So I was actually out in public the other day and I heard a father yelling at his daughter. This guy was completely flying off the handle. Yelling. Screaming. Bellowing. Right near the end of his tirade he bellowed, “I AM YOUR FATHER!” and with that, half of the people in the store looked up, since he could have been talking to any one of us. It actually sounded like the voice of God. Well, God or Darth Vader, I thought. Both of them are big on the “I am your father” thing. Frankly, either way – God or Darth Vader – it’s not great news for the kid. Both of them can and will kill you. Darth Vader can do it with a thought and he doesn’t even have to be really angry.
Now, I know a little bit about God. I read a book once. Really, just about everything I know about God came from that book, but anyway, He can and will kill you too, He just has to be more angry than Lord Vader. Remember, God is the guy who sent fire from the heavens down on Sodom and He is also the guy who flooded the whole world. Except for one guy! And he didn’t even take that one guy up to heaven while the flooding was going on. He put that guy on a boat with his wife and a bunch of pets. So I’m thinking that God wasn’t really feeling all that great about Noah, either.
What I don’t get about the flood is that Noah knew the flood was coming and all he did was build one boat. And his plan worked! But Noah wasn’t the only guy in the whole world who had a boat, was he? There had to have been other boats, right? I imagine some guy on his boat, it rains for 40 days and suddenly the land is gone and the guy thinks, “Well, what the hell, where’s the land?” Then, of course, the guy’s wife starts in on him with, “Well, you wouldn’t ask for directions, would you? Now look. NO LAND! Nice work, Mr. Navigator!” And then the guy would say, “One, I’m not lost, the land is just gone. And Two, I wasn’t getting out of the boat because IT WAS RAINING!”
Lucky for that guy and all the other guys with boats, besides Noah. God took pity on them. And drowned them.
Now, Noah, on the other hand, was set up relatively well. His wife knew what was going on, so she didn’t bug him much. Also, he had plenty of food. I don’t know how many animals Noah had left on the boat when the flood was over, but I’ll bet you it was a lot less than he began with.
OK. I really don’t know where this story was going, but now you know what happens in my brain when I’m out somewhere. Somehow it goes from some guy yelling at his kid to me wondering which animals Noah cooked.