Maybe it's age, but I'm starting to warm up to the God of the Old Testament big-time.
That's the one you're not supposed to like. The one you're supposed to feel embarrassed by. Even outraged. To hear religion-hater Richard Dawkins (and his tedious hordes of mini-mes) tell it, the Old Testament God is the personification of all cosmic vice. In Dawkins' words, he is "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction".
My immediate response is: okay—maybe he was unpleasant at times. Who isn't? And besides, anyone who ever does anything big is "unpleasant" every once in a while. Goes with the territory. Nice guys finish last, remember? Sometimes you have to kick ass to get stuff done. Everyone knows that. And in this case, we're talking about the Being who created the heavens and earth, and everything therein. You want big? That's big. Occasional unpleasantness is a given at that scale. You can't even hire construction guys to add an extra room on to your house without having a moment or two of unpleasantness. Think about the gargantuan task of trying to create, populate, and properly maintain a world.
A more serious accusation from the God-haters is that the God of the Old Testament isn't just unpleasant—he's evil. And he's evil because he repeatedly committed genocide.
But again, I'm not convinced. Sure, he committed genocide. But that presumes genocide is, by definition, always evil. Maybe God had extenuating circumstances.
Let's see what the Bible says.
God's first genocide was his biggest and most spectacular: the flood. He created mankind, and—well, it just didn't work out. "Every intent of the thoughts of (man's) heart was only evil continually", Genesis reports. But it was the ensuing evil human action which really sealed the deal for God. In a nutshell, "the earth was filled with violence". That means, I assume, colossal rates of murder, beating, rape, child molesting, brutal slavery, and more. Human beings had taken an Edenic paradise and turned it into hell on earth. God wanted a do-over. A hard reset.
So, yeah, God killed everyone, minus Noah and his family. Wouldn't you, if things were that bad? After all, you'd be delivering justice to the wicked, and maybe even mercy to their long-suffering victims. Just thinking out loud here.
As it happens, God covenanted after the flood to "never again destroy every living thing, as I have done". But—thankfully—his covenant didn't rule out more selective massacres.
Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, were cesspools of horror. The town fathers had institutionalized the gang rape of male city visitors, normalized rank sexual depravity in general (which I assume included sexual abuse of children), and topped it all off with pride, gluttony, and abominable selfishness. Even surrounding towns began crying out to God to do something. I feel sick just thinking about it.
And obviously, God did too, because he killed the entire populations of both gang-raping, probably child-molesting cities with the Bronze Age equivalent of Fat Man (fire and brimstone raining down from heaven). Why would I feel bad about that?
Here's another example of divine genocide (of a sort, anyway). After God sends ten plagues to Egypt, Pharaoh finally decides to free his Israelite slaves. Moses accordingly leads the people out of Egypt and toward the Red Sea, only to discover that Pharaoh has changed his mind, and is now leading his army out to re-enslave them.
God then parts the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to cross over on dry land. But when the Egyptian army follows, God returns the sea to its former state, drowning the entire Egyptian army. So, God (the original abolitionist) kills off a pro-slavery army trying to re-enslave the Israelites, after Pharaoh has already promised them freedom. Again, no complaints here.
The common thread in all these stories is that the people God kills are incorrigibly evil. They're a scourge to humanity. They commit murder, rape, child abuse, enslavement, cruelest tyranny, random beatings—you name the atrocity, they're committing it. And they're not changing their ways. They're committed to doing the wrong thing even after multiple warnings and chances to improve. These are the reprobate types Paul refers to in Romans 1—people who know they're doing evil, and delight in it. They hate God, they murder, they violate every innocence and trust. And for God, when things get bad enough, there's just nothing else to do with them but say goodbye.
I've been going somewhere with this. And where I've been going is toward a pitch to God himself, right here, live on SteynOnline. It's Stage One of what I hope will be a fruitful negotiation. (After all, when it comes to negotiating with God, Abraham did it. So did Moses. And Hezekiah. I might as well give it a go).
Here goes:
Hello, God.
