THE FLOOD
Genesis 8, Dry Land Again, Now What
HAMACO Lesson #4, 2/1/09

Read Chapter 8 in sections (“J” and then “P”) as we did last week. “J” sections are vv 1-5 and 14-19. “P” sections are vv 6-13 and 20-22.

I want to use our lesson this week to clarify a seemingly preposterous statement I made during last week’s lesson. I think it is important that I explain it more thoroughly. That the statement was controversial (even shocking to some) and I didn’t take the time to explain myself fully was an error on my part. Hopefully there again will be time at the end for questions or comments.

I’ll re-read the verse in question now (6:6) and what I think it means. The text says, “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” Most other translations read, ‘The Lord was sorry’ or ‘it repenteth him’ instead of ‘The Lord was grieved’. The phrase, ‘It repenteth him’ means that it caused God to feel the need to repent for what he had done. All three, in fact, create a word picture of God looking at humankind grown evil, being sorry he had created them, and feeling the need to repent. They lead us to one of two inescapable inferences: either God made a mistake by creating us or he is showing us, through this story, what to do when we err! Just as when we realize we have made a mistake, God wished he hadn’t done it; he even tried to undo the damage by giving Noah 120 years to persuade us to change the way we live, but that didn’t work either. So again I will say that this phrase, exactly as it is written in the Bible, can mean only that the way humans evolved made God sorry and caused him to repent for creating them. Let me make some hopefully clarifying points about such language as this.

First, it is impossible to take these words, “was grieved”, “was sorry” and “it repenteth him”, literally, and come to any conclusion other than a mistake was made by the one who said he wanted to repent; and that was God, by his own admission. Certainly that is the meaning when we say, “I am sorry” or “I must repent”; we did something we wished we hadn’t done. So why would those same words, in the Bible and attributed to God, mean something different? Probably, the answer is that all of our lives we have been conditioned to assign to God superlative powers by saying things like, “God can do anything”. But if descriptions like “God can do anything” are right, why can’t he make a mistake if he wants to? My point is there are infinitely more questions about God than there are answers. For his ways aren’t our ways, as he plainly told us so often.

Secondly, there are three descriptions of God that are often used by Christian thinkers and writers. He is omnipotent, which means he is all-powerful and can do anything; he is omniscient, meaning he knows everything, present, past and future; and he is omnipresent, which means he is everywhere at all times throughout time as we know it. While well meaning, any attempt to describe God, even in such consummate terms, is a mistake. They just don’t do him justice. God is much more that we can describe.

So what is the point? Oftentimes we must simply accept or believe what we don’t understand. Either we must sometimes accept as true what we cannot yet believe; (Remember the old Negro spiritual, “Further Along” that says, “We’ll understand it, all bye and bye?”); or we must believe what we just can’t accept. There is a great line in Mitch Albom’s popular book Tuesdays with Morrie, where He writes, “Sometimes you cannot believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel.” In Mark, chapter nine, a father brings his son to Jesus to be healed of seizures. Humbly and deferentially the father says to Jesus, “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” ‘If you can’?” said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes." Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, “I do believe; help thou my unbelief!” That father, due to no other virtue than his humility, hit upon something we latter day sophisticates often don’t understand. We just can’t know much about God; so he asks us to believe.

A third insight: the author of one of the truly great Bible commentaries, William Barclay, once wrote, “If a man wishes to teach people about things they do not understand, he must begin from things which they do understand.” Let’s see if this was God’s modus operandi in this story. I don’t know about you, but if there is anything I fully understand, it is about making mistakes. I’ve made some grievous ones! So how could this story help me with that? Let’s play a game, one we’ve all played before. Let’s play “What if”.

What if God just made up the story of a flood (and obviously it came from somewhere); and what if the story shows God taking ultimate responsibility for the problem (as it does); and what if he does this despite the fact that it wasn’t really him, but humankind that fouled things up (if you remember, he did say we had become violent and corrupted); and what if we today, reading the story, paint ourselves into it, and as participants, up on the stage so to speak, we see more clearly God confessing that he made the mistake, that he is sorry, and that he needs to repent?

This is hardly an uncommon occurrence. For instance, have you ever been in a situation where a mistake has been made and it could be your fault but it also could be the other person’s fault? The question, then, is who is going to get the blame. So you get all tense and defensive, but just as you’ve mentally formed your best argument, the other person quickly says, “I’m sorry; I was wrong. Please forgive me”. Most of us would feel a little embarrassment and quickly say, “No, it was my mistake. I’m the one who should be sorry.” What we don’t say is, “Well, you should be sorry”; it was your mistake.” We, as Christians, try to be more gracious than that. And where do you think the grace exhibited by both parties in this scenario comes from? When God wishes to teach people about things they do not understand (like grace), he, too, begins from things they do understand, like this story of a killing flood.

And finally, does this not show us that the only one we can change is ourself. Obviously, that was the conclusion God came to. Others may change, but only if that is their desire; not because we’ve preached down to them (my mother used to say, ‘browbeat), or criticized and blamed them for the mistakes they made.

But let’s pursue further this seeming conclusion by God that the only one he could change was himself. This is important because it adds something to the story in addition to what I said in the first lesson: “This isn’t a story about a flood. It is a story about us.” Now consider the possibility that the story isn’t even about us as much as it is about God himself. Could it be that the flood changes God; that he changes his ways after the flood? Let’s re-read verse twenty-one. “The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” This seems to contradict the writer of Hebrews who says (in 13:8): “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” If we take this story seriously, it clearly states that God changed.

Or maybe it says the way we perceive God can change with the flood story.