God Is Disappointed In You Page 10

  “The statue’s head was made of gold, its chest and arms were made out of silver, its midsection was made out of bronze, and its legs were cast from iron. The statue’s feet were made out of clay. Then a giant boulder rolled into the statue, shattering it into a hundred pieces.”

  Everyone held their breath, waiting for the king’s reply.

  “That’s it. That was my dream. But what does it mean?”

  Daniel explained that the statue’s golden head represented Babylon. Babylon would someday be defeated and replaced by another empire, represented by the somewhat less impressive silver chest. This empire would itself be defeated, and its successors would in turn be replaced by increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional nations, until one day when God would come down like a boulder, smashing all the kingdoms so that he could rule the entire world as the Kingdom of God.

  “Well, I don’t take a lot of solace in those predictions,” the king said, “but at least now I can put this whole dream business behind me, and focus on the company picnic.”

  King Nebuchadnezzar threw an enormous company picnic for all the satraps, governors, and middle managers of the Babylonian Empire. As a team-building exercise, he decided to have everyone bow down to the same giant idol at the same time.

  “This is a very simple game,” Nebuchadnezzar explained. “When the music plays, start bowing! To add to the fun, we have constructed this blazing furnace so that anyone who doesn’t bow will be burned alive. Okay, everybody ready?”

  The flutes and the drums struck up and, on cue, everyone bowed down to the statue.

  “Hey, the Jews are cheating!” somebody complained.

  Nebuchadnezzar looked over and saw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, still standing while everyone else was bowing. He called them over.

  “Look, maybe you guys didn’t understand the rules. When the music starts playing, you’re supposed to bow down to that statue over there. Otherwise, I got to throw you into this furnace. Got it?”

  “I understand the rules,” one of them said, “and believe me, if I’d thought there was any chance of getting incinerated at the company picnic, I would have called in sick. But our God won’t let us bow down to idols, and frankly, I’m more afraid of him than I am of you.”

  When Nebuchadnezzar heard this, he snapped. He ordered his servants to stoke the furnace before throwing the trouble-makers in. “I’ll show you some team-building!” he barked as the servants stoked the furnace. The fire was so hot now that the soldiers disintegrated as they threw the three men into the flame.

  Inside the furnace, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, stood miraculously unharmed. They waited there, enjoying the heat until Nebuchadnezzar ordered his servants to fish them out. They emerged from the furnace without a single hair out of place. King Nebuchadnezzar was so impressed by their devotion to their god, and by his devotion to them, that he welcomed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego back into the land of the non-burning and rewarded them all with nice fat promotions. Surviving an execution was also a good way to get ahead in those days.

  Not long after the thing with the furnace, Nebuchadnezzar was walking around his balcony, taking in the Hanging Gardens, when he suddenly went insane. For the next seven years, he lived like a wild man, growing a feathery, totally out-of-control beard and fingernails like bird claws. He would run around on all fours and tear grass out of the ground with his teeth, and people would say, “Hey, didn’t that guy used to be king?”

  After he went crazy, Nebuchadnezzar’s son Belshazzar took over ruling the Babylonian Empire. At one of his dinner parties, he thought it would be fun to eat off the holy goblets and plates the Babylonians had stolen from the temple in Jerusalem. Halfway through the dinner, a large phantom hand appeared in mid-air and began writing strange words on the wall. This bothered the king so much that he summoned Daniel to make sense of the writing.

  Daniel told Belshazzar that using the holy dinnerware made God extremely upset and that, consequently, his reign would be coming to an end that very night. God doesn’t like people using his cup.

  During dinner, Babylon was conquered in a sneak attack by the Persians, and Belshazzar was thrown out like an old calendar.

  As the new ruler of Babylon, the Persian King Darius was so impressed with Daniel, and his abilities to interpret dreams and supernatural graffiti, that he announced his intention to make him second-in-command over his entire empire. This made everyone else in the Babylonian civil service extremely jealous. They were all facing layoffs as a result of their merger with the Persian Empire, but now the new guy was going to be the Vice Emperor?

  “Daniel? The dream guy?” they asked incredulously.

  It was even worse for the Persian ruling class, who’d spent their whole lives climbing the corporate ladder.

  “Thirty years and I’m still the Associate Vice President in Charge of Cups and Bowls,” one of them complained. “Now, suddenly, some prisoner of war is going to get the number two job? I’m shitting pure rage right here!”

  So a group of Daniel’s disgruntled co-workers got together and hatched a crafty plan. After seeing the stunt Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had pulled during the company picnic, they knew that Daniel’s religion wouldn’t allow him to worship another god.

  So they went to King Darius and said, “You know what, King? You’ve been working so hard, and doing such a great job, we all think you deserve a little treat. How about this? For the next month, everyone in the whole empire will have to pray only to you. And just to make it official, we’ll pass a law which says that anyone who worships another god during that time will be dropped into a pit of lions. What do you think of that?”

  “Well,” the King said, “that does sound pretty nice. If you all think it’s a good idea, I suppose it would be okay.”

