The Story of God (6 page)

“Now I will kill all the firstborn Egyptian children,” God thought to himself, tickled by the idea. (Ex. 11:4–5) Pharaoh obviously wanted to relent by this time, but God wouldn't let him. God had his angels sneak into all the Egyptian houses and smother the children. (Ex. 12:29) He also had a few firstborn cows killed. (Unfortunately, the meat went bad by the time the angels got it back to heaven.)

God's “Operation Mass-Child-Murder” was a huge success. Pharaoh decided to let God's people go, which was exactly what Moses had been asking for. “I'll accept the victory,” God thought at first—then changed his mind. “For one thing, I am not
quite
famous enough yet,” he thought. “For another thing, I freaking love punishing Pharaoh and I am
still
not ready to be done.” God made his Pharaoh-puppet pursue the Hebrews toward the Red Sea. Looking down, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Double back,” God told Moses. “Trick Pharaoh into
thinking
you're lost, so that he will attack you.” (Ex. 14:1–4)
Which is exactly what happened. God parted the sea, allowing his people to cross. Then, when the Egyptians pursued them, he “unparted” it, drowning them all! (Ex. 14:27–28) It was fantastic, like the old days. “I'd forgotten how much I enjoy drowning people,” God nodded to himself.

God considered telling Moses to return to Egypt yet again, so that he could torment Pharaoh some more; he had an idea that pertained to swollen anuses that he was anxious to try out. But he decided he had more important work to do with his people.

It was time to lay down the law.

God started with the most important thing: Number one—Do
not
worship any god other than me. (“I could stop there, honestly,” he thought to himself, but decided to go on.) Number two—Really don't worship any other gods. Number three—Don't use my name in vain. (Ex. 20:3–7)

After that, God thought for a minute. What else did he have? Oh, here was one: Number four—Take one day a week off, just like I did when I made the universe. What else? Several came in a rush now: Number five—Respect your parents; Number six—Don't kill people; Number seven—No sex outside marriage; Number eight—Don't steal; Number nine—Don't lie, and …. What was the last one? Don't rape women? No, not that. Don't keep people as slaves? No. Don't abuse children or animals?
No no no.
Later, God would remember that what he had meant to say was: Number ten—Don't eat mice (Lev. 10:29)—but it had slipped his mind, so he said “Don't be jealous of each other” instead. Which was fine too. (Ex. 20:4–14)

And that was it, he was done. God sat back and crossed his arms, quite confident that these ten rules (“commandments,” he quickly corrected himself) would be all the guidance his people would need. Then, annoyingly, who should show up to talk about how hell was coming along but Satan. And, as always, he asked ridiculous questions. “Don't you think they already
knew
you didn't want them to worship any other gods?” he asked.

“So what if they did, Satan? I was
clarifying,”
God said, exasperated. “Besides, it wasn't all about me. I gave them some excellent laws! Respect your parents, for instance.”

“Don't they do that already?”

“What?”

“Don't they already respect their parents? Don't human beings naturally do that?”

“What are you driving at, Satan?”

“Aren't you just ‘commanding' them to do things they already do?”

God was incensed by this line of questioning. He had felt so confident before Satan arrived, but now … his body tightened as Satan continued, smiling pleasantly.

“The same with ‘don't kill' and ‘don't steal.' Don't they already know those things are wrong?”

“Not until my commandments they didn't!”

“Also, you tell them not to kill
now,
but aren't you going to
want
them to kill quite soon?” (Num. 31:37)

God glared at Satan, deeply irritated by his presumptions. His Ten Commandments were excellent, he knew that, and now Satan was mocking them. “I really should destroy him right here, right now,” God thought to himself. He was thinking of how he'd do it—throttle him?—impale him?—but then he had second thoughts. He took a breath, nodded, smiled coolly. “How is hell coming along?” he asked.

“A bit slower than expected,” Satan said. “It won't be ready for another hundred earth years.”

“But it's going to be horrible?”

“Extremely horrible.”

“I want it to be excruciating for them—
agonizing.”

“It will be.”

“Good, good.”

