God Is Disappointed In You (13 page)

The king is so hot. I love it when he gives me one of his “palace tours” that ends in the bedroom. Although, it’s a little embarrassing, walking around the palace. Everyone stares at me because I’m so tanned and poor and it’s obvious to all of them I’m just some chick who works in the fields. But I don’t care. Let them stare. Maybe they need to see what a happy woman looks like.
 

The king is so sweet. And did I mention that he’s hot? He lets me eat in the banquet hall and he feeds me raisins and apples. And on top of it all, he’s an amazing kisser. I’m going to faint just thinking about him! Last night, I kept waking up, wishing he were in my bed. When morning came, I went into town, just so I could catch a glimpse of him. He was riding around in his golden carriage with like sixty bodyguards.
He’s such a showoff! 

Did I tell you what he said to me the other night? He said my eyes were like doves and my hair was like a flock of goats. Oh. My. God. I thought I was going to melt! He said my teeth were like sheep (don’t ask, he has a thing about animal metaphors) and that my boobs were like a pair of gazelles. I’m pretty sure that was meant as a compliment. And then (I think I’m going to explode!), he asked me to go away with him! He said my love was his wine and my body was his fruit.
Let’s just say there was a lot of wine and fruit tasting going on that night.

When the morning came, I felt like I never wanted to leave or get dressed. I just wanted to stay in bed with him forever. But when I rolled over to say good morning, he was already gone. The palace staff totally turned on me once the king had left. They beat me, tore my clothes and gave me the bum’s rush out of the palace. I don’t care, though, that ivory body and those sweet lips have me wanting more. 

I ran into him later, and again he went on about how my love was wine, my hair was goats and my body was fruit (in fact, he went straight for my clusters of grapes, if you know what I mean). Again, he asked me to leave town with him. He said that he wished he could be more in the open about our relationship, that he could introduce me to his mother. I don’t know if he’s serious or if he’s just feeding me a line, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m in love and not even a river can wash that feeling away. Oh, I know this has almost no chance of ending well, but I can endure anything if I can just be in love while doing it.

In which Isaiah gets work as a motivational speaker, Jeremiah’s poetry submissions are rejected, and Ezekiel is the victim of an alien abduction.

The salad days were over. God was feeling hurt and betrayed
by his chosen people. The tiny Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah were surrounded on three sides by the superpowers of the ancient world: Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria. The only question seemed to be which of these three empires they would be conquered by. This is where the prophets came in. Other than Isaiah, whose advice was actually sought by the government, most of the prophets were guys who just wandered in from the desert to tell the kings how awful and incompetent they were. This represented a shift in the literary culture.

Before, during the boom times, the kings snapped up the literate men and put them to work as scribes: keeping records, writing histories, telling the world how great the kings were. Once the kingdoms became two petty puppet states, and there was no more cheese in the cupboard for struggling writers, the literary culture totally changed. Now, the writing was coming from disgruntled prophets, eating crickets and self-publishing their pamphlets in the desert.

Needless to say, the prophets weren’t very popular. They usually ended up being rode out of town on a camel, or dumped down a well.
 

One book which doesn’t really fit that mold is Daniel. Daniel was written hundreds of years after the events it describes. It was written during the Greek occupation of Israel, not the earlier Babylonian occupation in which it takes place. The Greeks were always pressuring the Jews to assimilate. They banned circumcised dudes from the gymnasiums and outlawed kosher diets. As such, Daniel was probably written to be an after-school special to teach fellow Jews the value of resisting the pressure to worship Greek gods, or to have reconstructive surgery on their penises in hopes of getting a gym membership.

The King of Judah walked up to the podium and addressed his advisers.

“Okay, can everybody hear me? As you all know, Israel has been conquered by the Assyrians, meaning that we are now the sole remaining Jewish kingdom. As you can see from the situation map, we have the Assyrians coming down at us from the north, the Babylonians heading straight for us from the east, and then we got the Egyptians coming up from the south. Basically, we’re caught in the middle of a Sumerian standoff between the three most powerful empires in the world. Needless to say, things are… uh, things are a little iffy. So to give us some much needed confidence, I have asked a motivational prophet to come speak to us today. Let’s all give a warm welcome to the Prophet Isaiah.”

(Applause.)

“I want you all to be honest with me,” Isaiah asked, looking for a show of hands, “how many of you feel like
winners
? Not many, huh? Well, I can understand why. You all saw the shit-stomping Israel got and you’re wondering ‘Are we next?’ You’re surrounded on all sides by enemies bigger and stronger than yourself. Why wouldn’t you be scared?

