The Story of God by Chris Matheson Page B

corrupt creatures. He probably should have drowned them all in the flood—but oh well, he didn’t, and now he’d promised not to.

Chapter Eleven
    Moses was a good friend. Ever since their rocky start, when God had tried to kill him, things had gone really well between them. God felt comfortable with Moses, at ease. For the first time, he felt understood. Moses’ brother Aaron, though? Well, he was a different story. Aaron was tough enough—a good disciplinarian and fighter. But he was kind of an idiot too.
    What had been God’s first commandment, his very
first?
“Do
not
worship other gods.” So what did Aaron do while God and Moses were up in the hills, talking? He melted down a bunch of gold (“which really should have been used for my temple,” God fumed) and created a golden cow to worship! (Ex. 32:2–4) “I should kill Aaron,” God thought. “No, wait—I should kill
all
of them.” And he was about to do it too, he really was (Ex. 32:10), when Moses talked him down a little bit, as only good and trusted friends can do.
    â€œIf you kill everybody,” Moses asked, “what will the Egyptians think of you?” (Ex. 32:12) This was an excellent question. What would they think (specifically, what would Pharaoh think) if God killed all his own people? It’s true, he could puppet the Egyptians into admiring him, but he didn’t want to do that. He wanted them to admire him for being himself, even if they were wicked and evil and destined for eternal punishment. He hadn’t worked so hard for fame to simply throw it away in such a cavalier way.So God decided not to kill the entire tribe. Moses did kill several thousand people for God, which was a good consolation prize. (Ex. 32:28) God sent a plague after that, which was satisfying too. (Ex. 32:35) “But I didn’t kill them all,” God noted to himself, feeling generous.
    A bit later, God and Moses were talking again. God had taken the shape of a cloud—he liked to do things like that—he was a bush another time (Ex. 3:4)—and he found himself saying to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord—a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in faithfulness and kindness.” (Ex. 34:6) Moses was silent. God felt odd for a moment. Had that sounded weird, the way he’d complimented himself in third person? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t think so. Everything he had said was true, obviously, but did it sound … insecure? What kind of God praises his own kindness and compassion in third person, he couldn’t help wondering. Then, quickly, he knew the answer to that question: The kind of God who doesn’t get
enough
praise and admiration from his own people, THAT’S WHO! “If they won’t talk about how compassionate I am, then
I
will, and if that’s insecure, then so be it!”
    Still, the little voice in his mind whispered: “But why do I feel the need to remind people that I’m God so often? Who said I
wasn’t?”
A disturbing thought: Was he so insecure that he doubted himself? That he somehow feared the humans were onto him and tried to maintain his position through bluster and intimidation? No. No no no.
    Moving on, God felt that he needed to clarify something important with Moses. “All fat is the Lord’s,” he told him. (Lev. 3:16) The humans had been cutting God out of his share of fat; they had been consuming it themselves and that was unacceptable, fat was his, ALL of it. (“What do you do with all that fat, God?” Satan asked him once. “Do you make candles?” God wouldn’t even dignify this with the true answer—which was that he liked to eat fat.)
    Next on the agenda, God needed to tell his people whatwas good for them to eat and what wasn’t. God had by this time sampled almost every kind of grilled meat there was; he considered himself something of a connoisseur. He