But the biggest surprise for me: God deliberately put Eve in the serpent's path. Sacrificing the creation he had been so content with. In his image, so a beautiful and by all means perfect creation.
God, I was informed, is a dirty schemer. Heaven, I understood, is all false pristine gleam and pink styrofoam marble and fake mother of pearl. Lovely chaste angels with golden trumpets? I get an image of a Borgia Vatican where aspiring saints push pope candidates from staircases, poison each other during their last suppers and bash each others heads in with the burners used for the black and white election smoke.
But the chore of the discussion here seems God's omnipotence.
Omnipotent means for me that there isn't anything an all-Creator cannot do. We may still have no inkling of how large the universe really is, God is supposed to know every crook and nanny. Holding time, space, reality in one hand, a hologram of our existence in the other (as we recently discovered). He breakfasts on quarks, brunches on white dwarfs and dines on black matter and marinated black holes. A Flood the size of Andromeda? No problem for God. A cluster of sinning galaxies elsewhere? They will giganova in a second, burning millions of years longer than Sodom and Gomorrah.
That's omnipotence.
So I think: what the frag is he doing in this galactic backwater hole with its 25 Watt sun? If you look at the rest, even our milky way is no bigger than the Monaco kingdom on the world's map.
Maybe he's here because the Board of Deity Directors took his omnipotence license in and gave him one with restrictions.
So much for infallibility.And God saw, it was good.
And God said: "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing(s), and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them"
And the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma [of roasted oblation meat] and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done."
Who was Yahweh kidding? He doesn't have to destroy living creatures including mankind, mankind is quite capable to do that himself these days and in the days after the Flood he already anticipated that. (his new license left him a few providence abilities).
Since the year 33 AD, God hasn't shown one miracle, if you don't count Mary statues weeping tears of blood or Jesus winking and thumbs-upping from a piece of burned toast. We saw no seas split open, no warning cracks in the moon, and the miracle of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki fireworks Man crafted on his own account.
In the first three decades of Christian history, he seemed to have blown a fuse, the trickery with his son may have sapped his all-power. God may even rest in a heavenly home for the elderly now, slowly moving around the worn dentures in his mouth while he watches his favorite news channel, Fox, because it's the least demanding one. His days of glory are over and he may not even care.
Genesis already predicted his downfall.
One of the examples is Jacob.
His story features another protagonist I sympathize with more than the actual star of the show. Esau. It's obvious that Jacob was a weak, jealous man who opportunistically took to swindle. God forgave him and protected him. Yes, Yahweh had 'plans' with Jacob. But Esau was in terms of leadership and survival of the species much more useful. God however let it be known that he didn't like Esau from the very moment the boy was in his fetus phase. I understand - albeit vaguely - what the symbolic meaning in those words is (sorry for not adding chapter/verse numbers by the way), it's not about person Esau but about a heritage, a race. Politics, I even dare call it. I think the same applies to Noah's son Ham who was destined to become the forefather of the black skinned race (because God pushed Isaac into sending his son in exile, and don't we ever forget that).
But it's still a typical unfathomable remark.
'He, who as yet has to be born, does not have my blessing and will never get it. Gabriel! Let Me speak to Rebecca from the House of Isaac immediately!'
One would expect that once Esau showed up into the world, that world saw a monster. A creation of imperfection certainly he was- he possessed too much testosterone, he was hairy like a chimpanzee. Ginger, of all colors! In a world where every baby had dark curls and an olive skin.
But there was something hanging onto Esau's furry ankle: Jacob. "Ooooo...isn't he beautiful?" the midwife and Rebecca's household slaves cooed. Jacob was such a lovely doll that he would have starred in a commercial for baby powder, had the Bronze Age known tv.
But despite the fact that his twin brother is described as a stereotype obnoxious hulk with a low IQ (thank you, writers and illustrators for biblical children's storybooks), it didn't traumatize him. After Jacob fled like the coward he was, his big brother Esau quickly overcame his anger flare and became a successful and prosperous businessman and a righteous leader, showing a good humored sense of mercy. The kind of man I would trust.
Unfortunately it is not known if he looked at the stars at night, and gave God the finger. I would have done.
And God turned away from me, with burning cheeks.
There's the episode with Onan...I almost looked in my closet and under the bed after I discovered this Genesis snippet. God goes into a tantrum. Because the man said: 'Mind Your own business, will You' ? Religious people have always tried to squirm out from under God, they struggle and fight with him, knowing they are not supposed to do that. God enjoyed a fight, with his sweetheart Jacob (this I understood after having seen Hendrik Christian Andersen's quite homoerotic sculpture). But in the patriarchal dynasties, Onan's star hardly shines, his is not a household name like Abraham's. So what was God's beef with Onan? The explanation that is given, is infuriating unsatisfactory. And if Yahweh has a good and kind side, we certainly don't see it in the Onan episode.
In the Catholic sector, the chapter with the Nephilim - in two sentences - makes no sense at all. I envision Moses checking his Book of Genesis notes and furiously burn certain pages. Or did an early pope do this? You know, one of those who realized that being God's ambassador on earth was a great opportunity to beget mongrels, abuse young slave boys, steal from the poor and start European wars to get richer still.
Hebrew theologians offer more on the spawn of fallen angels who bred with earth women. The problem is, the telling 'Book of Enoch' does not exist any longer. So where did these theologians get their information? A useless question, scholars present wishful thinkers all the time.
They were supposedly the 'Sons of God', the angel fathers of the Nephilim. I can't help but wonder, if God was their father, who was the lucky mother?
Irrelevant. What is, is that in those days God's all-power over his heavenly population was obviously already waning. And while one can point at Man's given free will, God had trouble to contain released mankind too.
Maybe I'm the only one who hears it, but next to cracking a subtle little joke about star counting, God's words to Abram ring a forced self-confidence, bordering on despair."Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. So shall your offspring be."
If not God's biggest mistake, the Messiah idea is certainly his most over-ambitious one. We see a father who uses the fruit from his spiritual loins as a pawn and coaches him into experiencing a truly excruciating ordeal. And all to save inveterate mankind again... I have trouble to pair this with Infinite Wisdom. All I see is typical human cruelty and hatred.
There will be a part 3