The flood story.

In Genesis there’s a story about a massive flood. Rain for a month and a half; waters which covered every hill in the area, and killed every living thing. It was, states the author of Genesis, God’s way of getting rid of the violence in the land: He got rid of everybody except this one righteous (well, righteous enough) family.

Starts like this.

Genesis 6.11-21 KWL

11 To God’s face, the land was ruined.

The land was full of violence.

12 God saw the land. Look, ruin!

all flesh ruined its way in the land.

13 God told Noah, “To my face,

the end of all flesh is coming:

They fill the land with violence before them.

Look, the land is ruined!

14 Make yourself a box of cypress trees.

Make living spaces within the box.

Plaster it from the inside to the outside with asphalt.

15 This is how you’ll make it:

A box 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high.

16 Make a window in the box, a cubit from the top.

Make a doorway in the box’s side.

Make bottom, second, and third floors.

17 Look at me: I bring the deluge of waters on the land

to destroy all flesh on it,

the breath of life under the heavens:

Everything on the land dies.

18 I raise my relationship with you.

Come into the box.

You, your sons, your woman, your sons’ women with you.

19 All living things, all flesh:

Two of all comes into the box to live with you.

They’ll be male and female.

20 From the bird to its kind,

from the animal of its kind,

from all which swarms the ground of its kind,

two of all comes to you to live.

21 Take with you all the food you can eat.

Gather it for yourselves.

It’s for food, for you and them.”

22 Noah did everything God commanded him to do.

So God has this man, Noah ben Lamekh, build himself a big black box…

Yeah, black box. What d’you think an ark is, a boat? What, were the Hebrews carrying around the Boat of the Covenant through the desert for four decades? Did Indiana Jones excavate a Nazi-killing gold boat, or am I remembering that movie all wrong?

But you’d be forgiven if you made the mistake of thinking a תֵּבַ֣ת/tevá is a boat. After all, American popular culture has the image of a boat cemented in everybody’s brain. Noah built a boat, they say—and on dry land! How the neighbors must’ve laughed and jeered at Noah and his kids for building a boat on dry land. Then when the floodwaters came, boy did they get their comeuppance.

Except it nowhere says in the bible, nowhere in Genesis, that Noah built a boat. That bit about the jeering neighbors? Not in the bible either. I know; you’ve been told this story so many times, you half remember it being biblical, don’t you? Nope. Go read Genesis 7 again. Isn’t there. Never happened.

Wait, what about those people in Kentucky who made the Ark Encounter, the life-size Noah’s Ark which they claim is totally based on the bible? Again, read your bible. Read that bit of Genesis 6 I just translated, in any translation you please. But remember, “ark” means box. God told Noah to build a box. Covered in כֹּֽפֶר/kofér, “bitumen,” or asphalt, so it wasn’t be bare or stained wood, like the Ark Encounter depicts it. It’d be black as the roads outside your house.

Arguably log-cabin style, ’cause it’s made of עֲצֵי גֹ֔פֶר/ačé-gofér, “trees of cypress.” God didn’t say planed wooden planks. I know!—you imagined Noah building a boat, so of course you imagined him building it out of planks, but there’s nothing in the bible to describe what Noah did with the trees once he chopped ’em down. Now, figuring a cubit is half a meter (or half a yard, if you’re American like me), Noah was instructed to make it 150 by 25 by 15, square. Not with a curved bow to easily cut through water, and certainly not with a rudder—who’s gonna steer it? What’s its destination? Why would Noah presumptively assume his box would even float?—for all he knew, it might stay where it was, underwater, watertight, waiting for the floods to pass.

The Kentucky monstrosity is entirely based on popular Christian culture, based on what generations of American preachers and their art have speculated about Noah’s box. Something which actually requires less faith in God than Genesis is describing. ’Cause they imagine Noah built something seaworthy, that could survive on its own—instead of something God would have to miraculously preserve, and did.

So whenever skeptics ask me whether I believe the bible’s flood story, I can’t give them a simple yes. I do believe the story. But the story I believe is the plausible one we find in the bible. Not as it’s told by young-earth creationists, who turned it into Christian mythology… then turned that into junk science.

Depravity: Humanity is messed up, yo.

DEPRAVE di'preɪv verb. To make immoral, wicked, or twisted.

[Depraved di'preɪvəd adjective.]

TOTAL DEPRAVITY 'toʊ.dəl di'prøv.ə.di noun. The Christian belief that unregenerate human nature is thoroughly corrupt, sinful, and self-centered.