I'm just going to come right out and say it: How about a comeback tour?
You fried the sickos in Sodom and Gomorrah. You drowned all those Egyptian slavers. You even wiped out the entire population of the earth, minus Noah and his family. So how about you help us out right now with a special new demographic reset?
I use the word "reset" on purpose. You see, I want to propose you begin your comeback tour by focusing on all the control freak politicians and bureaucrats who exploited a global panic (which they themselves had cynically manufactured) in order to effect a "Great Reset". These people make Max Robespierre look like Russell Kirk in a coma. They are—even as I type this—still busying themselves trying to destroy every single salutary aspect of human life and community. And while they've done all their damage in the name of public health, they're actually doing it all in service to themselves. For in their false, pagan morality—the kind you always used to say you hated —they are the gods. Not you. They are the ones who will improve us, heal us, bless us, save us. Not you. They are the ones who will rule heaven and earth. Not you. And their moral code, such as it is, is a putrescent stew of all the most noxious, even demonic, ideas imaginable. I can send you a detailed list in a follow-up note, if you'd like.
In any case, the price these control freaks are now extracting for the patronizing, self-serving, technocratic megalomaniac globalist totalitarian "beneficence" we never asked them for, and don't want, and which they're imposing on us against our will, is our sovereignty, our most basic freedoms, our humanity, our families, our traditions, our beliefs, our obligations, our identities, our nations, our allegiance, our worship. In short, these people are your enemies. And ours. We're in this together, God. We're on the same team.
These are the people, by the way, who are still pushing an injection—including to small children and pregnant women—who we (and they) know is nowhere near as safe or effective as they say. It is harming people. And it was Paul who told us that our bodies are the temple of God. Remember? He said, "your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God". And then he made a promise in your name: "If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are."
"God will destroy him". That's a big call. I'm going to assume Paul wrote that with your permission. I therefore respectfully suggest you make good on that. You have to. A deal's a deal. You have to stop these people, just like you did in the old days.
If that's not enough to convince you, God, consider this:
Jesus said the truth would make us free. He also said the father of all lies, the "deceiver of the whole world", was the devil. But now recall the great resetters consistently lied about those injections, censoring accurate information we deserved in order to make a proper risk/reward calculation for ourselves. Many of us might well have needlessly damaged ourselves and our children—needlessly polluted the temples you gave us—because these would-be gods abused our trust, lied to us, and even forced untested material into our bodies. They also lied about every single other aspect of the whole thing: where the virus came from, how lethal it was, what would protect us, what wouldn't, and more. They perpetrated the biggest propaganda fraud in history, to our great physical, emotional, spiritual detriment.
These are the people who, for months, used the strong arm of the state to incarcerate us. They punished us just for leaving our homes to attend a funeral, or wedding, or visit an elderly loved one (many of whom they forced into isolation). Yet they happily permitted "social justice" protests to occur. They even let rioters riot (that is, they let rioters pay violent tribute to the malevolent gods Naomi Wolf mentions here). But in addition to everything else, they forbid us, under pain of fine and imprisonment, to let us congregate to worship you, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Ancient of Days, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They wouldn't even permit us to get together to sing a few hymns to you. And so far, they've gotten away with it all scot-free.
That's gotta upset you. Seriously. You have to be able to feel that.
I could list many more of the most tyrannical, unconscionable impositions. But I'm going to pause here, and just say, once again, that now would be a great time for you to do a comeback tour. Boy, would it ever. These people wanted a Great Reset. How about you "great reset" them all into, shall we say, "outer darkness"? I don't really care what you do with them (if you catch my drift) as long as we never have to see them, hear them, or be tyrannized by them ever again.
You've done it before, God. Those who hate you fault you for the selective, well-warranted demographic pruning you used to do back in the old days. But I don't fault you. Most of the people reading this don't, either. You just did what you needed to do for justice to prevail.
Maybe it's time for justice to prevail again. I reckon that means a 2023 tour. The sooner, the better.
Just a thought. And a sincere hope. Amen.
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