There was a strained pause. God and Satan looked at each other; God shifted his weight a little. Why did he always have
the awful feeling that Satan was laughing at him? Like he saw something and was amused by it. Which was infuriating. He was
God,
he demanded respect and obedience, he had created Satan and he was not going to be mocked by him. God nodded brusquely. “You may go now.”

Satan looked at God, nodded, and turned away without saying another word. As God watched him go, he seethed. “His criticism of my Ten Commandments was ridiculous.” But he
did
start thinking of other laws for the humans. “Only to supplement what I already told them,” he told himself.

“When a man sells his daughter as a slave,” God told Moses soon thereafter, “she should not be freed as male slaves are.” (Ex. 21:7) It was a good law, God thought. But there was a part of him that briefly wondered: “Shouldn't I tell Moses that it's
wrong
for a father to sell his daughter as a slave in the first place?” He thought this over for a moment.
Was
it wrong for a father to sell his daughter as a slave? God was “laying down the law” here and he wanted to get it right (which he knew he would, in any case, because he was perfect), so he asked himself again, “Is there anything wrong with a father selling his daughter as a slave?” The answer came quickly: There was nothing wrong with it, nothing in the least! “We're talking about
girls
here,” God chuckled to himself.

More ideas started coming to God. “If a child insults his mother or father, he should be put to death,” he told Moses. (Ex. 21:17) Another good law—strong and fierce and hard. He'd already stated that children should respect their parents, but he hadn't made clear what the punishment would be if they didn't. Now he had:
Death.
Again, God had brief second thoughts. Was there something … hmm …
unreasonable
about this law? No, not at all.
Authority
mattered and parents were earthly authorities—or fathers were anyway (maybe it was okay to insult mothers?), and anyone who criticized authority should be killed. This seemed obvious to God. “How should they be killed?” God asked himself, stroking his chin—then nodded, knowing the
answer: Throw rocks at their heads. (Deut. 21:21)

God was on a roll now. “When an ox gores a person to death, the ox should be stoned,” he told Moses. (Ex. 21:28) Again—
obvious.
The ox had done something wicked and needed to be punished for it. But again, God hesitated for a second. Was an ox capable of the kind of moral transgression that required “punishment?” Why not just slaughter it? Why stone it to death? “Because,” God announced, “some oxen choose to gore people to death!” Along the same lines, all those animals that were choosing to have sex with humans, or even thinking about it? They needed to be stoned too! Damned slutty goats, damned lascivious donkeys! They all had bloodguilt upon them! (Lev. 20:16)

Now God began to feel a different impulse. “Enough about
them,”
he found himself thinking. “I want to talk about me, I want to tell Moses what
I
want!”

God had been working on heaven for awhile and it was coming along fantastically well; a work-in-progress, sure, but you could see how utterly amazing it was going to be. Now God turned his sights to earth. It had been so drab up to this point; God wanted it to be brighter, more colorful and spectacular. “I know exactly how I want my temple to look.” God told Moses to demand that people bring him gifts: Gold, silver, copper, linen, fur, oils, spices, incense, pretty rocks—the works. (Ex. 25:2)

God had created the Grand Canyon and Mount Everest, not to mention Saturn (none of which he seemed to know existed, but never mind that), so in a way he felt a bit weird asking for incense and rocks. But that feeling didn't last long. He liked these things. They were the finest things earth had to offer and he would use them to have the humans create a shrine to him that would be absolutely breathtaking. God knew that Satan would describe his taste as ostentatious and showy. He didn't care at all. “Let him think I have the taste of a fruity old queen,” he said. “What do I care?” And it was true, he didn't, not in the least. He liked gold balls and pomegranate blue fabric and cherubs and
lots of incense—and so what? (Ex. 25:18, 28:33–34)

It felt so good, so
liberating.
God had worked hard creating the universe, then spent a lot of time and energy coming up with perfect laws for his humans to live by. Which was all rewarding, sure—but what about
him,
what about
his
needs? God felt that he was, in some deeply symbolic sense, “coming out of a closet,” and it felt wonderful. All along, God now realized, he had wanted two things: Fabulousness and spectacle! Now, finally, he was getting them.