  Despite the new law, every morning Daniel would kneel toward Jerusalem and pray to God, just as he had done his entire life. The advisers, peeping through Daniel’s window, called the police the moment he began praying. King Darius was annoyed. He had no idea that Daniel’s religion would trap him into violating the law.

  “I thought that was kind of a weird suggestion,” the king said. “I’m so sorry, Daniel, I let myself get tricked into signing this stupid law. But unfortunately, stupid or not, it is the law. Once I sign it, even I have to obey the law.”

  Having offered his apology, the king had Daniel lowered into the pit of lions. King Darius went home, but was too bummed thinking about Daniel getting torn apart by lions to enjoy his evening snack or watch his dancing girls. “I think I’m just going to go to bed,” he announced glumly.

  The next morning, he got up and went down to the lions’ den, expecting to mop up whatever was left of his friend and protégé. Instead, he found Daniel alive and unscratched. God had spared Daniel just as he had saved Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the team-building exercise.

  The king had Daniel hoisted out of the lions’ den. Then, to teach them a lesson, he threw the advisers who’d tricked him into the pit of lions, along with their wives and children. The lions immediately devoured them and everyone had a good laugh.

  Despite the fact that he was a Jew in the Persian Empire, Daniel never stopped dreaming. Literally.

  He began keeping a dream log, which was soon filled with apocalyptic visions of the future and the end of the world. In his dreams, the Jews would be allowed to return to Israel. They would rebuild the temple. Then they’d be invaded again. The next nation to occupy Israel would put an end to animal sacrifices at the temple and, three and a half years later, the world would come to an end. The important thing was the Jews had to keep the faith, even as the whole world crumbled around them.

  Part Five

  The Minor Prophets

  In which we learn the bright side of marrying a whore, God punches many things, and the wicked are set on fire.

  The Minor Prophets are sort of like the Bible’s AM radio dial. They were constantly railing against the
government and complaining about how the nation had lost its moral compass. These prophets were uniquely blessed with the ability to see everything wrong about everyone else. The Minor Prophets basically existed to give Israel poor body image.

  In their defense, they lived during anxious times. The Minor Prophets wrote after Israel had been split into two kingdoms: Israel and Judah. Some of the books were written just before the two kingdoms were conquered, respectively, by Assyria and Babylon. Some were written after they were conquered, while the Jews were forced to live in captivity. Others were written after the Jews were allowed to return to Israel. Regardless of when they were written, the Minor Prophets had one consistent theme: something is about to go horribly wrong, and it’s all your fault.

  Hosea

  Hosea was a prophet whose wife was always cheating on him. Every day, Hosea would go out into the town square and call upon the people of Israel to change their ways.

  “You’ve turned your backs on the Laws of Moses!” he’d shout. “You’ve been worshiping pagan gods, and giving the sacred raisin cakes to your idols, WHEN YOU KNOW THOSE ARE GOD’S FAVORITE!”

  But his words would be lost on the crowd because everyone was snickering. They all knew that while he was preaching, his wife, Gomer, was somewhere getting boned by a sailor or a stonemason or some swarthy goat herder.

  At the end of each day, Hosea would pack up his pedestal and his tip jar and return home to find his wife missing. Knowing what she was up to, Hosea would stomp through the streets looking for her. When he found Gomer, they’d created a huge scene in the middle of the street, much to the amusement of the people of Israel.

  But the next day, Hosea would be back in the marketplace, condemning the people’s idolatry and general lack of enthusiasm for following God’s laws. Once again, his words were ignored as the crowd began laughing at Hosea, the cuckold.

  Hosea and Gomer had three children. Or, I should say, Gomer had three children, as Hosea wasn’t the father of any of them. Sometimes she’d disappear with a new lover for months at a time, but inevitably the romance would sour, or her new lover would get tired of her and throw her out into the street. Every time, she came crawling home, and Hosea always took her back. One time, she ran off with a guy who decided to make a few extra shekels by selling her off as a slave. In what had to be an all-time low, even for Hosea, he actually had to pay his wife’s lover in order to buy her back.

  People could not believe that Hosea would put up with Gomer after all the times she’d stepped out on him. Hosea was back in the town square preaching when someone finally worked up the nerve to ask him why he didn’t simply throw his wife out on her ass.

  Hosea shrugged, saying that his relationship with his wife was like God’s relationship with us. That we are always cheating on God, leaving him for some sexy new idol or chasing some fleeting object of our desire, but no matter how badly we break his heart or how ridiculous we make him feel, he is always prepared to swallow his pride and take us back.

  And the people finally understood what Hosea had been preaching about the whole time.

  Joel

  Dear Israel,

  Have I got a prophecy for you! It mostly involves grasshoppers. Because you’ve screwed up God’s plan for you so badly, he has decided to push the red button, wipe your country off the face of the Earth and start over from scratch.

  This is how the end will come:

  Locusts will eat your crops. Then there will be a horrible drought. People will die of thirst. Your fields will turn to dust, and the quality of your olive oil will definitely suffer. But that’s just the beginning. The grass will dry up, the streams will disappear, and all the little sheep and cows will turn their heads sadly towards heaven and cry for rain. Doesn’t that image just break your heart?

