I don’t know about you, but I find Noah’s Ark to be the most disturbing story in the Bible.
I think this for two reasons.
One
How it’s presently taught tempts me to conclude God is cruel. Perhaps the cruellest being ever.
We conveniently focus on those whom God saves, but I can’t ignore how this is a story of annihilation. This flood brings two million species to the brink of extinction and kills billions of creatures in the violent death spasms of drowning.
And three times the Bible says God is behind it (see Gen. 6:7 & 13; 7:4). Therefore, we’re not talking about a natural disaster, but the worst deliberate act of violence ever perpetrated on Earth.
Two
Most Christians seem content to justify God’s extinction-level killing spree.
If this story weren’t in our holy book, then we would find God’s actions morally reprehensible and utterly indefensible. But because it’s found in our Scripture, we defend mass murder and the destruction of nature by hiding it behind holiness. We even turn it into a children’s story. This is not a children’s story, regardless of how many church creches and Sunday school rooms we paint with colourful pairs of animals boarding a wooden ship.
God tells Noah in Genesis 6:7, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air.” (NKJV) Then, in Genesis 7:4, God tells him, “every living thing I have made I will wipe from the face of the earth.” (CSB)
It’s time we stop using cute animals to desensitise ourselves from the horror of these statements.