God Is Disappointed In You Page 5

  David was an able general and a successful king. He routed the Ammonites and destroyed the Philistines. He had single-handedly taken Israel from a failed state to a world power. But his home life was a mess. His wives were constantly scheming against each other and their kids were constantly at each other’s throats.

  Most of the real trouble started when his daughter Tamar was raped by her half-brother, Amnon.

  The law was unclear on this matter. On the one hand, having raped Tamar, the law now required Amnon to marry her. On the other hand, the law forbade brothers and sisters from marrying. It was a loophole Moses had failed to foresee.

  David’s solution to the dilemma was to forget the whole thing happened. So Tamar’s older brother, Absalom, took justice into his own hands and killed her rapist. Absalom, who was mostly known for his long, luxuriant hair, went on the run. Just as his father had done decades before, he gathered his friends and supporters and declared himself king. Then he rode into Jerusalem, stabbing anyone who disagreed. Not wanting to get stabbed, David left town and hid in the countryside. While David was raising an army to take back his throne, Absalom made himself at home in his father’s palace.

  Just like his father, Absalom wondered what he could do to convince people that he was the real king. The answer he came up with was to have sex with David’s concubines on the roof, so that everyone could see him.

  Leading an army, with the throne of Israel on the line, David returned in force, and creamed Absalom’s army. While fleeing the battle, Absalom got his long, beautiful hair caught on a tree branch which pulled him off his horse and left him dangling helplessly from a tree. When his pursuers found him hanging there like a piñata, they couldn’t help but whack at him with their swords and spears. Unfortunately, no candy came pouring out of Absalom, just blood and organs.

  Despite the fact that he had stolen his throne and had sex with his girlfriends, David was torn by grief when he heard that Absalom was dead.

  David’s reign was a big success, but he was losing sons and daughters left and right. The palace, the capital city, all his war trophies, they did nothing for him now. He was a heartbroken and haunted man.

  “Haven’t I done everything God has asked of me?” David wondered. “Didn’t I kill all the right foreigners? Why would God do this to me?”

  The Prophet Nathan had an answer to this riddle. He told David about a rich farmer who lived nearby. This farmer was so rich he was practically shitting sheep and goats. His neighbor, on the other hand, was a poor man who had only one sheep and that little animal was all he owned in the world. Despite having so much, the rich farmer killed the poor man, took his one little sheep and pushed into his flock, where it promptly disappeared becoming just one more sheep.

  “Your majesty, what do you think we should do with this farmer?” he asked.

  King David responded immediately, “What do you mean? Bring him here. I’ll kill him right now.” Nathan then revealed that David was the farmer. The farmer’s crime was what he himself had done to poor Uriah. “If you would have a man executed for doing what you have done, then how can you expect anything less from God? God might want you to be king. But just because God put you in a position to pull shit like that,” Nathan said, “that doesn’t mean he has to let you get away with it.”

  The 1st Book of Kings

  King David had gotten old. He was so cold and frail that the court appointed a young woman to snuggle with him in his bed. No, they didn’t have sex. Though the court did make a point of hiring someone beautiful, just to put a little sizzle in his chicken.

  The presence of a human hot water bottle notwithstanding, David was dying. His wife Bathsheba was afraid that once he died, her son Solomon would be killed by his older brothers.

  So Bathsheba tricked David into passing over the crown prince Adonijah and naming Solomon as his successor, even though Solomon was his youngest son. In what would later become a common tactic in scams against the elderly, she told David that he had already promised to do it, but had simply forgotten.

  David died, making Solomon King of Israel. When Adonijah stopped by the palace for a rather awkward family visit, Bathsheba met him at the door.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Look, I just wanted to say that you have nothing to worry about from me. Solomon’s king now and I’m totally cool with that,” he said. “Things don’t always work out the way they should—I’ve come to accept that. Anyway, I’m not here to cause you any trouble. All I want to ask from you is one tiny favor.”