“But I’m here to tell each and every one of you that YOU ARE A WINNER! Not because of anything you’ve done. Not because you’re rich, or powerful, or have a full head of hair. No, you’re winners for one reason and one reason only…you are God’s chosen people.

“And how does a winner behave? A winner acts like he belongs. He doesn’t cower.
He doesn’t find a daddy to protect him. He stands on his own two feet. I’ve seen scared nations before and I know what they do. They curry favor. They adopt foreign gods. They make alliances with foreign nations that don’t have their best interest at heart, and then they’re surprised when their protectors turn on them.
 

“I’m going to say this just once: you CANNOT trust foreigners to protect you. If you join forces with one of these empires and it loses a war to one of the others, the winner is going to see us as a hostile nation and invade.
And even if you join forces with the winning empire, once it realizes it no longer needs you,
it
will invade.

“Let me see if I can put this in terms anyone can understand: There is a chicken named Judah. This unlucky chicken happens to live in a cul de sac where its neighbors are an alligator, a lion and a coyote. Judah the chicken would like to go on living. Who should he trust to save him? A) The alligator. B) The lion. C) The coyote or D) the Almighty God. As naive as this may sound to you, the answer is actually D. The chicken should trust in God. And do you know why? Because God is the only choice WHO DOESN’T EAT CHICKEN!

“Nobody respects a loser, and a winner does not beg for protection. So the only way to convince people you’re a winner is to stand tall. It’s not camel-science, people!

“But, Isaiah,
you might ask,
suppose they do invade us. How do I convince God to save us from annihilation? I can’t even convince my wife to give me a foot rub!”

(Laughter.)

“The answer, as always, is simple: you get God to save you by being a people worth saving. All God wants from you, all he’s ever wanted, is your love and respect.
Now, some of you believe that God is just one among many gods. So you feel like you can choose to worship him or some idol the same way you would pick out a hat to wear to a party. And many of you who stay true to God only do so because you think he’s better than the other gods. Well, at the risk of shocking you, I’m here to tell you that Jehovah is not just the best god, he’s the ONLY
god!

“I have news for you. When you have to carve an idol out of balsa wood so it can tell you what to do, you’re not worshiping a god. You’re worshiping a puppet. You have to question the intelligence of someone who worships a god he made in shop class. A man who whittles a god out of a tree branch and then uses the rest of the tree for firewood has two things: a pile of firewood and crap. If anything, he should worship the firewood, at least that will keep him warm at night.
 

“But at least the heathens don’t know any better. How you people, after witnessing God save your broccoli in the desert, after seeing him lead you out of Egypt and perform miracles before your very eyes, how you keep betting on golden calves and wooden idols is the real mystery.

“So, in summary, it doesn’t make sense to make deals with any foreign rulers. You’re merely choosing who gets to eat you. If you don’t want to be eaten, then make your alliance with God. Put away your idols, show God some respect, and everything will be bananas foster. And remember: YOU. ARE. A. WINNER. Thank you all and goodnight!”

Isaiah pumped his fist in the air and walked off the stage to raucous applause. Everyone poured to the front of the room to shake his hand. The king thanked him for coming by. Once Isaiah had left the room, the door was closed and the king turned to his advisers.

“Pretty great, huh?” the king asked.

“Yeah, that guy was amazing!” they concurred.

“So, what do you think? Should we take Isaiah’s advice?” The king asked.

“Are you nuts? We
have
to make an alliance. He’s a great motivational prophet and all, but come on, we have to live in the real world. Divine Intervention isn’t a foreign policy.”

So the king called up the Assyrians and made a deal. Judah became a puppet state, and the king basically became the regional manager for a hot and dusty corner of the Assyrian Empire. As Isaiah predicted, this arrangement didn’t work out very well. Before long, both Assyria and Judah were conquered by Babylon. The Babylonians carted away Judah’s treasure and led the Jews away in chains.

“Well, you win some and you lose some,” Isaiah mused. “Despite it all, I’m still pretty optimistic. God didn’t choose us as his people, give us laws, and bring us out of Egypt just so we could serve drinks and carry fruit trays in Babylon.
He chose us so the rest of the world could know God.

“Someday we’ll return to our homeland. Someday, a woman will give birth to a child named ‘Immanuel,’ who will free us from foreign rule. He’ll be a wise king, the sort of king who listens to somebody whose job title is ‘Prophet.’ Someday, we won’t have any kings at all. God will rule the Earth and put an end to all this war, corruption and greed.

“Someday,” Isaiah sighed