2. The Calvinist belief that all human nature, regenerate or not, is this way.

[Totally depraved 'toʊ.də.li di'preɪvəd adjective.]

Present-day Christianity has been heavily influenced by popular culture and popular philosophy. And vice-versa. Sometimes for good; sometimes really not.

Humanism, fr’instance. It’s the belief we humans have great potential to do great things. It emphasizes rejecting our instinctive, conditioned behavior, and solving our problems through rational, selfless ways. It emphasizes human rights and human worth. After all, God figures we have infinite worth: He loved us so much, he sent us his Son. Jn 3.16

Problem is, one of humanism’s core beliefs is Pelagianism, the belief humans are inherently good. Humanists insist we were born good, not evil; and become evil because we have evil influences. Like evil parents, evil neighbors, evil authorities, evil media. Those folks taught us to be evil, but we can unlearn it, and choose to be good.

Hence you’ll find more Christians are Pelagian than not. Because being inherently good sounds way better than the alternatives, so we embrace the idea: “We are good. For when God created the world and humanity, didn’t he declare his entire creation ‘very good’? Ge 1.31 And what could be more innocent and sinless than a newborn baby? Certainly we’re born good. But we got corrupted. Stupid parents. Stupid mass media. Stupid government. It’s all their fault. If they’d just leave us alone to do as we naturally will, we could be free and libertarian and sinless.”

Well. Those who think nothing’s more sinless than a baby have clearly never raised one. Why do babies cry? ’Cause they want stuff. And as soon as they’re old enough to swipe it, or shove other kids out of the way in order to get it, they will. As soon as they figure out the word “no” they use it. A lot. Not because they’re inherently good and rejecting their parents’ evil; because they selfishly want their own way, even when it’s wrong.

Humans don’t have to learn to be selfish. We are selfish. Inherently. It’s part of our self-preservation instinct: We have this whole system of pain sensors in our body which warn us if we’re gonna seriously damage ourselves. (Or inform us we’re seriously damaged.) So if animals didn’t look out for number one, they won’t survive.

Humans have simply taken that natural instinct, and dialed it way up. Everything we do is about defending ourselves, getting our way, making ourselves comfortable—physically and emotionally. We don’t always go about it the right way, but we don’t care about the right way, or others’ feelings; we want what we want. If you get in the way of our wants, we’ll shove you aside. Goodness isn’t the goal; it’s about what’s good for us, or what we consider good, or what feels good—no matter how many brain cells it kills.

Humans aren’t naturally good. We have to be taught what goodness is. Problem is, who’s doing the teaching? Other selfish humans.

Yep, it’s corruption all the way down. All the way back. Started with the very first humans. When God first created ’em, they were good. They changed. Lots changed.

Sin happened.

I assume you know the Adam and Eve story. If you don’t, this sums it up: God made an אָדָ֜ם/adám (Hebrew for “humanity,” and humanity is descended from him) and made part of him into a woman. He put the two of them in paradise, and gave ’em a simple command: There’s a tree, and eating of this tree gives you knowledge of good and evil. Don’t eat from it. Otherwise do as you please.

The humans broke the one rule, so God booted them from paradise. Can’t live forever anymore. Now they gotta work for a living, wear clothes, childbirth is painful… but God promised ’em a savior. Oh, and now they know what good and evil are. Guess which of the two they gravitated towards.

Genesis 6.5-6 KWL

5 The LORD saw how Adam did great evil on the earth.

Every inclination, every thought in his heart: Only evil, every day.

6 The LORD was sorry he put Adam on the earth.

It grieved his heart.

Give humans the wherewithal to do evil, and that’s the direction we go. Not reluctantly, not grudgingly; we head that way in a mad dash. We aren’t naturally good. If we were, we wouldn’t need governments, wouldn’t need judges, wouldn’t need money, wouldn’t need laws. Evil would be easy to defeat. And it’s not.

Evil comes from the inside, Jesus taught, not the outside.

Mark 7.20-23 KWL

20 Jesus said this: “What comes out of the person? That makes the person ‘common’.

21 For evil reasoning comes out from within the person’s heart:

Porn. Theft. Murder. 22 Adultery. Covetousness. Depravity.

Deception. Immorality. Stinginess. Slander. Conceit. Stupidity.

23 All these inner evils come out and make the person ‘common’.”

The human heart is desperately wicked. Jr 17.9 It’s self-seeking, self-deceptive—we think we figured out how to be good, but at their core all our “good deeds” are ways to look good, and fool ourselves into thinking we are good. ’Cause we’re better than other people. Or we’re good enough. Or we’re more good than evil on our karmic balance sheet. Look at all the charity we’ve done!—surely that makes up for the hit-and-run we committed years ago.

