The Story of God (2 page)

God made a speech to the birds and the fish, welcoming them to earth and giving them a sense of direction—getting them off to a solid start, basically. He thought about what to say, then decided he'd found the perfect note to strike: “Be fruitful and multiply,” he told them. (Gen. 1:22) Which seemed like an excellent message … until that damned self-critical voice piped up again: “They're fish and birds, they don't understand you, you
do know that, right?” God hated it when he had thoughts like these. They ruined what had been a highly productive day. He had planned on making more living things, but he went to sleep instead. “Also,” he lied to himself, “I'm still tired from creating the whole universe yesterday, all those trillions of stars …”

God woke up the next day refreshed, ready to continue. “Let there be tiny, creeping things,” he commanded, quite pleased with that description of insects. Insects seemed like a splendid idea to God, not least because some of them would be good to eat! (Levit. 11:22) God then created mammals, and he felt very good about them, especially cows, which he instantly knew would taste delicious. (Gen. 1:25) (“I never created reptiles,” God later realized, and that bothered him. Who
did
create them? “Why, the same person who created mushrooms and lobsters and crabs and snails and everything else I never mentioned—ME! Who else would have—another god? They don't even exist, so how could they have?”)

The stage was set. There was land, water, trees, insects, fish, birds, cows—the whole planet was teeming with life, and that was good, although, you know, utterly pointless. God didn't actually care about any of these creatures, and here's why: Because they didn't care about him! Chimps, elephants, dolphins, wolves—yawn.

It was time to create the creature that would love him. God had been planning this creature, the final and most important one, for awhile now. He would be called “human” and he would look
just like God!
God was thrilled by the idea.

“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,” God heard himself command. (Gen. 1:26) Which was strange. Why had he said that, he quickly wondered. In our image, in our likeness? What did that mean? “Am I so pompous that I refer to myself as ‘us,'” he wondered. Or did he, on some level, think that he wasn't alone? That there were other gods up in the sky with him? This thought bothered God a lot. He didn't want there to be other gods; it made him mad to think there were. Because what if there
were and the humans, his special creatures, somehow, perversely, ended up liking those other gods more than they liked him? (Which was exactly what would happen, God already knew in his heart.)

Maybe it was a slip of the tongue, God thought. Maybe he'd meant to say “in my image, in my likeness,” and had said “in our image, in our likeness” by accident. That could happen to anyone. He wasn't going to worry about it, he told himself. (In truth, he worried about it constantly.)

Just as God would create man in his own image, he would also create the man's companion—“woman,” he called her—in his image. Or, you know, sort of. Not exactly, obviously—God wasn't a “woman,” but he would create her in his likeness … except for the fact that she was, you know, female. (“What are you, some sort of she-male?” Satan would ask him much later, when they were about to fight over the final destiny of humankind, but that is jumping ahead. Anyway. No, God was not a “she-male.” He made woman in his own image, but he was all man, what was strange about
that?)

God hesitated. Why did he even need women? Why couldn't there just be males? Why couldn't they give birth out their anuses? No … No … It wouldn't work; women were, sadly, necessary. With regard to woman's creation, God considered two options. One was to basically make her at the exact same time as the man. That seemed like a good idea; God decided to do that. Then he decided that he'd make the man first and create the woman from the man's rib. Then he decided that he'd do both. “Can I do that?” he wondered, then instantly rejoindered with “I can do anything, I'm GOD, I can make the man first and
also
create them at the same time!! Watch me!!” So he did—but it was a little bit confusing. (Gen. 1:27 vs. 2:7) (The two “extra” humans that God made he put in cages, where they lived for awhile, then died when he forgot to feed them.)

The man God named Adam. The woman he didn't give a name to, he just called her “woman.” (Gen. 3:20) She was
certainly attractive; the man obviously thought so, his penis made that obvious. God did not like the way that looked.

“The first chance I get, I'm going to make them cover up,” he thought to himself. “Their nudity really bothers me.” But for now, he'd let them be naked. It was distracting, though. In the days since discovering his own testicles, God had had a change of heart. He couldn't help but notice what attractive balls Adam had—“perfect” was the word that came to mind. Adam's penis was very nice looking too, though something wasn't quite right. It definitely needed a change. After thinking about it for a while, God decided the man's penis could use one important fix. If the skin at the head of it was trimmed away, it would look even better. Good idea, God thought to himself.

God honestly couldn't grasp what exactly Adam found so alluring about the woman. Not only was she less interesting to God (“My story will revolve around men,” he murmured to himself), he also sensed something … what? … bad about her. Something strange and hidden and disruptive. He didn't
trust
her. He'd just made her and already he wondered if he'd made a mistake. “She's going to create problems,” he thought. “She's trouble, I can feel it.”

Still, it was with an amazing feeling of pride and accomplishment that God looked down upon his glorious creation. “This is very good,” he said to himself. (Gen. 1:31)

And yet …

Those damned dark thoughts always seemed to creep in. Where did they
come
from? He had no idea. He'd have eliminated them if he could—but he couldn't seem to. “It's a perfect creation and my two humans, Adam and woman, will be happy and content within it, as I wish them to be. They will live within their beautiful garden forever and they will love me and that will be wonderful,” God told himself.

But he knew it wasn't true.

What was it, God later wondered?

Was it insecurity that made him test them, a fear that they wouldn't obey him? Or was it something else, something even darker? He said he wanted these two to be perfectly happy in the garden he'd made for them, but when he really thought about it—it sounded boring. Perfect happiness forever? What's interesting about
that?