  “Like what?”

  “I want to marry the human hot water bottle.”

  “Really? That’s it? I thought you were going to ask for half the kingdom or something.”

  “I guess I’m just a hopeless romantic!” he shrugged.

  Bathsheba went to Solomon and told him about Adonijah’s request.

  “A pretty reasonable request under the circumstances,” she added.

  “Woman, please! If I approve this marriage, I might as well have my brother fitted for the crown. My claim to the throne is shaky, at best. Suppose they get married and the human hot water bottle then concocts a story about how you or I poisoned dad? Or that we smothered him in his sleep? How would that look for us?

  Plus, she has friends like all over the palace. Who’s to say one of them wouldn’t slip a little arsenic in my soup in exchange for being promoted to ‘Taster of Meats?’ Geez, I can’t believe you fell for that. Way to go, MOM!”

  Solomon now knew that his brother was planning a coup d'état and he reacted to the crisis with all the subtlety and aplomb of his father, which is to say, he paid a guy to club Adonijah in the skull. Solomon then went on a spree, clubbing in the heads of Saul’s relatives and David’s old generals. This royal game of whack-a-mole didn’t end until Solomon felt that he had removed everyone who was a threat to his rule.

  Establishing himself as king was a bloody process, just as it was for his father, but eventually he prevailed. God, who always likes a winner, granted Solomon one wish. Great power, enormous wealth, a ten-inch dong, all the normal wish stuff. Instead of choosing any of those, Solomon asked God to grant him great wisdom. God was so thrilled to get such a noble wish that he made Solomon the wisest man in the world.

  It wasn’t long before Solomon’s new smarts were put to the test. For some reason, being King of Israel meant occasionally presiding over custody battles. Solomon was hearing a case between two prostitutes, each of whom was claiming to be the mother of this baby.

  Since it was just one prostitute’s word against another, Solomon ruled that the only fair thing to do was to cut the baby down the middle and give each woman half.

  “Fine with me,” one of the women said. “Half a baby is better than none.”

  The other woman collapsed onto the floor and pleaded for Solomon to let the other prostitute keep the baby.

  Having coaxed these radically different reactions from the women, Solomon figured that the one who was begging to save the child’s life must be its true mother, so he let her keep the baby. In its entirety.

  Word of his shrewd decision quickly spread throughout the land. As luck would have it, this story also worked as an allegory, a moral injunction against any upstarts or ambitious members of the royal family who, like the bad whore, would tear the country in half with civil war rather than let it live intact under Solomon, who may or may not be its rightful mother.

  Under Solomon’s wise and undisputed rule, Israel entered its golden age. The country doubled in size and Solomon became the richest man in the world. He ate figs and gazelle meat until his legs went silly. He gave lectures on fish and birds. People came from all over the world to be dazzled by his brilliance.

  The time had come for Solomon to build God his temple. God had given Solomon a set of blueprints to work from, and Solomon put tens of thousands of people to work on the building. When it was finished, it was a world class temple. Its int
erior walls were tastefully lined with carved cedar, except for the room where the Ark was going to be kept, where the walls were lined with solid gold. A little flashy, but that’s the way God liked things. The temple was decorated with bronze bulls and furnished with hundreds of washing bowls and wick-trimmers. God couldn’t have been happier.

  Once he finished the temple, Solomon celebrated by building himself a massive new palace.

  He needed one. Like his father, Solomon had a taste for the ladies and soon had over 700 wives. Solomon was now free to spend the rest of his days hanging out with his wives, composing proverbs, and trying to get his music career off the ground.

  The good times didn’t last forever, though. God was jealous because in addition to his temple, Solomon had also built temples to all his foreign wives’ gods.

  “Why would he do that?” God wondered. “Didn’t I grant him a wish? He even built temples for Moloch and Chemosh and those guys are TOTAL dicks! You know what? I’m done with Solomon. And Israel. The next time they get into trouble, they can ask their girlfriend Moloch to save them.”

