This New Yorker cartoon came to my attention via Hemant Mehta on Facebook. It often strikes me how few people notice the horror and brutality of the flood story in Genesis. It depicts God acting like an immature human being, one who would happily wipe out everyone else in order to have a bit of peace and quiet, or peace of mind, or whatever else it is that the self-centered person might desire. And that is not surprising, given that it is a reworking of a story about the gods trying to wipe out humanity because we had become too noisy.
Readers of the Bible need to be able to recognize when God is depicted in a manner that is a projection of humanity at its worst.
The way to make the world a better place is not to give free rein to our inclination to destroy others so that we can have our way. The way to make the world a better place is to resist that impulse, and to reject it, even when we see it projected onto the character of God in our own sacred scriptures.
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