Essay on The Holy Bible - The Nature of God in Genesis

1153 Words3 Pages

The Nature of God in Genesis

The depiction of God in the Bible’s story of creation, namely Genesis, brings to mind the image of an omnipotent, almighty and all-powerful child playing in a sandbox. Like a child his sole purpose seems to be to simply amuse himself, and possibly acquire a source of unconditional love. These needs are in contrast to the classic view of God acting with the idea of an ultimate plan. His actions clearly show that there is no perfect plan, or if there is it must be grossly overcomplicated. Consistently God makes poor decisions, and then eventually acts to fix the situation. The whole scenario conjures up an image of the crew of Apollo 13, alternately breaking things and then patching it together with duck tape.

God’s initial idea was a good one. He was alone in the void. Either out of boredom or perhaps out of a need to have someone else to confirm his greatness, he creates the Earth, plants, animals and most important (both for the sake of this argument and in God’s own mind) mankind. By design, man is supposed to be ignorant. So, for a time, God is happy and he has a source of praise. This is a rather mundane existence, however. As any kid will tell you, the game is no fun if you know you are going to win. Sure, it’s amusing for a while, but in the long run what the hell good is it? The game, in this case, is life, namely God’s life. (If that concept strikes you as odd, feel free to call it God’s existence) In any case, God makes sure there is temptation for man. It’s no accident that Adam and Eve have been made to live in close proximity to the one thing that is forbidden to them, the tree of knowledge. God wants his children to not o...

... middle of paper ...

...en dominion over animals, which is completely different. Dominion would mean that mankind were the keepers of animals, looking after them essentially. With Noah, God specifically says that the animals will fear man, and they will provide mankind with food. Once again, this forces us to ask why God didn’t just do this in the first place, with Adam? Once again this indicates not a plan on the part of God, but more like him throwing things together on the fly.

If God does have a plan, it seems to hold mankind’s welfare in little regard. A great example of this is the tower of Babel, where God willfully acts to destroy the clear progress of man. If God is not interested in mankind’s evolution, then it seems very clear to me that we should have as little to do with him as possible. It appears to be working so far.

More about Essay on The Holy Bible - The Nature of God in Genesis

Open Document