  On the other hand, I also have a much nicer prophecy to share with you: if you all repent and start living the way Moses taught you, God will forgive you.

  If you apologize to God, give up bacon and put away your idols, the rain will come back. Your crops will grow. Your fruit will taste better than ever. Your cows and sheep will stop their crying. Your kids will become prophets. Your old people will have these really amazing dreams.

  All the foreigners will go back to wherever the hell they came from. Egypt will dry up like a prune.

  The Assyrians will watch as their sons become male prostitutes. Wine will start flowing from the mountains in rivulets, and little streams of milk will start trickling through the hills.

  All you have to do is say you’re sorry and go back to him.

  Signed,

  The Prophet Joel

  Amos

  Amos was a shepherd who moonlighted as a prophet. He also did a little tree surgery on the side. During Amos’ time, Israel was at peace and its economy was starting to really take off. But amidst these boom times, Amos was disturbed by the greed and moral decay he saw all around him. The people of Israel had become soft and cosmopolitan. They sat on Corinthian leather, drank imported wine, and worshiped the most expensive gods. Those who couldn’t hack it in the new economy were dumped into the streets to starve to death.

  People who had once owned their own land were forced to become farmhands. Farmers who once grew all their own food now planted vineyards and became insufferable wine snobs. Amos didn’t like the fact that a once-united people were being increasingly divided into rich plantation owners and destitute farmhands.

  A people only gain sophistication at the expense of their identity. And Amos worried that the Jews were in danger of becoming one more drunken tribe of pagans, living off the hard work of slaves.

  “If we’re going to be just like the pagans,” Amos wondered, “why should God bother protecting us?”

  “God will do what he can to rescue Israel,” Amos warned people, “but when you pull a sheep from the jaws of a lion, sometimes all you get back are a couple of legs. Or an ear. So even if he does save us, we might not all make it.”

  “What do I have to worry about?” somebody would argue. “I sing in the choir. I make my sacrifices every month. Surely if God saves anyone, he’ll save me.”

  “Do you think God cares about your hymns?” Amos replied. “Do you think he needs your goat meat? God doesn’t give a heavenly shit about your church camps or your animal sacrifices as long as you’re evicting his people from their homes and letting his children to wander the streets hungry.”

  A pair of affluent men stepped up to argue with Amos.

  “Maybe God rewards the righteous with money. You ever stop to think about that? Maybe all these poor people are loafers being punished by God for their laziness. Maybe we’d make God angry if we try to help people he has cursed with poverty.”

  “Hey, that’s good,” the man’s friend said, sipping a goblet of wine. “You should start a newsletter!”

  “So if somebody gets rich taking bribes or foreclosing on some old widow’s farm, you think that’s proof of their holiness?” Amos asked. “And if they sell the widow’s children to a salt mine, those kids must have had it coming? What planet do you live on?”

  Amos continued. “Believe it or not, God didn’t bring you out of the desert just so you could cheat and rob each other. God isn’t rewarding you, he is disgusted with you. God would rather burn the whole country to the ground than watch you swindle people and imagine your greed to be the mark of his approval.”

  Amos upset a lot of people, so it wasn’t long before the king summoned him to the palace.

  “Amos, buddy, why do you want to rock the apple cart?” the king said, rubbing Amos’ shoulders in a friendly manner. “Sure, there’s a homeless problem. In any time of economic transition, there’s bound to be some losers. A few people who happen to get sold into slavery or starve to death. It’s tragic, I know. But for most people, things have never been better.

  The economy is booming, people are getting rich, and the markets are full of stuff most people hadn’t even heard of ten y
ears ago. So what’s all the fuss, li’l cuss?”

  “A few dead widows and starving children may seem like a small price to pay so the rest of you can eat fresh grapes all year round, but let me tell you, wealth is temporary. The economy rises and it falls. Someday when the party comes to an end—and it always comes to an end—when our silky robes are in the pawn shop, and our strip malls are ghost towns, when that day comes, the only thing of value our people will have is the way we treat each other.”

  “Look,” the king said, “I’m just going to lay it out for you. We’re up to our balls in prophets. Israel needs a prophet about as much as literature needs another hundred Sweet Valley High novels. Thanks for coming by, though. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  The king then showed Amos to the door, and banished him from the country forever.

  Obadiah

  To the people of Edom: You’re flying pretty high now, but all things come to an end. Even an eagle dies in the mud.

  Just in case you’ve forgotten, you are the descendants of Esau and we are the descendants of his brother, Jacob. Basically, we’re cousins, and like good cousins, we are supposed to have each other’s backs. But where were you when Israel was invaded? At harp lessons? Well, guess where we will be the next time you’re up to your ass in Philistines? That’s right. We’ll be sitting on top of the hill, sipping our sweet wine and watching as your tents burn, your cattle are stolen, and your treasures are looted.

  And there’s no point in trying to prepare for the end, either.

  You’re not going to know what hit you until it’s too late. Your friends will betray you. Your attackers will come like thieves in the night. Only they won’t be thieves, because thieves wouldn’t take the time to beat you to death with rocks or salt the earth so it won’t grow crops again. No, they’ll be more like, I don’t know, psychotic maniacs or something.