The Story of God Read online

  God didn’t like Ezekiel, who he felt was making him look bad. He wasn’t sure what to do—so he decided to bring some skeletons to life. (Ezek. 37:5) That helped for a moment, but not for long. Finally, Ezekiel died and a bunch of minor prophets came along. None of them was very interesting to God; he didn’t talk to them much and when he did, he didn’t say much of interest: “You’re whores—ruled by your dicks—drunks—lechers—I’m done with you and this time I mean it blah blah blah!” God was depressed during this time. He drank a lot of wine, ate a lot of veal, gained weight. He continued to think about wiping everything out and starting over, but by this time he had serious doubts as to whether he would actually do it.

  At certain moments, the answer to God’s problem seemed obvious to him: Why not make his people love and obey him? Why not make everyone love and obey him? He could do that, obviously. Why didn’t he? Everyone would be happier. Maybe he’d had some limited hope that people would choose to love and obey him, but that was quite obviously not going to happen. He should just fix things, that’s what he should do. Fine, God concluded. I will accept that my creation was flawed and I will fix it. I will do it … right … now!

  But once again, he just sat there.

  Time passed. God considered bringing more skeletons to life, then decided that was pointless. He felt angry again. He was God. He didn’t have to explain or justify himself to anyone. He’d made the Sun, dammit! The idea that humans, lowly worms that they were, would question or doubt him was enraging. He decided, instead of fixing things, to throw shit in their faces. (Mal. 2:3) That’s what they deserved. He didn’t actually go through with it, mainly because he disliked shit so much that he didn’t want to handle it—but he wanted to do it, he really did.

  There was one moment—looking back, God didn’t really understand it—when he felt and behaved quite differently. “Jonah seemed to bring out the best in me for some reason,” God noted. “To start with, I wanted him to convert people, which I don’t remember wanting at any other time back then. For another, when Jonah didn’t want to do it, rather than punishing him, which I ordinarily would have done, I taught him a lesson in a, let’s say, whimsical way. Finally, when he wanted his converts, the Ninevans (who I normally detested) to be punished, I said no. I told him I wanted to reach people, not hurt them, I didn’t even want to hurt their animals.” (Jon. 2:1, 4:11) Honestly, God had no idea what had come over him at this time. Maybe it had something to do with those odd mushrooms one of his angels had gathered on earth and given to him? “After I ate them, I have to admit that I felt calmer, less angry—like somehow I was part of something bigger than myself. It was beautiful.” That feeling passed, of course, and when it did, God found himself even angrier than he’d been before.

  When God looked back at this overall period, much later, he felt that it was the lowpoint of his career. “I wanted to throw poo in my own people’s faces, you know?” he said to that stallion-hung angel. “How much worse can it get than that? You know?”

  Slowly, inexorably, something was building inside God—something dark and troubling. He fought it with everything he could, tried to hold it in, but he simply couldn’t do it.

  One day, talking to—or technically, shrieking at—Hosea, he heard his voice catch. “I loved you and you forgot me,” he wailed. (Hos. 11:1–7) Another time, talking to Micah, he heard his shuddering voice cry out, “What wrong have I done you?” (Micah 6:3) He felt wetness on his cheeks—something salty—what was happening to him?

  Suddenly, it was clear. All God had ever wanted was love. Why didn’t people love him? Why did they love others instead? No one loved him, no one ever had. He had never been touched, God suddenly realized; never been held or comforted in any way—and the knowledge of that was suffocating and heavy and almost unbearably sad.

  God found himself sobbing, his body shaking with rage and pain, anguished at the (literal) infinity of loneliness he had known. No mother, no father, no siblings, no friends. Nothing. He was alone. He had always been alone.

  It was time, he knew, to look at that unfortunate series of events that had happened so long before, the ones that he had blocked out, that he had told himself a hundred, no a thousand times, were meaningless—but which he now understood to have been extremely important.

  It was time, he knew, to look back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sometime long before, after the Tower of Babel but before Sodom and Gomorrah, there had been a man named Job who loved God very much. God liked that about him. It made God feel wonderful that this good man—for Job was a good man, a blameless man, really (Job 1:1)—loved him so faithfully.

