The Story of God (7 page)

God moved on to birds. “You may eat any bird you want!” he told Moses, then quickly added, “other than eagles, vultures, hawks, ravens, and bats.” (Lev. 11:19) There was an awkward pause. Had he just called bats birds? He had, yes. That was embarrassing. Obviously God knew that bats were mammals. What kind of God wouldn't know
that?
He'd simply been talking too fast and out it came: “Bats are birds.” Moses didn't say anything, he just stood there, looking down. “What should I say?” God wondered. “Should I say, ‘That thing I just said about bats being birds? Obviously that's not correct, bats are mammals, of course. The
point
I was trying to make was, you know, don't eat them. They're abominations.'” No, it sounded weak, not like something an all-knowing and all-powerful creator would say. Could he say, “I was kidding when I said that bats were birds,” or “I was just testing you, Moses?”

God decided not to say anything, to simply move on. So what if he'd called bats birds? It was meaningless. He moved on to insects, most of which he regarded as abominations. He'd made a lot of them (especially beetles for some unknown reason), but he
mainly thought they were repulsive. None of them were good to eat, God proclaimed—before remembering a few exceptions. “You may eat locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers,” he announced to Moses. (Lev. 11:22) God had tried eating each of these bugs and found them to be surprisingly tasty and nutritious and crunchy.

God imagined his mental checklist: Lobsters and shrimp? Abominations. Bat-birds? Same. (“Wrong! Bats aren't birds, I know that!”) Crickets? Good eating. Was that it? No, he had some other regulations: “Don't eat mice,” he finally got around to telling Moses. He had not actually seen any of his people eating mice, but he wasn't taking any chances. Mice were … unclean. God liked things that were clean—like grasshoppers. The idea of his people eating filthy little mice sickened him. “Don't eat moles either,” God told Moses (Lev. 11:29)—revolting little eyeless freaks. And lizards—do not eat lizards—they are abominations.

God really hated unclean things like mice and, honestly? … menstruating women. (Lev. 12:2) That was not what he and Moses were talking about, he knew that, but still—menstruating women were so damned unclean. God hadn't trusted women from the start, but this whole monthly bleeding thing—it was awful. (Not long after this, God made clear what he'd always felt was obvious: “Women are worth 60% of what men are worth,” he told Moses, thinking to himself as he said it, “which is being
generous.”)
(Lev. 27:3–4) God didn't want to get stuck on the whole “menstruating women are unclean” thing—even though it was true—so he moved on to medical matters for a moment.

Existing outside time and space, as God obviously did, he had a perfect understanding of human illness. With regard to leprosy, God advised Moses that the best treatment was to kill a bird and sprinkle its blood on the leper. (Lev. 14:5–7) As Moses wrote this down, God nodded to himself and murmured, “Right on the money, Lord.”

God tried to get back to food—but his mind started to feel contaminated now. So
many
of the things he'd created were
unclean: shrimp, mice, bat-birds (“stop!”), menstruating women, lepers. Yes, he'd made some things that were clean, like locusts and catfish and goats—but still—even the things that were clean so often had blemishes. God hated blemishes. He wanted perfection. “I am perfect and I created this world, so
it
should be perfect too!” he reasoned with impeccable logic. “Why should I have to tolerate so many blemishes?” he demanded. And not just any kind of blemish either; many of the flaws were in the worst place they could possibly be: The balls. (Lev. 22:24)

God loved perfect balls. Perfect, hanging, unblemished balls. But they were so very rare. (“Especially in combination with a perfect, cut penis,” he murmured to himself.) There were goats that were perfect except for their balls, which were bruised, torn, cut, whatever. These goats were of
zero
interest to God. “I only want the ones with perfect balls!” he would demand. “I also only want to be served by men with perfect balls!” (Lev. 21:20)

By the time he was done laying down the law, God felt confident. He had made it clear what he expected of his people, what was clean, what was unclean, the importance of perfect balls, all of it.

“Things should fall into place nicely now,” he thought.

But it was strange.