Paul wanted to be good, but found his fight with sin to be a losing battle.

Romans 7.14-24 KWL

14 We’ve known the Law is spiritual—and I am fleshly, sold into sin’s slavery.

15 I do things I don’t understand. I don’t want to do them. I hate what I do.

16 Since I don’t want to do them, I agree: The Law is good.

17 Now, it’s no longer I who do these things, but the sin which inhabits me.

18 I know nothing living in me, namely in my flesh, is good.

The will, but not the ability, exists in me to do good.

19 I don’t do the good I want. I do the evil I don’t want.

20 If I don’t want to do them, it’s not so much me doing them, as the sin which inhabits me.

21 That’s why I sought the Law, which wants me to do good: Evil is always around.

22 I rejoice in God’s Law, despite my inner humanity—

23 I see another law in my body parts, fighting the Law in my mind,

taking me captive to the law of sin, which exists in my body parts.

24 I am such a miserable human.

What will rescue me from this death-plagued body?

Theologians call this total depravity: Sin has so messed us up, so warped our thinking and behavior, there’s simply no way for us humans to defeat it without divine intervention. It ruins everything. That’s why we call this depravity total.

Our salvation: God.

As I hope you know, Paul’s discussion doesn’t stop in the middle of verse 24.

Romans 7.24 - 8.3 KWL

24 I am such a miserable human.

What will rescue me from this death-plagued body?

25 God’s grace, through Christ Jesus our Lord!

That’s why my mind’s now enslaved to God’s Law… while my body, to sin’s law.

1 That’s why there’s no judgment anymore for those in Christ Jesus:

2 The law of the Spirit of Life, in Christ Jesus, released you from the law of sin and death.

3 God, sending his own Son in the form of sinful humanity, judged that sin in the flesh,

doing what the Law, hindered by the flesh, couldn’t.

Christians (assuming we’re truly following God) don’t wanna sin anymore. 1Jn 3.9 God doesn’t want that for us either, and hasn’t abandoned us to the ravages of sin. He’s entered the fight on our side. He’s come to cure us of total depravity, and help us so we don’t sin. 1Jn 2.1-6

So if we can’t be good about God, what about all the “good people” in the world? What about philanthropists, charities, peacekeepers, do-gooders, and all those who try to make the world a better place?

Well, lots of them are Christians. I’ve worked for a few charities. They’re loaded with Christians and God-seekers. That’s why they started those groups, or joined up. God’s working on them, they’re working with God, and they’re doing good on his behalf.

Then there are those so-called “good people” who are no good at all. I’ve worked with them too. They work for charities because they have to: They get a paycheck. They’re trying to pad a résumé. They were convicted of a crime, and volunteer work is part of their sentence. Their family or job expects it of them. They earn tax credits. They get good public relations. They’re trying to earn good karma. And so on. All these motives are self-serving, and goodness is a byproduct.

So no, I’m not saying (as many Calvinists will) that non-Christians are incapable of good deeds. Of course they’re capable. I’m just saying total depravity taints their deeds. There’s just enough self-interest, just enough wrong motive, just enough unwholesomeness, to turn it into crap. It’ll be mostly good; it’ll be 99⁴⁴⁄₁₀₀ percent good. But it never wholly good, ’cause we can’t be wholly good. It won’t meet God’s absolute standards for goodness.

God can use (and even inspire) the good deeds of such people. Often he’s the reason their good deeds get anywhere. It’s surely not because of them.

Partial depravity?

Christians who grew up believing the humanist view of goodness, tend to think total depravity is only a Calvinist thing. John Calvin taught it, and Calvinists are a little too fond of preaching on the subject. But it’s hardly just a Calvinist thing. St. Augustine taught it, Martin Luther taught it, John Wesley taught it… and all orthodox Christians teach it. Because we are totally depraved, and need God to save us. We can’t save ourselves!

The reason Augustine taught it was ’cause one of his contemporaries, Pelagius of Britain, believed as the humanists do: People are inherently good. He taught that if Christian kids were simply raised right, we won’t sin. And if we adults just exercised our free will and self-control, if we just embraced positive thinking and a wholesome lifestyle, we could banish sin from our lives and live entirely sin-free. If you wanna stop sinning, just stop.