  God was throwing a lot of parties at this time; he’d just started working on heaven and he liked to walk angels around and show them how amazing it was going to be. Sometimes he would invite 10–15 angels and they would all listen, rapt, as God discussed his stunning achievements, how he had literally created everything in the universe in a single week. Sometimes the angels would spontaneously applaud God, and while he didn’t expect or demand it, he did enjoy it. But the main thing God liked to talk about at this time was Job. God never got tired of telling everyone how much this flawless man loved him.

  And then, at a certain party, Satan showed up. (Job 1:6) He was not invited, obviously. He was not supposed to be in heaven at all, except for occasional and brief meetings about hell. But there he was. God and Satan had had limited interactions since the whole tree of knowledge thing. God didn’t like the way Satan had handled it and he strongly disliked how insinuating and, at times, frankly, disrespectful Satan had been toward him. So what was he doing here at God’s garden party? Did he show up just to ruin it, because he hated, resented, and was jealous of God (which he obviously was)? God didn’t want to get upset in front of his angels, so he didn’t do what in hindsight he obviously should have done, which was to kick Satan out. Instead, he tried to stay calm as if, yes, of course he’d invited Satan to his party. It’s not like he snuck into heaven.

  There was a strained pause. The angels looked at Satan, then back at God. Everyone knew these two didn’t like each other. Satan stood there, not saying anything, an annoyingly blank look on his face. God was going to stare right back at him, stare him down, he had no problem with that—but then he decided to take the high road, be a good host, actually engage Satan in a friendly conversation. “Where have you been?” he asked. (Job 1:7) Not that he didn’t know the answer to this, obviously. He always knew the answer, every single time he asked a question. He was just being polite.

  “I have been roaming the earth,” Satan answered, and for a moment God thought about saying, “Why weren’t you working on hell, that’s your job?” But he decided not to. Glancing over at his angels, God nodded grandly and said, “Did you see Job? He’s a very good man who loves me and hates evil” (Job 1:8) (Meaning: “He loves me and hates you, Satan. Suck on that.”)

  Satan’s response was quick: “Why wouldn’t he love you? He has a nice life. Take that life away from him and see if he still loves you then.” (Job 1:9–11) God felt his entire body tense up. Satan was publicly challenging him. “He snuck into my party and then, when I tried to make polite small talk with him, he attacked me. I should kill him right now.”

  But God decided that it would look weak if he reacted violently against Satan. “No, I will act as if I am amused by what he is saying,” he told himself. He smiled broadly, shrugged, and in the most supremely confident voice he could affect (which was very supremely confident, he felt), he said: “Go ahead then, Satan, ruin his life, I don’t care, just don’t physically hurt him.” (Job 1:12)

  Satan looked at God for a moment, then nodded and walked away without saying another word. Instantly, God regretted what he’d said. He liked Job very much and now he’d given Satan—Satan—permission to destroy the man’s life. “Why didn’t I say something like ‘Think whatever you like, Satan, you obviously are trying to goad me into giving you permission to torture Job, but gues
s what, I’m not going to give it to you. By the way, you weren’t invited to this party and I’d like you to leave!’”

  God watched in disbelief as, in a matter of hours, Satan dismantled his faithful servant’s life: Job’s cows and camels were stolen, his sheep were burned up by holy fire (“unnecessarily harsh,” God muttered to himself), his servants were killed, and then, in one fell swoop, all of his children were crushed in a freak windstorm. (Job 1:13–19) God did have to admire Satan’s skill, much as he disliked what was happening. “Killing ten people in one house in a windstorm is not easy,” he noted to himself. (It took him fourteen tries to do it to some Amalekites a bit later.)

  Still, guess what? Good news. The point that God had wanted to make? Well, it was made. Job was still faithful. (Job 1:22) God knew he would be, of course, but it felt good to be so publicly vindicated. “It will be interesting to hear what Satan has to say now,” God chortled. “I imagine he will be singing a slightly different tune the next time I see him.” God felt so good that he decided to throw another party. (“Given all of my responsibilities, do I throw too many parties?” he’d asked himself, then quickly answered: “No, I enjoy throwing parties and that is that.”)

