God Is Disappointed In You (17 page)

And there’s no point in trying to prepare for the end, either.
You’re not going to know what hit you until it’s too late. Your friends will betray you. Your attackers will come like thieves in the night. Only they won’t be thieves, because thieves wouldn’t take the time to beat you to death with rocks or salt the earth so it won’t grow crops again. No, they’ll be more like, I don’t know, psychotic maniacs or something.

What’s that? You’re sorry? You want God to forgive you? Well, too bad! God doesn’t want to hear any of it. There’s nothing you can say to change his mind. You’re dead men. You might as well break it to your kids that they’re orphans. Or pre-orphans, to be more accurate. Say goodbye to your homes, your crops, and your little pre-orphan kids. Your day of reckoning is coming. And when it comes, Israel will be rebuilt, we will all be high and dry, and living the good life. No thanks to you, assholes.

Your Loving Cousin,

Obadiah the Prophet

God was sick to the teeth with Assyrians. They conquered Israel, looted its wealth, and scattered its people to the wind. Assyria was totally being a pill. So God sent a prophet named Jonah to their capital city, Nineveh, to tell the Assyrians that God was going to kill them all in forty days’ time.
 

Jonah worried that they might not be entirely receptive to that idea. In fact, he worried that they might make balloon animals out of his testicles. So when he got to the docks, Jonah tried to give God the slip. Instead of going to Nineveh, he boarded a ship to the city of
 
Tarshish.

But God is not easily fooled.
He sent a storm to intercept Jonah’s boat. Massive waves battered the ship, threatening to sink it. The storm was so bad that the sailors figured the supernatural might be at work. They drew straws to figure out who was to blame for the storm, and Jonah drew the short straw.
 

“What kind of god did you have to anger to cause a storm like
this
?” the sailors demanded to know.

“I’m a Jew,” Jonah replied, “Our god created the ocean. Come to think of it, he also created the land.”

“What is wrong with you? Why would you ruffle a god like that?” the sailors scolded. “What do we have to do to calm this god of yours down?”

“If you throw me overboard, everything will be fine,” Jonah informed them.

As angry as they were with Jonah, throwing a passenger over the side of your ship wasn’t really done, so the sailors persevered, bailing water and paddling for the shore. But when the storm worsened, and the whole ship seemed on the verge of sinking, they reluctantly tossed Jonah into the sea. The storm immediately stopped, the sun came out, and the ship sailed on its merry way.

Jonah, meanwhile, sank into the ocean and was swallowed whole by a giant fish. While trapped inside the intestinal tract of the fish, Jonah had time to take a moral inventory of his life.
 

“Why did I think I could cheat God?” he wondered. “For that matter, why should I be afraid of the Assyrians if God is on my side? If anyone so much as tickled me, God could have them swallowed by a fish, or beaten to death by an orangutan— or something.”

It wasn’t long before the fish lost its taste for minor prophets and vomited Jonah up onto the shore. Jonah, for his part, was no longer worried about what might happen to him. Smelling like a bucket of chum, he proudly marched into Nineveh. He wandered the city streets stinking of fish and telling everyone about the trucker-beating God was about to lay on them.

The Assyrians didn’t try to kill him. They didn’t even laugh at him. To his shock, the entire city fell flat on their faces and began praying for forgiveness. The king ordered everyone to roll around in the dirt and wear sackcloth as a sign of their humility. They even dressed their animals up in cute little sackcloth outfits.

“That’s right,” Jonah said, smug with power, “you should be afraid!”

Having delivered his message of doom, Jonah triumphantly marched out of the city, found a nice shady tree under which to sit, and waited for the fireworks to begin. Only the fireworks never came. God’s deadline came and went and still Nineveh stood, every brick in place.

Jonah sat there, disappointed. “God, you told me you were going to destroy Nineveh. You brought me out here specifically to tell them that. I came hundreds of miles, INSIDE A FISH, goddammit! You’re totally leaving me hanging, here.”

“I changed my mind,” God shrugged. “They were all so sad and apologetic. It made me feel sorry for them.”

“Fine, but just so you know, I don’t appreciate being made to look like an idiot.”

God smote the shady tree Jonah was sitting under, causing it to whither, die, and topple over.

“Oh great!” Jonah said. “It’s like a hundred degrees out here. Just kill me now. This is the worst day, ever.”

“You’re upset about the destruction of a single tree?” God said.
“A tree you did nothing to plant, a tree you never watered, or nurtured in any way? That city over there has a hundred and twenty thousand people, every single one of whom I created and care about. Are you telling me their deaths shouldn’t bother me?

