Chapter 4 Chapter 3 God Overreacts—Flooding the World

At this time, there are many people in the world, and they also have daughters. The son of God sees the beauty of the daughters of mortals, and he chooses whichever one he chooses to marry as his wife. God said: "Human beings are flesh and blood, and my surging spirit will not remain on human beings from generation to generation; let them have a life span of one hundred and twenty years!" There were giants on the earth at that time, and there were also giants later, when the sons of God came to meet the daughters of mortals, they gave birth to (children)—they were the heroes and famous men of ancient times.

Now God sees that human beings have done great evil in the world, and all their thoughts are full of evil.So God regretted that he created man in the world, and his heart was pierced like a knife.God said: "I will wipe out the human beings I created from the world, from human beings to animals, crawling on the ground, flying in the sky, because I regret creating them. Only Noah found favor in the eyes of God." "Genesis" chapter six verses one to eight Now God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth! Every animal that is on the earth, every bird of the air, every creeping thing that crawls on the ground, and every fish that is in the sea, Fear you and fear you—they are all under your control. All living animals can be your food, just like vegetables, and I will give them all to you. But you are not allowed to eat living, bloody meat! In the same way, I will punish anyone who shed your blood or kill you, whether beast or man, even to every brother."

Whoever sheds human blood, his blood must be shed, for God created man in his own image.Be fruitful and multiply and prosper in the earth! God said to Noah and his sons, "As for me, I will make a covenant with you and with your descendants, and with every living creature that is here with you, every living thing that came out of the ark, including birds, livestock, and beasts. .I make a covenant with you that all flesh and blood will no longer be destroyed by floods, nor will floods destroy the earth again.” "Genesis" chapter nine verses one to eleven God is like some rulers who overreact to the criminal's weakness and dissatisfaction with the consequences, and take the other extreme.We've seen it happen over and over again in our own world: drug laws were laxly enforced in the 1960s; capital punishment seemed a relic of the past; sentences for violent criminals continued to shrink.Then the public and politicians rallied to criticize the rising crime rate.As a result, drug control laws have become tougher, the death penalty has increased dramatically, and prison populations have skyrocketed.In the early days of man, God also saw evil.His reaction was to regret creating human beings - in the language we translate - and then killing everyone in the world except for one family, the righteous Noah's family.

Before we talk about whether such a massacre is justified or not, we might as well think about it, God did not expect the things he created to do those evil things, so what would a god who regrets or regrets creating human beings think? There is a description in Midash, where God claims to have created man out of dust, "a mistake that makes me regret" God would admit such a thing!Is such a God still omnipotent?If not, then when he created human beings, he should have known that these little things would have bad thoughts in their hearts. There is an article in "Midash", comparing God to a baker who makes dough bad. If the baker himself hates it, then how bad the dough should be. "Another article simulates God as a tree-planting human, knowing that one day he must cut the tree down. However, God is not a baker with poor cooking skills, and humans are not trees. God should be omnipotent and omniscient. However, even He never thought that human beings are so capable of doing evil, so he decided to exterminate not only the human beings he created, but also animals, birds, and fish.

God's anger turned into anger, like a teenager in school who quit the school team if he couldn't beat others, and simply took the ball home.However, in this case, God is not just playing on the school team; moreover, the creator has no right to destroy the life he created.Parents cannot kill their children just because they have turned bad.As long as anyone has some justice and axiom in his heart, he will not destroy everything and start all over again, even God is the same.Saving a family doesn't resolve the moral issue.God seems to be obliged to find a way to solve problems together with the things he created.However, the Bible does not mention whether God took any improvement steps to find a way to improve mankind before sending the death sentence of extinction.Maybe just downgrade a code, maybe kill chickens and monkeys.At any rate, God should have tried to destroy all living things, regardless of good or evil, after trying more humane methods to no avail.But no.God jumped directly from inconsistent and rarely executed punishment to total destruction, setting a bad example for future legislators.This situation has unfortunately repeated itself time and time again throughout human history.

What should we learn from this unbridled, unbridled display of power?We know that God has the power to send a flood—any second-rate God can!But why is this God incapable of responding rationally, appropriately, and justifying punishment to evil forces?Why did he get involved so extensively?There are few convincing interpretations of the Bible commentators on this issue. So the theory of cause for effect comes in handy again. There may have been a major flood in the Middle East, causing most of the local humans and animals to drown.Many ancient cultures documented devastating floods on a massive scale.This terrible event became part of the consciousness and tradition of many writers of the Bible.So it is necessary to give a religious explanation, which is the story of Noah's Ark.From the perspective of anthropological history, such folktales are understandable.But to regard it as a story of God showing justice and axioms, further explanations that are reasonable must be made.