  Satan showed up again. God smiled as he saw him approach, looking forward to hearing his nemesis eat his words. “Oh Satan—where have you been?” God asked, goading him. (Job 2:2) When Satan didn’t even respond, God decided to let him have it: “You see, Satan, you were wrong. Job still loves me, even though you incited me to destroy him for no good reason.” (Job 2:3) God quickly stopped, thinking about what he’d just said. Had he just admitted that there was no good reason for Job’s life to be ruined? He had, yes. That wasn’t a smart thing to say, he felt. He was God; God was supposed to have good reasons—perfect reasons—for everything he did. He thought about correcting himself: “What I meant to say, of course, was that you incited me against Job exactly as I wished you to, in order to prove my point, Satan.” But he decided not to, thinking that it sounded somewhat convoluted.

  Satan, that bastard, retorted with, “He still loves you, God, only because he’s not in physical pain. Let me cause him bodily pain and then see what happens.” (Job 2:5) God was incensed by this. He’d won the wager, but rather than acknowledging it, Satan was challenging him again. He was not going to let Satan know he was annoyed, however. God feigned his most superior smile and shrugged: “Go ahead then, do whatever you want, just don’t kill him.” (Job 2:6) As Satan nodded and walked away, God rolled his eyes at his angel party-guests, as if to say, can you believe this guy? But on the inside, God didn’t feel great about what was happening.

  Satan covered Job from head to toe with boils. It looked incredibly painful. Job’s wife (what was her name? … oh, who cares?) was still alive. God couldn’t help but chuckle at Satan’s nasty joke: Job was worse off with his wife alive than dead, ha, exactly right! She told him that he should curse God. (Job 2:9) (“I’m going to get her for that,” God muttered to himself. “She did just lose ten children,” flickered across his mind but he dismissed it, mumbling “whore” to himself as he did.) Job, though, bless his soul, stayed strong and loyal to God. “One must accept the evil as well as the good,” he responded. (Job 2:10)

  Even though God felt a little bit guilty about the way he’d let his favorite man’s life be ruined, he felt great about being vindicated for a second time. Satan had said that Job would not love him if he was in pain, and he had been proven completely wrong. God was right. Job still loved him. God realized later that he should have called the wager over at that very moment. “I won, Satan,” he should have said.

  Because the truth was, not long afterward, God’s glorious victory started to crumble.

  Job sat on the ground, mourning his existence, regretting that he’d ever been born. (Job 3:3) Hearing this, God seethed. Obedient, loving Job was suddenly and not-so-subtly criticizing him! When Job said that God had “hedged him around” (Job 3:23), God’s insides churned.

  “Hedged him around? What does that even mean?” he boomed. On some level, of course, he knew exactly what it meant, and it wasn’t good. The wager—“Job will be faithful to me no matter what”—that he had so clearly won? Well, it began to look as if … hard to even acknowledge this … Satan had perhaps been at least partially right.

  Satan didn’t show up to claim victory, which God was thankful for. God decided to wait and see what would happen next. (He knew what was going to happen, needless to say: He was going to lose the bet more and more embarrassingly until, in the end, he was going to make a colossal fool of himself in an event that would haunt him for thousands of years to come.)

  Chapter Nineteen

  Job’s friends showed up. God was hoping that they would argue on his behalf, but when they did, they were, to be blunt, such monumental dicks that he wished they hadn’t. Zophar, Bildud, and Eliphaz traveled a distance to see their friend Job and, at first, they wept. (Job 2:12) “Fakes!” God practically yelled down at them. “It’s obvious you’re happy about what’s happened to Job!”

  These three guys spent the next several days hectoring Job: “You must have done something wrong; Your children must have deserved it; You deserved worse than this,” things like that. God almost couldn’t believe what shitheads these three friends were. So much so that when they kept pointing out how great and wondrous and just God was (Job 5:9, 8:3), he shook his head and muttered, “I wish they’d shut up.”