“Just because they chose the wrong religion doesn’t mean that I don’t love them just as much as I love you.”

God is coming, and he doesn’t look very happy. He’s melting mountains and tearing up valleys, and if he catches you with some other god, something’s going to get smashed. And when God gets all smashy, nobody wins. Samaria and Jerusalem will be reduced to rubble. Your children will be sold off as slaves. Your hair will fall out. Not a very nice vision of the future, is it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not gloating. When this happens, it’ll be the saddest day of my life. I’ll cry like a jackal and moan like an owl. You can just imagine what that will sound like. I’ll be so depressed that I’ll walk around town naked for a few days.
 

I love our country, I really do.
I just can’t kid myself about the sort of things that are going on here anymore. We used to be a nation of people who treated each other like family, now the rich and powerful are snatching up everything. The rest of us have no choice but to work their plantations or starve. If God wanted his people to be slaves, he would have left us laying bricks in Egypt.
 

At least there we had cucumbers. You know, it used to be that when you heard that your neighbor was in danger of losing their orchard, you would go over to lend a hand. Now, the only reason you stop by is to get a good deal on plums.
 

I realize that saying these things isn’t going to make me a very popular man. But then, I’m not one of those prophets whose predictions get sweeter the more you put in his tip jar. If I wanted to be liked, I’d prophesy the coming of free wine. But I want you to know the truth of God’s anger, even if you hate me for it.

Most of you seem to think that you can escape judgment so long as you ply God with sacrificial rams and olive oil. And maybe that’s the problem— you simply think of God as one more public servant who needs to be bribed. But God doesn’t need any more boar meat or lamp oil. In fact, there are only three things God wants from you. Are you listening? Here it is, the entire Jewish religion in a nutshell:
 

1. Build a just society where the rich and powerful don’t get to treat the rest of us like livestock.

2. Don’t get all too cool for school whenever God tries to tell you something. Be humble. You’re never so holy that you can’t improve a little.
And finally,

3. For gravy’s sake, help each other out once in a while. Don’t you understand? We’re here on Earth to make life better for each other.

The Lord’s not a hard
guy, but don’t fool yourselves, he will not let the nation that destroyed Israel go unpunished. You Assyrians think you’re pretty hot corn, don’t you? Well, let me tell you what’s going to happen to your capital city: Nineveh will run dry. God will dry up all the wells, and your water will turn to sand. Your people will be parched. The cedars of Lebanon will wither.
 

Then, just for a dash of irony, he’ll send in a flood to destroy you. Your idols will be smashed. Your children will all drown. Meanwhile, the people of Judah will celebrate your destruction with some extremely cool festivals and dances.

Then God will send soldiers dressed in red to plunder your city. Their chariots will buzz up and down your streets, and the soldiers will go door to door, looting your silver and gold and making your slaves moan like doves. Dead bodies will clog the gutters. This is what you’ve done to other nations, so now it’s your turn.
God is going to lift your skirt over your head and laugh at your naked body while he pelts you with shit.
 

You think your walls will keep you safe? You’ve destroyed walled cities before. You know that’s not enough to keep you safe. The clouds are nothing but the dust God kicks up when he walks. Rocks shatter when he walks past. God is going to shake your fortresses like a tree and watch your soldiers fall out like loose figs.
 

And do you know what the worst part of all this will be? The fact that nobody’s even going to miss you.
When the world finally sees the Assyrians getting annihilated, people will cheer with joy.  Maybe even do a backflip.

Q:
Dear Lord, how long are you going to goddamn ignore me? Every day I pray for you to stop the Babylonians from killing us, and every day passes without you doing anything to help.
A:
Dear Habakkuk, why would I stop the Babylonians? I’m the one who sent them. I found the nastiest, least trustworthy people in the world, and raised them to become the totally bad-ass nation they are. Their horses are as fast as leopards and as mean as wolves. They laugh at fortified cities. They take prisoners like they’re scooping up sand with a bucket. Their strength is their only god and their will is their only law. Totally bad-ass. They’re going to run through you guys like bread through a goose.
 

Q:
Dear Lord, so you’re using the Babylonians to punish us? Okay, I get that. But if you’re going to punish us for being bad, doesn’t it strike you as a tad unfair to use people who are ten times worse than we ever were? I mean, come on, that’s like letting a serial killer pass sentence on a jaywalker.
 

I was brought up to believe that you are a just god who rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, but now I’m starting to think that’s a crock of shit. Everywhere I look, I see prophets hiding for their lives while the corrupt rule. Have I been misinformed? Is justice simply not all that important to you? I eagerly await your reply.