The Story of God by Chris Matheson

Author:Chris Matheson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing
Published: 2015-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

That was the beginning of the dark times.

Things went horribly for God’s people for a very long time and, frankly, God didn’t much care. He was feeling more and more finished with his people. He didn’t want to help them anymore; what he wanted to do was berate them and tell them how wicked they were for several hundred years. He used his prophets to do this.

Isaiah came first. There were things God liked about him. The part about God’s enemies’ babies being dashed to pieces on rocks was excellent. (Isa. 12:16) Also good was when Isaiah talked about how God had killed all of the other gods. (Isa. 26:13–14) (“Fine, they did exist the whole time, whatever. I had my reasons,” God thought curtly to himself, then smiled, remembering the other gods screaming as they were mauled by she-bears.) God also liked the way Isaiah capitalized every version of his name. “There is no anger in Me,” Isaiah had God saying, for example. “Isaiah’s right! I am so great that all descriptions of Me should be capitalized!” God exclaimed. He also appreciated that Isaiah correctly perceived that there was no anger in Him. Anyone opposed to Him would be set on fire, that was true. (Isa. 27:4) But not out of anger. No. Out of righteousness. Ultimately, however, God thought Isaiah was a bore. He talked way too much for way too long, and God was glad when he died.

Jeremiah, who came next, was even worse. He was duplicitous—pretty obviously using God to curry favor with the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. Even his own people saw through Jeremiah, locking him up for telling them to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar again and again. (Jere. 38:6) What Jeremiah did, however, make clear was how very much God hated his people by this time. They were stupid and unintelligent. (Jere. 4:22) They were, let’s be blunt, firewood. (Jere. 5:14) Yes, it was sad but true; God had decided to burn his own people like firewood, that’s how much they mattered to him. They had hurt his feelings too many times. He loathed them by this point and he told them so: “I come to loathe you,” he said. “You are dung and I will make an end of you.” (Jere. 8:2) It had gotten that bad; God’s people were shit to him and he would wipe them out. He didn’t care what people would say about him anymore—didn’t care about his fame or reputation or anything. It was time to end this thing and start over—right now.

And then—and God couldn’t really understand this—for some reason, he didn’t end it. When God looked back on this period of time much later, it seemed a blur to him. Things were going badly, his people were losing, he was furious with them, even more furious at their enemies—but strangely ineffective at changing anything.

“I am all powerful, yet nothing ever seems to go the way I want it to. That’s bizarre,” God thought to himself.

He kept complaining about his people.

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