Problems continued—bad ones: (1) Sin was back. God had tried so hard to wipe it out, drowning everyone on earth, incinerating two cities. But for some reason it was rampant once again. His people were having sex with animals now, for instance. (Lev. 18:23) And perhaps one of the reasons for
that
was (2) God's people, his chosen ones, were starting to drift toward other gods. (Lev. 20:2) God hated all these made-up gods, but the one who he truly despised was Baal, the so-called sex god. People loved Baal; he was seductive, even to God's own people. (Num. 25:1–3) Baal didn't exist, obviously, “But if he did, I would definitely kill him,” God muttered to himself. (Much later, when God discovered that Baal actually
did
exist, he would kill him, along with all the other,
not
-made-up-as-it-turned-out gods. The moment when God shoved his knife into Baal's gut and felt his life flow out was very rewarding.) (Isa. 26:13–14)

“Why am I so bothered by a fictional character?” God would sometimes wonder. “I'm God, why should I be threatened by someone that doesn't even exist? I shouldn't be … and you know what, I'm not.” God would then sit in tense silence for awhile, fretting about this. There were moments when he couldn't help but wonder: “Why did I create a reality that makes me so damned angry?” He was mad all the time, it seemed. His
people infuriated him—they didn't listen, they didn't obey, they did wicked, evil things and worst of all, they worshipped that asshole, Baal.

On top of all that, bizarre things were happening. Ghosts, for instance. God didn't like ghosts—he didn't like anything about them. He had created them, obviously—but now he'd forgotten why. “It must have seemed like a good idea at the time,” he reflected, “to have dead people continue to wander the earth as semitransparent, floating entities.” It must have been designed as some kind of punishment, God decided (what
wasn't?),
but it hadn't worked out the way he'd wanted. He didn't want humans and ghosts to interact with each other. “Anyone who has a ghost,” God informed Moses, “shall be put to death.” (Lev. 20:27) “Won't that just create
more
ghosts?” flashed across his mind, but he dismissed it instantly, muttering “ludicrous” to himself as he did.

His creatures were scared of death. God knew that. Even if ghosts didn't exist, humans would probably have made them up to comfort themselves. Humans did things like that—devising stories and characters to make themselves feel better and less afraid. It was touching in a way and for a moment, God softened. “It's not easy being human,” he said to himself. “It's quite frightening apparently. Death scares them terribly and they need to find ways to comfort themselves.” Still, was he supposed to just let it pass? No. Anyone who talked to a ghost needed to have large rocks hurled at their head until they were dead. It was the only thing to do.

These problems were frustrating to God because what he wanted to be doing was giving his people advice on important matters like—well, sideburns, for instance! “You shall not destroy the side growth of your beard,” he told Moses. (Lev. 19:27) God liked sideburns—
loved
them, actually. Most of his angels had them and he thought they looked quite virile. “Destroying them is a sin,” God thought. That's how he put it—not “cutting them off,” but “destroying them.” (God sometimes wondered if he would
look good with sideburns. He decided he would, very much so.)

“I also want to give them advice on buying and selling houses!” God proclaimed—and so he did. (Lev. 25:29–30) This felt, he had to admit, slightly trivial, given that he was God and all. (“Is it like Abraham Lincoln adding skin-care advice to the Gettysburg Address?” he wondered. No, that was completely wrong. For one thing, Lincoln wouldn't even exist for another 3,000 years! For another, what if he
did
offer skin-care advice in the Gettysburg Address? Would that be so bad?)

Again and again, maddeningly, God had to command his mulish, recalcitrant people to obey him. “If you do obey me,” he told them, “you will be untroubled by enemies, including wild animals.” (Lev. 26:6) (“Can I really promise that?” he briefly wondered.) “But if you
don't
obey me …” God considered what he wanted to say to his people, then nodded, having found the perfect thing: “If you
don't
obey me, I will send wild animals to eat your children.”
That
should do it, he thought. But just to be sure, he added “I will also make you eat your own children.” (Lev. 26:22–29)

God smiled, thinking of how his people would react to that one. “We don't want to eat our own children!” they would wail. Which was his point, obviously. Obey me and you won't have to! Disobey me and you will! There was little doubt this would work; humans had zero desire to eat their own children, God knew that. But
just in case
they still wanted to disobey, God lowered the boom on them.

“If you don't obey me,” he told Moses, pausing for effect … “I will no longer savor your pleasing odors.” (Lev. 26:31) God chuckled, thinking about how that one would land.

