Free The Story of God by Chris Matheson Page B

whore, which she was. Many Israelite women were whores too, to be honest. Most women were whores, when you got down to it.) And that wasn’t even the worst of it; the men also started flirting with the whore’s god, who happened to be … Baal! (Num. 25:1–3) “What is the point of all this?” God began to wonder. “Why do I waste my time with these people? They’re hopeless.” This was never going to work, ever. He should pull the plug on the whole thing and move on. Maybe start over on another planet somewhere. There were plenty that would support life, God knew that. Why not do it? “I should, you know—I really should. I should just kill them all, send them to hell—which is nearing completion—and move on. That’s the sensible thing to do.”
    But he just couldn’t get himself to do it. As much as God hated humans—and he did, they were awful—he couldn’t help but feel … what was it? Not love exactly, he definitely didn’t
love
them … but attachment. He felt
attached
to them. He’d created this whole thing for them. They’d been through a lot together. He wasn’t ready to throw in the towel on the whole thing. “I can still make this work,” he told himself. “I have lots of ideas I haven’t even tried yet—big ideas, great ideas!”
    Also, he didn’t claim to have “perfect self-understanding”; he was God, he was complicated, multifaceted. If, for whatever reason, he needed his plan to fail utterly for a very long time—well, he must have good reason for wanting that! “The satisfactionwill be all the greater once I decide I
want
things to go as I say I want them to!” he told himself.
    God had all the men who were involved in worshipping Baal impaled: Problem solved. (Num. 25:4) Things got back on track again for a while. His people attacked the Midianites and defeated them. At first, they wanted to spare the women and children, but God straightened them out. “Kill everyone except the girls, then divide the booty,” he told Moses. (Num. 31:27)
    â€œWas that a crude way of putting it?” he asked one of his angels. “Did I sound like a pirate or something when I said ‘booty’? Would it be like the Buddha (who was a fake, needless to say, but just as an example) saying, ‘Kick the shit out of that guy?’” The angel assured God that he’d expressed himself perfectly—as God already knew he had, in truth.

Chapter Fourteen
    God’s people were on the verge of success now. He had led them to the River Jordan and they were poised to take the land that was rightfully theirs from the people that lived there. God thought it was funny that other people thought this land was “theirs.” That was ridiculous, of course; the land belonged to his people and they were just about to take it. The only problem was … his people didn’t seem to want to fight. (Deut. 1:26) God commanded them to go take their land, but they refused.
    God stood there with his hands on his hips for a moment, staring down, speechless. These people were unbelievable. God had intended to help them defeat their enemies, but now he changed his mind. By the time Moses finally shamed them into fighting, God had decided he didn’t want to help them anymore. Yes, he wanted them to take their land—he’d led them a long way to do so. But their laziness and cowardice infuriated him. He would let them lose. (Deut. 1:42–44) “Maybe that will teach them,” he told himself (knowing as he said it that it would not, that nothing would teach them; that they would never ever learn.)
    God’s people fought and, exactly as he wished, lost. Moses then spent a long time trying to inspire them to fight again. “Good luck,” God thought, annoyed. “My people drive me crazy,” he told some angels. “I brought them to the brink