  After a nice long reign, Solomon died, and the whole country immediately started a long slide into the ditch. Israel became embroiled in civil war, and unlike the baby with the prostitutes, the kingdom actually was cut in half, with the new guy becoming King of Israel in the north and Solomon’s son taking control of the new Kingdom of Judah in the south.

  The once great kingdom was now two mediocre ones, ruled by a succession of weak and corrupt men.

  The worst of the lot was a guy named Ahab, who reigned as King of Israel. His wife, Jezebel, was a pagan who killed prophets as a sort of pastime. Ahab and Jezebel worshiped a rain god named Baal.

  This made God so angry that he sent the prophet Elijah to challenge Baal to a cook-off. The priests of Baal and Elijah each set up altars. They each killed an ox and prayed to their respective gods to send fire down from heaven to cook the sacrificial meat. The statue of Baal, sat there dumbly, looking straight ahead while his priests danced and flailed themselves before him.

  God fared much better. As if from a divine propane tank, a searing jet of flame shot down from heaven, instantly barbecuing the meat and incinerating Baal’s priests. God had won the cook-off. And as was common in these ancient game shows, the losers were killed on the spot. But the royal family remained unmoved, shrugging it off as “one of those things,” and carrying on with their pagan lives.

  Ahab came across a piece of land that he thought would make an absolutely perfect place for his vegetable garden. He went to the landowner and offered to buy it. The man graciously turned down the offer, explaining that the land had been in his family for generations. Later, at dinner, Ahab told Jezebel about his failed land deal.

  “It’s really too bad. It would have been perfect. There was a nice patch for cucumbers, I could have planted rhubarb in the corner…a real shame it didn’t work out.”

  “Oh, you big pussy,” said Jezebel, who was always taunting Ahab, “is that how a king acts? Don’t worry, I’ll get you your vegetable garden, Sally.”

  Jezebel invited the landowner to dinner at the palace. When he arrived, she seated him between a couple of dubious characters. In the middle of the dinner, one of the men stood up and accused the landowner of cursing the king, just as Jezebel had paid him to.

  “I heard it, too!” the other man said, corroborating the charge.

  Jezebel called in the guards and had the poor, sputtering landowner killed on the spot for treason. His land now belonged to the king.

  Ahab was happily planning his new vegetable garden when Elijah showed up at the gate and confronted him.

  “I came here to tell you that God will not tolerate a vegetable garden built on the blood of an innocent man,” Elijah said. “God is through with you and your rotten wife. As punishment for your crimes, your dynasty will be destroyed, your family devoured by birds and dogs. Have fun with your peas.”

  Not long after, Ahab got shot with an arrow during a battle and died. They buried his body before any animals got to it, but dogs did get in to lick up his blood, so Elijah gets partial credit on that one.

  The 2nd Book of Kings

  Somewhere along the line, God and the Jews became more than just friends. In fact, God considered himself to be married to the Jews. Like most marriages, it was a non-sexual affair, but unlike most marriages, it was anything but snoozy and passionless. God’s marriage to the Jews was a tempestuous, rancorous affair.

  The Jews were always drinking too much and flirting with other gods, while God would lose his temper and storm out of the house.

  Every now and then, God would appoint a prophet to act as a sort of marriage counselor. These prophets were always trying to patch things up between God and the Jews.

  The Prophet Elijah’s marriage counseling career had come to an end. For his retirement party, God sent a golden chariot, which came swooping down from the sky and carried Elijah naked up to Heaven. Elijah’s marriage counseling practice passed on to his protégé, Elisha.

  Elisha cursed the idolaters who’d forged the emotional wedge between God and his people, and validated God’s feelings of neglect. Elisha then tried to take the Jews on an “empathy adventure,” getting them to understand God’s feelings of abandonment. To help him with his work, God granted Elisha miraculous powers. Elisha traveled the country, using his powers to remind the Jews of the spark they once felt for God.