Especially when there was another way of looking at things. “What if I test them—they will fail, I already know that, obviously—then punish them for that failure by sending them out into the world, which before long they will fill up with more humans, lots more? (These creatures will love sex, no matter how wicked I will tell them it is, and I will tell them that constantly, but it will not matter.) All of these new humans will then also do bad things that I can punish them for, then forgive them for, then punish them for again!” Just the thought of this future sounded very appealing to God. So much to do. God knew himself well enough already to understand that he
loved
drama. Animals were fine. But he found nothing exciting about bears or robins or spiders; they were mainly here to be eaten. God was so uninterested in animals, in fact, that he didn't even name them: He allowed Adam to do it instead, to call them whatever he wanted to. (Gen. 2:19) “I'm surprised there weren't
more creatures called ‘blaaahhs' and ‘urrgghhs,'” God chuckled to himself and—wait—did Adam name himself? (Gen. 2:20)

For the first time, God called on Satan, whom he had apparently created at the same time he created reptiles. From the first, God didn't like the way Satan looked at him. There was something knowing in his eyes. He acted as if he was God's equal, which was ludicrous. “He knows nothing, he is my employee, I created him to work for me and that is all,” God thought.

“I want you to enter into my Garden of Eden and trick the woman,” he announced to Satan.

Satan studied God silently for a moment, then asked, “Why?”

“It's a test obviously, Satan. I want to see if my humans will obey me.”

“You don't know if they will?”

“Of course I know if they will. They won't. Which is exactly my plan.”

“Your plan is for them not to obey you?”

Satan's “innocent” questions irritated God. “Exactly!” he snapped.

“But if you already know they won't obey you, then what's the point of testing them?”

God stared at Satan for a second, then shook his head briskly. “Leave the big thinking to me, alright, Satan?” That blank look again. “He's mocking me,” God thought. “I should kill him right now. Why do I need this guy? I don't. Creating him, which I obviously did, was a mistake and I'm going to rectify that mistake right now.” God glowered at Satan and prepared to kill him—then hesitated, reconsidered. “No. I am God. I do not
make
mistakes. I am, by my own definition, perfect, not even capable of a ‘mistake.' Therefore, I must have created Satan for a perfect reason. I will ignore his ridiculous questions and make him do my bidding.”

“Here's the point, Satan: I have commanded them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen 2:17)

“The what?”

“The tree of knowledge of good and evil,” God repeated, puffing up a bit, quite proud of the name he'd given the tree. “Not pretentious in the least,” he'd congratulated himself.

“What is that?”

“It's a tree that contains knowledge of good and evil, obviously.”

“And you don't want them to know the difference between them?”

God tightened. He'd had enough of this asinine line of questioning; this wasn't about the damned tree, this was about obedience! “Just listen to what I am telling you to do, alright, Satan?”

Satan crossed his arms and looked at God silently.

“As I said, I want you to test the humans, especially the woman. There is something about her that I don't trust.”

“That's because you like men.”

God glared at Satan, knowing very well what he meant. “Rise above it, Lord,” he told himself. “You are better than this, do not get pulled down to his demonic level.”

“As I was
saying,
Satan, I want you to take the form of a talking creature of some sort.”

“How about a reptile?”

“A reptile, hmmm—yes, that could work. You will be a talking reptile and you will trick the woman into eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”

“How should I trick her?”

“Tell her … tell her that she will not die if she eats the fruit, ha!” (Gen. 3:4)

“Which is true.”

“Which is true, exactly, yes!”

“Even though you already told the man that if they ate the fruit they
would
die?”

“I was setting up the trick, Satan,” God explained, as if speaking to a young child, even rolling his eyes a little to imply “how dim you are.” Satan just looked back at him.

“You are telling her the truth as part of the trick, do you not understand me, Satan?”

“I do understand you.”

That remark hung in the air for a moment. “Oh no you do not,” God thought to himself. Satan left soon after that and God breathed a sigh of relief. What a bad person he was, so nasty and insinuating and always with that vaguely bemused tone to his voice, as if he knew something, which he did not. “Why
did
I create him?” God asked himself. “To work against me? Why would I want that? Why would I want someone to undermine and subvert me at every turn? It makes no sense. Only someone who
hated
themselves would want that. And I don't, obviously. I love myself!” Wait … Was it even possible? And this was a hard question to ask, but was it possible that he didn't actually create Satan? That Satan just existed, like God? No, that could not be, because if it was, “then I would be a great fraud, falsely claiming to be the creator of everything! But I AM the creator of everything, not just some vain, fatuous, self-obsessed fool who thinks he runs the world when he doesn't!”

Things worked out precisely as God wanted them to. (They always did, it was a given, but still …) Satan tricked the woman into eating the fruit. She then persuaded the man to eat it too. God knew the woman was bad news, but the man's spinelessness surprised him a little. Adam, dear Adam—what a weakling he turned out to be. He didn't even fight it, he just ate the fruit! (Gen. 3:17) “I made him in my likeness and he has bad character. It makes
no sense.”
God muttered to himself.

For a moment, God thought about starting over completely, going back to square one. But could he go back to the start, wipe all this out and begin again? The universe was massive, could he just erase it? He wasn't sure. He decided it wasn't a good idea anyway. “No,” he said to himself. “I will not wipe the whole thing out. I will, instead, work with what is here. I will punish the humans, I will kick them out of the garden, make the man work (wait, hasn't he already been working?) (Gen. 2:15) and make the woman suffer when she gives birth (that'll show her!). “I will also,” he thought, “punish reptiles by making women hate them.” (Gen. 3:15) (“It wasn't reptiles, per se, it was Satan, possessing a reptile; why should reptiles be punished?” that critical voice asked. But God was getting better and better at ignoring it. Still—the way Satan looked at him from inside that reptile really did bother God. As if he had somehow gotten the
better of things; as if God was angry because Satan had snuck in and subverted things, rather than having been—as he had been
!—instructed
to subvert God's plan.)