Traditional commentators have focused on a few plausible explanations.First, the Flood was Cain's punishment for murdering Abel, but it was only postponed.If this is the case, this kind of punishment is too unreasonable, because the person who committed the crime became the lord of the city, and lived a long life and had a successful career, but his descendants after several generations, whether innocent or guilty, all Extinct.The second point—the characteristic that best describes this in terms of eugenics—is that the Son of God (whoever he is talking about) took the daughters of mortals as his wives and produced mortals.It is also mentioned here that there were still "giants" in the world at that time. Although there is no scientific evidence, some people speculate that this strange content may represent a distant collective memory from the ancient times. Anderts or other primitive creatures collectively roamed the surface of the earth.In short, God needs to clear the earth of the growing hybrids so that humanity can flourish.Any eugenic solution would necessarily eliminate innocent babies along with guilty adults.However, this point is hard to justify in the ears of modern people.

There is a chapter in "Midash", which compares the flood to "the plague in nature, sweeping the world, and the good and the bad suffer together." However, after all, the flood is different from the plague, and the flood is God's deliberate punishment.Some commentators claim that God actually gave the past a warning and an opportunity for repentance.Judging from this interpretation, God’s mention of a human lifespan of 120 years is nothing more than a packaged threat: Humans have 120 years to cultivate their virtues, or God will destroy them.Another version of this argument is that Noah exhorted his people to stop their violence.It's just that his persuasion was ineffective, and God fulfilled his threat to destroy all mankind.

The apologetic interpreter rejects any unjust possible interpretation of God's destruction of the world.For these commentators, God's justice is a constant and everything else is variable.However, the God in the Jewish Bible is not only a teacher, but also a student. Maybe it was a mistake for him to send the flood.He regretted his decision to destroy the world, just as he regretted his decision to create human beings before, which seems to be tantamount to admitting his fault.When the flood was over, God made a deal with Noah, and he promised never to destroy the world by flooding again.Yet he knew that human beings could still go bad.That's right, he understands the promise never again, "I will no longer curse the earth for man's sake, because man's thoughts have been evil from childhood." ("Genesis" Chapter 8, Section 21)

In any case, he completely forbade himself to send any more floods.This determination shows that God may understand that he has made a mistake and does not want to repeat it.When he saw the vicious appearance of the villain, he had a new understanding of himself in shock: this kind of evil creature was created exactly according to his own appearance, so maybe he also has the ability to do evil ability, he himself must learn to control this ability.Just as a person understands that he needs a public commitment to control his destructive instincts, God binds himself by promising never to send a flood again.Even God needs to obey the law.

After the great flood, God did what he should have done before destroying all living things.He promulgated a set of laws and regulations, which clearly stated: "The murderer pays for his life, whoever sheds blood, his blood will also be shed." Through this practice, God recognized one thing, that is, the viciousness of human beings can be controlled, at least Some are bound by law.Henceforth, God's dealing with evil will be implemented in a way that can be followed and targeted at the offender, rather than being treated as a "sin". In addition, his laws will be derived from the experience of humans and God, not by the law. He is arbitrary.Human beings, having seen the consequences of the absence of laws, understand the necessity of laws. God not only takes success as an example, but also failure as a lesson. Such an image of a teacher is amiable.As any good teacher knows, admitting mistakes and learning from them is an excellent teaching technique, and in many ways better than pretending to know everything or be perfect.In my first year as an assistant professor, I asked a first-semester mindfulness student a question about the judge's instructions to the jury in a case we were studying.He looked at me with puzzled eyes, and talked about him from left to right.For a moment I realized I was asking the wrong question—I was assuming the case was for a jury when it was for a judge.I immediately admit that I was mistaken.Since then, the atmosphere in the classroom has been lively and open.Students are now less afraid of making mistakes, because even the professor on stage admits mistakes.For several years since then, I have deliberately replayed this confession. An important factor in the mystery of the Jewish Bible (especially the book of Genesis) is that every character in the plot is not perfect, including "the" Jewish God who plays the leading role is great and powerful, but Even he wasn't perfect, at least not at first. For those who believe that God must be perfect, there is some religious plausibility to this argument. A perfect God understands that in order to be a good teacher, he must be an imperfect, learning God in front of mankind. Mistakes can be argued, persuaded and willing to repent.Therefore, he expressed in human language that he regretted creating human beings.As we shall soon see, he is willing to argue with a mortal even over what he has created.God is willing to admit that his heart is changed by mortals. He is really a great teacher.If we want to learn how to be good teachers, there are many teaching methods that can be learned from the never-stop learning God in Genesis. So the story of the Flood is about God overreacting to evil;In fact, God's learning and teaching process continues to the next story in the Bible.There, God seems to be backtracking, and Abraham taught him an important lesson: first weigh everyone's merits, and then show justice.Teachers become students and students become teachers.There must be someone to guide God's justice and axioms on the right track, so that it will not be irretrievable and beyond redemption.

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