  Most of the miracles Elisha performed were quite practical and helpful. He focused on things like multiplying small amounts of food into great feasts, making water appear in the desert, or healing people of food poisoning. He even helped a man retrieve a lost axe head from a river.

  “Wow, thanks, Elisha!” people would say. “Maybe we can work things out with God, after all.”

  Not all of his miracles were so benign, though. Elisha was bald and touchy about it. A lot of bald men are. When he arrived at the town of Bethel, he was teased by a group of boys who called him “baldy.” Elisha responded to their taunts by summoning a team of wild she-bears. The bears mauled the boys to death, leaving the bloody remains of forty-two children littered on the ground.

  Nobody knows why Elisha didn’t just summon a full head of hair.

  Ahab was dead, but his Baal-worshiping family still ruled Israel. Elisha felt that a change in leadership would make it easier for Israel and God to rediscover their lost intimacy and rekindle the embers of mutual trust. So Elisha talked a local thug named Jehu into taking over the government.

  Jehu rode to the home of the new king of Israel, Joram. When Joram saw Jehu in the distance, he and his entourage hopped in a chariot and drove out to meet him.

  “What are you doing here?” Joram asked.

  “Well, if you must know,” Jehu replied, “I’m here to kill you.”

  When Joram tried to race away in his chariot, Jehu shot him in the back with an arrow. Joram slumped over, dead. Panicked, his friends dumped Joram’s body into a nearby field and fled the scene. Ironically, the field where the corpse of Joram lay, being devoured by birds, was the same field Ahab had stolen to make his illicit vegetable garden.

  When Jehu arrived at the royal palace, Jezebel finished putting on her makeup and slowly walked out to the balcony, flanked by her eunuch bodyguards. “Oh look, it’s that hillbilly who killed my grandson,” she said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Just that there are job openings in my kingdom.”

  Knowing a good career move when they saw it, the eunuchs threw Jezebel off the balcony to her death. Her body was dragged off and eaten by dogs. Somewhere God high-fived Elijah, who had scored 2.5 out of 3 on his prophecy.

  As the new King of Israel, Jehu asked the priests of Baal to meet him at their temple, so he could get off on the right foot with their god. This turned out to be a sting operation. When they showed up, Jehu killed all the priests. Then he converted Baal’s temple into a public restroom. As
a joke, Jehu changed the sign on the doorway from Beelzebul, which meant “Baal: Lord of the Heavens” to Beelzebub, which meant “Baal: Lord of Flies.”

  Elisha was right about the positive impact regime change would have on God’s relationship with the Jews. With Jehu in charge, God and Israel were able to begin the healing process and it saved their marriage, at least for a while.

  Elisha’s career as a marriage counselor had also come to an end, by which, I mean he died.

  No chariot ride for Elisha, though, he was interred at a local cemetery. As an interesting side note, another funeral was going on at a nearby grave when it was interrupted by a bandit attack. The terrified pallbearers ditched their dead loved one into Elisha’s grave by mistake. When the dead man toppled down onto Elisha’s still miraculous corpse, he instantly came back to life. I can only imagine how confused he must have been.

  After King Jehu died, Israel’s kings went right back to worshiping foreign gods, and God’s relationship with Israel took a turn for the worse. God was constantly threatening to leave. Eventually, God would make good on his threats. Having finally had enough, God let the Assyrians conquer Israel and evict the population, forever scattering ten of the twelve tribes of Israel.

  Judah, Israel’s cousin to the south, was so disturbed by Israel’s demise that the King of Judah immediately called for his nation to recommit itself to God.

  There is perhaps no surer sign that a marriage is in serious trouble than when a couple decides to renew their vows. The king of Judah paid for a big, glitzy ceremony at the temple to reaffirm Judah’s dedication to God.

  It was a beautiful ceremony and everyone agreed that God looked great. But somehow, the whole thing stunk of forced smiles and masked contempt.