God Is Disappointed In You (9 page)

People congratulated and toasted the couple, but as they sipped their sparkling wine and ate their hors d'oeuvres, they secretly chuckled to each other that it would never last.

When David was King of Israel, God wasn’t having to constantly bail Israel out the way he used to.
So God refocused his considerable free time and energy on his new hobby: scrapbooking.
 

He put the priests to work compiling thousands of tidbits for his Precious Memories scrapbook. They gathered enough of these to fill the first nine chapters of Chronicles with birth records, genealogies, and gossipy details on hundreds of people going all the way back to Adam and Eve.
The priests tirelessly assembled volume after volume of sentimental keepsakes.
 

God decided that he needed a house of his own, someplace where he could relax, keep in touch with friends, and work on his scrapbooks. A place where the priests could be kept stocked with parchment, glue and clip art.

David had come a long way since his days of guarding sheep and playing harp for tips at the palace. He was not only king, but God’s best friend to boot. God and David were inseparable. Once he became king, David hired some movers to bring the Ark of the Covenant to his palace so he and God could be roommates. David imagined all the trouble two guys at the top of their game to get into.
 

“People will probably give us matching nicknames, like ‘Thunder and Crash,’” he thought. “They’ll say, ‘There they go, Thunder & Crash.’ We’ll totally run the place.”

God was riding the Ark into Jerusalem, sitting on his Mercy Seat, when the road suddenly started getting bumpy. The Ark began slipping around on the ox cart. One of the movers reached up to keep the Ark from falling off, but when he touched it, God immediately struck him dead. God doesn’t like people touching the Ark.
 

When he heard about this, David wondered if God might not be such a great roommate, after all. So instead of moving the Ark into the palace, he stashed it in a tent where the priests could help God with his scrapbooking, and sacrifice tasty treats to him, and hopefully he wouldn’t kill anyone.

David put together a big parade to celebrate the arrival of the Ark. There was music, burnt offerings, and free cake for everyone. Then he showed God to his tent.

“I thought I was going to live with you,” God said.

“Oh, you wouldn’t like that,” David replied, “I snore, and I’m always walking around the palace naked. Trust me, you’ll be much happier in your own place.”

But God was not happy. God hated camping. He wanted a palace of his own like David’s. So he told David that he should have his son Solomon build him a nice, spacious temple.
 

“Then I can get down to some
serious
scrapbooking!” God told himself.

Meanwhile, David spent most of his time away from home fighting wars. In the middle of all his fighting, David decided to take a census, which really ticked God off for some reason.
 

“Maybe this is a chance to show David who’s really in charge,” God wondered.

To teach him a lesson, God gave David a choice of three punishments: either Israel could suffer three years of famine, three months of losing battles, or three days of God’s bare-knuckled, no-holds-barred wrath.

Hoping to get the punishment over with as soon as possible,
David chose the three days of divine wrath. In just 72 hours, God managed to wipe out seventy thousand people. David was so distraught that he ripped his clothes and poured ash on himself and begged God to stop.

“Fine, quit your blubbering, you big baby,” God said. “I’ve got parchment which needs gluing, anyway.”

God threw himself back into a new Creative Memories scrapbook. At this point, First Chronicles takes a break to list six chapters worth of notable people and birth records, including those of God’s favorite musicians and soldiers.
It even gives a shout-out to some of Jerusalem’s gatekeepers.

His wars over, his kingdom secure, David decided to spend more time at home, hanging out with the family. He rediscovered his love of music and once again took up jamming on his harp, writing songs. His son, Solomon, turned out to be musically inclined as well.
 

Before he died, David gathered all the timber, gold and jewelry he’d accumulated as spoils of war over the years and gave them to Solomon along with the architectural blueprints for God’s new temple.

“Whatever you do,” David advised his son, “don’t drag your feet on building this temple. God will get sick of scrapbooking before long. Everyone does. When that happens, trust me, he’ll be looking for reasons to be pissed off.”

After Solomon was crowned king, he eagerly began construction on the temple.
 

Like most rich nations, Israel was completely dependent on foreign labor. Solomon knew that in order to bring a really big construction project in under budget, you needed illegal aliens, and plenty of them. So Solomon rounded up all the immigrants in Israel and put them to work cutting stones in the quarry and carrying them to the construction site. Then he hired the best architects, artisans and interior decorators from all over the world to put the temple together and imbue it with an opulent, yet dignified, sense of elegance.

When completed, the temple was tricked out with gold plating, bas reliefs of palm trees and jewel-studded walls. It even came with apples hanging from chains, like charms from a necklace. It had dozens of hand-washing stations for the priests, an enormous altar, and crowns and water basins, all made out of the best gold.
 

For the grand opening party, Solomon slaughtered twenty thousand oxen and sheep. God was so impressed by his new house that he sent fire down from heaven, convection baking all that meat for everyone who’d come to marvel at the temple.

Riding atop the Ark, God was ceremoniously moved into his new house. Nobody had ever seen anything quite like it. It was a true architectural marvel, and it soon became famous all over the world as the Temple of Solomon.

During the housewarming party, one of the priests had made the egregious error of looking inside the Ark, but God was so mellowed out by the good time he was having that he didn’t even kill the guy.

Later, that priest told his story to the others, who were positively dumbstruck.

“You looked INSIDE the Ark?” one asked. “That’s insane!”

“What was inside?” Another asked.

“It was empty,” the priest shrugged, “except for a couple of stone tablets.”

All this time, the only thing God kept in the Ark were the tablets he had given to Moses centuries before. The deal he had made with the Jews to be his people.
 

“You’ve done an amazing job on the temple,” God told Solomon. “It’s just as I imagined it would be, and I love it. This is probably the happiest day of my life!

“Solomon, can I tell you something?” God said, taking Solomon aside for a moment. “I just wanted to say that I know I can seem a little petty sometimes, demanding solid gold handsinks and apples hanging from the ceiling.
 

“And I know I can be a bit of a hothead. But there’s a reason why I get so jealous. The truth is that I love these people, but sometimes I feel like they don’t love me back. And that drives me
crazy
. The reason the temple means so much to me is that I want it to be a place my people are proud of. I want them to be proud of
me
.
 

“As much as I love my new temple, I would rather tear it down than see it become another museum to a forgotten god nobody takes seriously anymore. Solomon, I’ve never told anyone this before, but I don’t know what I’d do if the Jews ever stopped loving me.”

The next morning, as people sobered up from the grand opening party, everyone was truly taken aback at how wonderful God’s temple was. Overnight, the Temple of Solomon became the beating heart of Israel.
 

Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever. After the initial excitement over the temple had died down, people gradually turned away from God and began once again worshiping foreign gods. The kings who followed began building temples to other gods, and everyone seemed to agree that they were now too rich and sophisticated to be expected to honor the deal their ancestors had made with God back when they were a homeless nation of hikers.

God watched as he and his temple were gradually reduced to little more than a tourist trap.
God was so heartbroken that after a while he couldn’t even be bothered to get out of bed, not for miracles, not for scrapbooking, not even to save his people from foreign invasion.

God barely even noticed as his people were conquered, first by Assyrians and then Babylonians. When the Babylonians showed up at the temple, knocked down its walls, and stole its treasure. Then they set the whole place on fire. The priests were forced to pick the Ark and all of God’s scrapbooks out of the ruins. The temple treasure, the priests, the Ark, God’s scrapbooks, and anyone who was anyone were carted off to Babylon as trophies while Jerusalem burned to the ground, leaving only the smoldering ashes of a dead nation.