In our scripture readings for Creation Sunday, we hear the familiar story of Noah's Ark. God is so upset with how his creation of humanity has turned out, that he wants to press the reset button, and start over. He selects the only righteous family he can find, and instructs them to build a ship large enough to save the family, and at least two of each land creature, plus all the food they will need. Then, God floods the earth with 40 days of rain like we have never seen since, so that even the highest mountain peak is under water. And after all flesh has died, and the waters have dried up, obedient Noah offers a sacrifice, and God has a change of heart....from now on, God will follow a different plan to establish righteousness on the earth.....
The angel food cake that refused to rise. The LEGO model with an error in step 3 out of 120. The painting that looks blotchy and smeared. As creators, we all know the frustration when what we were trying to create, does not go as planned. The natural instinct is to rage at it, destroy it, preferably violently, and then try again. But then, sometimes as creators, we figure out that what we were trying to create, DOES go as planned, but what was UNPLANNED is that what we have created....turns out to be a MONSTER. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb. Charles Kettering and leaded gasoline. Are Elon Musk or Peter Thiel and their AI technologies next? What if the creator CAN'T undo their creation?
After watching the first ten generations of humanity play out over almost 1700 years, God figured out that he had created a monster. And God had a plan to undo it. It wasn't going to be easy – humanity was highly adaptive and very intelligent. To ensure that only his selected righteous family of humans would survive, God would destroy ALL land-based life, saving just enough copies of the other species for repopulation in a giant ship that could float above a global flood of many months. And in case you think this was a knee-jerk emotional reaction by God, remember that God had the length of time needed by Noah to prepare the ark, likely years, in which he could have changed his mind. This was a planned, calculated, humanocide – with the exception of Noah and his family – and the rest of life on earth was acceptable collateral damage.
This is not a side of God the Father we like to talk about very much! We tend to drift into a picture of God the Father as Michaelangelo's greybeard grandpa type, reaching out to Adam from the clouds. He looks wise, and gentle, and kind, and ….harmless. God is love, we say ….but God is also GOOD, the source of goodness, and a prerequisite for goodness is the unwillingness to surrender to evil.
And when God looked down before the 600th year of Noah's life, what God saw predominantly in humanity, was evil. Specifically, in Genesis chapter 6, wickedness, corruption... and violence. The pattern was set with Cain's jealous murder of his brother Abel, and has just continued from there.
And continues to this day! We are blessed to live in a part of the world where wickedness, corruption, and violence are at a minimum... and yet our headlines are always full. We make a grave error when we assume that God the Father is no longer upset by humanity's evil, or that the God of love CAN'T respond with the destruction of his creation.