  But they didn’t shut up, they kept yammering on and on. And the more they talked, the worse God felt. Because the more Job responded to them, the worse things he said: “God is terrorizing me.” (Job 6:4) “I wish he’d just kill me.” (Job 6:9) God bristled. Maybe Job did have this coming. And it got even worse. Before long, Job was talking about suing God! (Job 9:2–4) “Even though I’m good,” Job said, “God would prove me bad. God mocks the innocent as they suffer.” (Job 9:23) (“The mocking part was untrue,” Satan would later say. “You don’t mock, God, because you have absolutely no sense of humor.”)

  As to the wager, why was it continuing? “I suppose I could end it now,” God thought—“but then I’d have to admit I lost.” An eternity of Satan gloating about his win? That was not going to happen. Satan was going to pay for letting the bet continue. At some point, Job was going to come back around and when he did, at that moment, God would end the bet, thus outsmarting Satan!

  The one thing that God could cling onto was that Job had not, technically speaking, “blasphemed” him, so in that sense, he had not yet lost the wager. “But the only reason he’s not blaspheming me to my face is that I’m not there!” God’s nostrils flared as Job kept trashing him. “God is defrauding me” (Job 10:3); “God is a liar” (Job 10:7); “God is a bully” (Job 10:16); “I wish God would leave me alone.” (Job 10:20) God wanted to attack Job at that moment, kill him and send him to proto-hell. But he continued to restrain himself: How would it look to kill his favorite human, whose very faithfulness he had wagered on, in front of his angels?

  God looked around, suddenly nervous. Where was Satan? Why wasn’t he claiming his victory? Job was attacking him. Satan had won. It would be hard to argue that he hadn’t, yet he was nowhere to be seen. Why would he be so foolish as to let the wager continue? Was he up to something? God suddenly felt very anxious.

  After all three friends had spoken, God relaxed ever so slightly for a moment, hoping that perhaps the hideous, humiliating back and forth between them and Job was over. “Maybe things’ll get a bit better,” God hoped to himself (knowing that they wouldn’t; knowing in his guts that he loathed himself and had created this entire machine to punish himself for his bottomless, eternal, infernal wickedness.)

  Job went after God yet again, demanding that he “take his hands off him,” as if he wanted to fight him. (Job 13:21) God trembled with rage. “Where are you, God, why don’t you show yourself?” Job demanded, essentially challenging God. (Job 13:24) “I’ll tear him apart, limb by limb!” God blurted—then lo
oked around to see if anyone had heard him. He saw some angels a ways off and … wait … was that Satan? Was he here to end the wager? God wanted it to end now; this situation was rapidly becoming a complete debacle.

  But it wasn’t Satan. The wager rolled on. God shook his head, no no no, as the three friends started to hold forth again, telling Job that he was sinful, loathsome, and foul. (Job 15:5, 18:5) God, furious as he was, couldn’t help but snicker. “With friends like those …” He was enraged at Job for his insolence, but these friends were just such monumental pricks! “You’re the evil ones,” Job retorted (Job 19:29), before he started weeping. Now it will end, God told himself.

  But of course it didn’t. The friends started saying things that were simply idiotic: “You will die like your shit” (Job 20:7); “Food will turn to snake venom in your belly” (Job 20:14); “Anything that doesn’t turn to venom, you will puke back up.” (Job 20:15) They were making things up! None of this was true! Job was being punished for “torturing the poor,” they said (Job 20:19), and God rolled his eyes. These guys were unbelievably horrible friends. They just kept topping themselves in the idiot department! “You’re like a worm,” they told Job, “you’re like a maggot.” (Job 25:6) (On some level, of course, this was basically true. Since God was pure good, all the evil in the world had to have come from mankind. The only thing that sometimes seemed odd: How had he created such vile worms in his own image?)

  Job was silent for a moment. Maybe it was over now? God prayed. Then Job spoke again: “God is cruel, our pain means nothing to him, less than nothing.” (Job 30:19–21) “Not true!” God thought. “I care deeply about my creations. Their pain affects me … you know … a lot …” He trailed off, knowing this wasn’t true. He didn’t care, it was obvious; he’d just allowed the destruction of his favorite man’s life on a party bet. How could he claim to care?