God was feeling more and more comfortable with expressing himself now. (“I was so repressed,” he fretted briefly before shrugging it off. “But not anymore!”) “I'm even going to tell Moses exactly how I want meat grilled! I will tell him what kind of flour to use and what kind of oil—I will even tell him what kind of wine to serve it with!” (Ex. 29:40, Num. 15:7)

God was happy. His people were finally giving him what he wanted: A fancy shrine and well-cooked meat. All was well. Or as well as it could be, given that humans—even
his
humans—were essentially evil and corrupt creatures. He probably should have drowned them all in the flood—but oh well, he didn't, and now he'd promised not to.

Moses was a good friend. Ever since their rocky start, when God had tried to kill him, things had gone really well between them. God felt comfortable with Moses, at ease. For the first time, he felt understood. Moses' brother Aaron, though? Well, he was a different story. Aaron was tough enough—a good disciplinarian and fighter. But he was kind of an idiot too.

What had been God's first commandment, his very
first?
“Do
not
worship other gods.” So what did Aaron do while God and Moses were up in the hills, talking? He melted down a bunch of gold (“which really should have been used for my temple,” God fumed) and created a golden cow to worship! (Ex. 32:2–4) “I should kill Aaron,” God thought. “No, wait—I should kill
all
of them.” And he was about to do it too, he really was (Ex. 32:10), when Moses talked him down a little bit, as only good and trusted friends can do.

“If you kill everybody,” Moses asked, “what will the Egyptians think of you?” (Ex. 32:12) This was an excellent question. What would they think (specifically, what would Pharaoh think) if God killed all his own people? It's true, he could puppet the Egyptians into admiring him, but he didn't want to do that. He wanted them to admire him for being himself, even if they were wicked and evil and destined for eternal punishment. He hadn't worked so hard for fame to simply throw it away in such a cavalier way.
So God decided not to kill the entire tribe. Moses did kill several thousand people for God, which was a good consolation prize. (Ex. 32:28) God sent a plague after that, which was satisfying too. (Ex. 32:35) “But I didn't kill them all,” God noted to himself, feeling generous.

A bit later, God and Moses were talking again. God had taken the shape of a cloud—he liked to do things like that—he was a bush another time (Ex. 3:4)—and he found himself saying to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord—a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in faithfulness and kindness.” (Ex. 34:6) Moses was silent. God felt odd for a moment. Had that sounded weird, the way he'd complimented himself in third person? He wasn't sure. He didn't think so. Everything he had said was true, obviously, but did it sound … insecure? What kind of God praises his own kindness and compassion in third person, he couldn't help wondering. Then, quickly, he knew the answer to that question: The kind of God who doesn't get
enough
praise and admiration from his own people, THAT'S WHO! “If they won't talk about how compassionate I am, then
I
will, and if that's insecure, then so be it!”

Still, the little voice in his mind whispered: “But why do I feel the need to remind people that I'm God so often? Who said I
wasn't?”
A disturbing thought: Was he so insecure that he doubted himself? That he somehow feared the humans were onto him and tried to maintain his position through bluster and intimidation? No. No no no.

Moving on, God felt that he needed to clarify something important with Moses. “All fat is the Lord's,” he told him. (Lev. 3:16) The humans had been cutting God out of his share of fat; they had been consuming it themselves and that was unacceptable, fat was his, ALL of it. (“What do you do with all that fat, God?” Satan asked him once. “Do you make candles?” God wouldn't even dignify this with the true answer—which was that he liked to eat fat.)

Next on the agenda, God needed to tell his people what
was good for them to eat and what wasn't. God had by this time sampled almost every kind of grilled meat there was; he considered himself something of a connoisseur. He began with what was
good:
Anything that lived in water was fine, unless it didn't have fins or scales—in other words, if it wasn't a fish. In which case it was bad—no, that wasn't a sufficient word—he knew the right word—anything else was an abomination. (Lev. 11:12) Lobsters, for example? Abominations. Crabs? Abominations. Anything that lived in a shell?
Abominations!
“Why did I make them?” God briefly wondered. “Did I make them? I don't seem to have made reptiles—is it possible that Satan made reptiles
and
lobsters?” God decided that it was not possible: He had made everything, and if some of the things he'd made were abominations to him—well, what of it? He liked what he liked and hated what he hated. (Still, the question—could Satan have created lobsters?—did stick in his mind for a while.)