He is God, I am not

Reading:

Genesis 2

Genesis 3

Genesis 4

Genesis 5

Genesis 6

Genesis 7

Matthew 2

Psalms 2

This story has always been challenging for me, because I read it and contemplate what it tells me about God. As a child, I would wrestle with “How could God destroy everything yet still be a loving God?” Or “If God is all knowing and all powerful, why would He create something that would frustrate himself to the point that He must destroy it?” All kinds of troubling questions come to me as I contemplate things like Cain and Abel, the Sons of God having sex with women and bearing Nephilim, and the story of Noah all read more like the scary fables of old and of an authoritarian rule of force than like the gospel, the New Testament, etc. Then I think about my experience being a parent, and how I raised my daughter as a baby looks very different than now that she is older. I contemplate on how different (yet still like us) God must be if He is truly all powerful and all knowing yet is able to generate these situations where his patience eventually comes to an end and He must intervene.

As I read stories like Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, Herod killing the firstborn of Israel, God killing the firstborn of Egypt, and the description of Jesus given in Psalm 2, it pushes my comprehension of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit far beyond the image of “buddy Jesus” that is easy to swallow, easy to ignore, and easy to call up when you need a friend to talk to. If we cookie cutter and twist the Word of God into our own feelings and opinions of what God “should be like”, we’re making ourselves and our own way out as an easy to swallow “my personal truth” (that is truly a lie) that doesn’t require us to change. But no, The Way we are given is narrow, and He is God, not us.