“Why isn't God asking us to grill meat for him anymore?”

“He no longer savors the smell!!”

“Noooooooooooo!!”

God thought he'd straightened everything out with his “eat your own children” threat—but there seemed to be something almost beyond reach in many of his people. They were proud, stubborn,
difficult.
No matter what God said or did, they seemed … unconvinced. That made him seethe. “I chose one small group of people on the entire planet to be mine and even most of them doubt my words!”

God felt especially bad for Moses. People had the temerity to question whether he was the only one who could talk to God! (Num. 12:2) “Anyone can claim to be talking to God,” they would say. “We can all talk to God, not just you, Moses.” Which was utterly absurd! God had chosen Moses to talk to; when other people talked to him, he ignored them. He had no interest in talking to anyone else! “I'm going to kill them all,” God decided.

Once again, Moses talked him down: “What will people think of you? What will the
Egyptians
think of you?” he asked—which was, you know, always an effective question. (“Why do I care so damned much what Pharaoh thinks of me?” crossed God's mind for a moment.) Fine, God wouldn't kill everybody, but
something
had to be done. Rebellion against Moses simply could not be allowed! Even Moses was starting to feel the pressure. “Why have you laid all this on me?” he asked God
(Num. 11:11), who briefly considered flying down and beating him to death for that. “I need to straighten things out,” God thought to himself, then nodded decisively. “I will appear before all the tribal elders and speak to them.”

“How should I appear before them?” God asked himself. “Given that some are doubting me, shouldn't I show up as a man, as I have several times before (Ex. 33:11), and prove myself to them?” He stroked his chin, then shook his head firmly. Too obvious. He would appear to the elders as a cloud. That was better, much more convincing. Should he then
talk
to the elders as the cloud? No, he had a far better idea than that. He would, as the cloud, excite the elders so much that they would speak in a kind of excited gibberish! (Num. 11:25)

If God's people were reasonable at all (which they were
not,
needless to say) this would have convinced them of the truth of what Moses was saying. But of course, as God knew beforehand, it would not convince them. Before long, they would be complaining again: “We want to go back to Egypt, we don't like it here,
waaaah.”
(Num. 14:2–4) God decided to punish them preemptively for this whining. “I will give them a huge windfall of meat,” he thought. “But guess what? The meat will be poisoned, haha!” So God blew a bunch of quail into camp. His people feasted on them and a lot of them died. (Num. 11:31–33)

“I cloud-inspired old men to speak gibberish and
still
they doubted me, so I had no choice but to kill a bunch of them, including some who were not even opposed to Moses and so what?” God told his angels, feeling completely justified in his behavior. The angels agreed with him absolutely.

God decided to punish his people further by sending them into battle against the Amalekites. Now make no mistake: God
hated
the Amalekites, despised them really. (Ex. 17:14–16) He wanted them wiped out; even the memory of them he wanted wiped out, and he had vowed to
do it
too! But before he did that, he would use them to punish his own people. (Num. 15:43–
45) “My subtlety sometimes amazes even me,” God thought to himself.

But
that
didn't work either. The discontent about Moses' authority continued, even increased. There were four ringleaders now—Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and Om—spearheading a group of several hundred people. God was furious. He really
was
going to kill all of them. And this time, there was nothing that Moses could say to stop him. The only question was how to kill them. Should he burn them up? Drown them? Have them eaten by wild animals? Force them to eat
each other?

No. God had a better idea, a spectacular idea, a “home run,” he would later call it. “I will cause the earth to open up beneath their feet and
swallow them,”
he cried happily. And not just the four ringleaders either—God was going to kill their entire families too, little children and all. (Num. 16:30–33) “I am sick and tired of this endless carping, I intend to put an end to it, once and for all,” he told his angels, who agreed that this was exactly the right thing to do. “After the earth swallows up those opposed to my boy Moses and deposits them in sheol—well,
that
should do it!” he announced. God wished that “hell” was ready for these troublemakers; eternal fire was what they deserved, and it was slightly frustrating that all they'd get was sort of grey endless nothingness. But no matter. The looks on their faces as they felt the ground beneath them open up would be priceless.