people who might appeal to him. No, he decided—these few thousand men in this one small part of the world were the only ones that interested him. He decided to continue working with them. Also, he liked Moses very much. He truly wanted to see him take Canaan before he died. “In the end, I will not allow him that,” God declared. “But I do want to.” (Deut. 1:37)

  As long as he was sticking around, not going to visit another solar system or something, God decided to teach his people a few more important lessons: “Don’t eat rabbits,” he commanded Moses. (Deut. 14:7) “Vile little hopping abominations,” he muttered to himself. “Among birds, don’t eat bats,” God reiterated—then silently kicked himself. (Deut. 14:17) “Do not allow a woman to dress as a man, or vice versa,” he commanded. (Deut. 22:5) This was abhorrent to God because he found it vaguely homo-ish. “Don’t plant a field with an ox and an ass together; I’m not sure why, I just don’t like it!” (Deut. 22:10) “Bury your poo when you squat,” God finally got around to telling Moses. (Deut. 23:14) God thought his description of pooping, “squatting,” was excellent. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, if two men were fighting and one of their wives showed up and tried to help her husband by grabbing the other man’s penis? (This was apparently something that was happening a great deal; people couldn’t keep their hands off penises.) “Cut her hand off,” God told Moses. “Cut it clean off, show no pity.” (Deut. 25:11–13)

  God got very into causing hemorrhoids at this time. (Deut. 28:27) “I can make peoples’ anuses swell up and get itchy!” he crowed to some angels, clapping his hands together in delight. He’d tormented people in a wide variety of ways, but he’d never caused them anal discomfort before! See how they liked that!

  God gave the Ashdods hemorrhoids, then the Ehronites, then the Philistines. (1 Sam. 5:6–12) The Ehronites died from their hemorrhoids, which God was quite proud of. God loved making people’s anuses blow out; he thought it was funny every single time. God also very much enjoyed the fact that the Philistines made golden hemorrhoids to appease his people. (1 Sam. 6:5) “They are so traumatized by the hemorrhoids I gave them that they are making icons of them! They could have just paid my people in gold nuggets, but they decided to make golden buttholes! That is hilarious.” God didn’t laugh much—being the author of all reality was serious work after all—but this made him cry with laughter.

  Almost there, God thought. Almost to the end of the story. Or to this part of it anyway. Not to the whole story, obviously; that was going to roll on and on (mostly in ways that God would not like, he knew) for thousands of years more, before he finally ended it. But it was nearly the end of this very important part of the story: God’s people were just about to take their rightful place in the world. (“Why didn’t I just put them there at the start?” popped into his head, but by now he was quite comfortable with retorting, “I had my reasons, whether I understood them or not.”)

  After Moses was gone, God did miss him. He’d been a great friend and ally. God had opened up to him in ways that he never had before. And the guy who replaced him, Joshua? Well, he was a good general, but honestly, he was boring. Moses had been a big personality, fun and exciting. Joshua was the sort of guy that neither God nor his angels had much interest in talking to. The one angel God sent down to visit him couldn’t get out of there soon enough. “What do you wish of me?” Joshua had asked in that flat, dull voice of his, and the angel was so eager to leave that all he told Joshua to do was to take his sandals off. Which Joshua did, allowing the angel to depart. (Josh. 5:13) Everybody laughed about that for a long time.

  Still, Joshua was a strong leader—“very strong on impaling,” God had to admit (Josh. 8:29, 10:26)—and he led his people toward Canaan. At one point, to help him out a little bit, God stopped the sun. (Josh 10:13–14) Needless to say, this was something he could have done anytime he wanted to. He’d just never wanted to before. “And I never will again,” he whispered to himself, out of breath. Although God acted like it was easy, stopping the sun was actually fairly difficult. It worked, though. Not long after he did it, victory was achieved. “Everything is fulfilled,” God told his angels triumphantly. (Josh. 21:43)

  It felt true at that moment, it really did. But oh, those impossible humans. Even in the midst of success, they still doubted, they still drifted toward Baal. Outraged, God hammered them again and again until, before long, they were living in caves again. (Jud. 6:2) God felt disconcerted by this sudden fall—and even more so after the “Jephthah debacle,” as he called it.

  Here’s what happened: A man named Jephthah was leading God’s people and, at a key moment, he made the following deal with God: “If you help me defeat the Ammonites, I will kill whoever walks out of my front door.” (Jud. 11:30) God agreed to the deal, then winced when Jephthah’s
teenage daughter emerged through the door. It was something like the Abraham and Isaac situation, except that in this case, God did not send down an angel to stop Jephthah, who actually did kill his daughter. “Who did he think would walk out of his own house?” God asked, feeling slightly queasy as he watched Jephthah strangle the crying, terrified girl.

  “I’m glad I don’t know her name,” God muttered, watching the poor girl die. “What kind of God am I ?” he briefly wondered. “That I allow this man to slaughter his daughter for me when I can stop the sun without asking for any sacrifice at all?” God silently stared down at Jephthah’s daughter’s lifeless body for a long moment, then turned away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  And then, somewhat amazingly, things suddenly got dramatically better. (Maybe the sacrifice of that girl did work?) A series of men came along who God liked very much indeed. First came Samson. “He ate honey out of a lion’s skeleton!” God cried happily, not exactly sure why he liked this so much. (Jud. 14:9) “He killed a thousand people with a donkey’s jawbone!” (Jud. 15:15) “He had super-powered hair! He was a good dancer!” In time, Samson fell in love with a conniving little bitch named Delilah and had his eyes gouged out. But damn, he was fun to watch!

  After Samson, God fell for an extremely handsome young man named Saul. Saul became king and God had very positive feelings about him—for awhile. Then, and he wasn’t quite sure why, God started to feel rather differently about Saul. There was something indecisive about Saul, maybe that was it. He was the sort of man who would say he was going to kill his son, for instance, and then not do it! (1 Sam 14:44–45) God didn’t much like that. He started ignoring Saul at times; he began to regret that he’d made him king. “I will send an evil spirit to scare him!” God decided. (1 Sam. 16:14) (“Does this mean that ‘evil’ can come directly from me?” God wondered, stroking his chin. “Not at all, I am pure good.”)