Lots of people have lots of questions about the flood of Noah in Genesis 6-9. Why did it happen? How did it happen? And who were those pesky Nephilim? I have answered many of these questions in another article. But another perennial question is how does the God of Wrath displayed in the Flood story relate to the God of Love seen in Jesus Christ. How can the evil of the Flood be justified in the light of the Goodness of God? Although I have touched on this in other articles on Divine Violence and Divine Sorrow, I would like to write more here on how the Flood connects with the larger problem of God and Evil.
I’m assuming I don’t have to answer this as if we are dealing with literal flood that literally covered the entire planet. I take it as both a reconstruction of an ancient cultural memory (lots of cultures, of course, experienced huge floods both in pre-history and ancient history), as well as an etiology (ascribing a divine cause for why such a flood occurred). As we know, there are many parallel stories from cultures near and far, which ascribe various divine etiologies for why the god(s) caused the flood(s). I think the Hebrew account is ethically unique (and especially inspired) because of two particular insights:
First, unlike most ancient flood etiologies, the Divine motive here seems uniquely concerned with human wellbeing. Other ancient etiologies portray the gods as concerned with petty issues, such as humans making too much noise and inconveniencing the gods. In Genesis 6, God is grieved because humanity is wicked and corrupt inside out, creating a society filled with violence (6.11), which in turn corrupts all other creatures and aspects of creation (6.12). It is even so corrupt that powerful “fallen ones” (Nephilim) use and abuse women for their own purposes (6.1-4). This society is so antithetical to human wellbeing and flourishing that God decides to start over entirely.
Second, the most unique ethical contribution is that the Divine method of starting over DOESN’T WORK. God’s intent is to re-start human society, giving Noah and family the same basic instructions he gave Adam and Eve (see Genesis 9). And yet, by the end of the chapter, in the story where a drunken naked Noah plagued by PTSD curses his own grandson, we are back to a corrupt, debauched, sexually predatory, and violent family not unlike the society that just got wiped out. And it only goes downhill from there. God’s solution of using “redemptive violence” to “heal” society just does not work at all. It is a complete failure. This leads us to yearn for a better way to redemption. The moral of the story is that violence is never a solution to humanity's illness, even when that violence is perpetrated by God himself. To heal humanity, we must be healed, not harmed over and over. This is a very deconstructive redeployment of mythical etiology.
Even with all of these moves, I don’t think this story meets up with the needs and insights of modern theodicy. The God revealed in Christ does not sit well with a God who wipes out an entire culture, even if that act of judgement is justified in some sense. Christ reveals that God suffers with us, and even dies with us, so that we may be raised to a new life. And while the text of Genesis 6 states that "every inclination of the human heart was wicked all the time", we may note that it is theoretically impossible for every inclination to be evil at all times. Such a condition would be a negation of being itself and result inevitably in a person’s death and self-destruction. Even Satan must will at least one good thing— self preservation— in order to continue existing and doing evil.
So, Noah's world may have been awful. But it could not have been devoid of all good. It had to have some redeemable aspects. And yet, in this story God did not redeem them. However, as we turn from the first book of the Bible (Genesis) to the last book of the Bible (Revelation), we note a drastic change of perspective. After the final "flood" of destruction overcomes the world in Revelation, we look for the final healing of all Creation in the final two chapters of the Bible. In those chapters, death itself is put to death, and every tear is wiped away, while God heals the nations. Instead of a world where "every inclination of the human heart was wicked all the time", we find a world where a healed humanity desires nothing but love and joy and peace all the time. We will at last be transformed into the image of the sinless Savior Jesus Christ, and become people who no longer desire sin at all. This is a complete inversion of the human condition that caused the Flood Myth.
If God can accomplish this, why didn't God accomplish this at the time of Noah? Why allow the world to be destroyed by wickedness instead of saved from wickedness?
If we can recover anything positive in the Divine action of the Flood Story, it does seem to point to the fact that wicked cultures do tend to rot from the inside, and get flooded with violence and tragedy, so that they collapse in a massive apocalypse. While there are material causes for social collapse (guns, germs, steel, etc.), there are also moral causes of social collapse (greed, hate, corruption). Usually it takes both happening at the same time to cause a society to collapse. When a society is plagued by moral corruption, and experiences material disaster, it no longer has the resilience to recover.
The end of social order tends to come suddenly in a flood. It is similar to watching someone crash from riding a skateboard too fast. There’s a phenomenon called “speed wobble”. When you reach a threshold speed, any slight correction to one side turns into a violent over correction, which requires an even more violent over correction to the other side, and so on. It leads to a death spiral of over correction that ends in a crash. And it seems that cultures do this too, as they wildly flail from one conflict to another, one crisis to another, one ruler to another, one political faction to another, one ideology to another, one fad to another. And I think our society is doing that right now.
You can call the resulting implosion "social dynamics" or “the law of cause and effect” or “divine wrath”. Perhaps they are merely synonyms when the same phenomena is viewed “from above” or “from below”. And we may well get to find out soon, in a very intimate way, what happens to wicked empires that experience material disaster. And then we will have to pick up the pieces and bind up the wounds after the crash.
But death and destruction are not the end of God's Story. The Flood of punishment and discipline that results from corruption and crisis are not God's Last Word. Rather, God's Last Word will be the same as his First Word. That Word is Life. That Word is Logos. That Word is embodied in Jesus, who is "The LORD who saves"
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