Except, as you’ve just read, Paul tried that and failed. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and loads of Christians have tried to achieve sinlessless on our own steam, and failed. Betcha Pelagius failed too; he just did a better job of fooling himself. Sinlessness can’t be achieved without the Holy Spirit—and even if we think we have achieved it with his help, we’re likely still fooling ourselves.

If sinlessness were possible, Jesus wouldn’t’ve had to die for sin, y’know. He could’ve just told his students, “Hey, guys: The Law? Read the Law. Follow it real good. See you in heaven.” And back he went. No; legalists throughout history have tried their darnedest to follow the Law, and of course had no real success, because the Law was never meant to save us anyway. We can’t be good without God.

This is why we call Pelagius’s view heresy. There’s only one savior, only one mediator between God and humanity, and that’s Christ Jesus. If we’re not totally depraved—if we’re only a little depraved, and can overcome the rest of our sins with a bit more effort—it means each of us can be our own saviors. Jesus saves the rest, namely those who lack the willpower, but the rest of us can do just fine without his salvation or the Holy Spirit’s sanctification.

What happens when we believe this crap? Bad stuff.

See, we fail. And we know we fail. And if we imagine perfection is possible, yet somehow we can’t achieve that perfection, we’re gonna think we’re utter scum. If every other Christian can achieve goodness, yet we can’t, we must be some sort of sick, freakish, nasty aberration. Maybe we’re not really saved. Maybe we’re predestined for hell. We’re just too twisted for God to want.

Such people don’t realize—and can’t believe—everybody is twisted, everybody needs God. They think, wrongly, God only takes the good ones, and they’ll never qualify. Like Paul said, “What will rescue me from this death-plagued body?” Ro 7.24 People who assume we can be good on our own, tend to feel this very same kind of despair and frustration. And we needn’t! God can save us. You’re not a special case. You’re normal.

Everybody’s totally depraved. But God can save every last one of us. And wants to. 2Pe 3.9 It’s not a losing battle, an impossible dream.

Besides, God does the impossible all the time. Sometimes for fun. And always because he loves us.

Nefilim: The mythology of fallen people.

NAFAL nɔ'fɔl verb (Hebrew ‏נָפַל, Strong’s 5307) To fall down, fall prostrate, fall into, be thrown down, be removed.

[Nefil nɛ'fil noun, nefilim nɛ.fil'im n.pl.]

Every once in a while I get asked about the Nefilim (NIV “Nephilim,” KJV “giants”). And folks, it’s not “a Nefilim,” ’cause it’s a plural noun. One Nefil, many Nefilim. Understandable mistake though; most English speakers can’t get our own plurals right, much less Hebrew nouns.

I don’t pry into why people wanna know about Nefilim, although when they explain, it nearly always has to do with some mythological garbage about half-human half-angel beings. They hear about that, then hear, “And it’s in the bible!” so they check out their bible and find this weird little story. It comes right before the flood story in Genesis 6, so you’d think they’d have read it, but you know people don’t read their bibles. But even when people aren’t checking up on weird myths, they read this story, scratch their heads, and go, “Huh?”

Genesis 6.1-5 KWL

1 It happened that the Adamites began to be many over the face of the earth.

Daughters were fathered by them.

2 God’s children saw the Adamite daughters—that they were good.

They took them for wives—all whom they chose.

3 The LORD said, “My Spirit won’t remain with Adam forever.

Plus he’s flesh. His days are 120 years.”

4 Nefilim were in the land in those days, and also afterward:

God’s children mated with Adam’s daughters, and begat from them

the powerful men who, from antiquity, were men of name.

5 But the LORD saw the Adamites were a great evil in the land.

Every intention and thought in their minds was only evil, all day.

Okay. Lemme start by bluntily saying nobody knows what this passage means. I need to make this crystal clear from the very beginning. NOBODY.

I know; you may think you do, ’cause the myths told you what went down. Or you heard some interpretation which makes sense to you. Or you actually heard or read some bible scholar’s theory, and figure bible scholars are smart people who must know what they’re talking about. But unless they’re really arrogant people, scholars are the first to tell you our theories are nothing but good guesses. ’Cause nobody knows what this passage means. Like I said.

Yeah, this fact bugs people. Since the scriptures are God-inspired, and meant for our instruction and correction and growth, 2Ti 3.16 how can there be such things as scriptures which no one understands? And since we Christians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit—the same Spirit who inspired the writer of Genesis to drop this story in the book—shouldn’t he have clued us in on what it means?

Fair questions. And there are people who claim the Spirit has told ’em what this passage means. I might even believe ’em… if they weren’t so arrogant about it, and if their interpretations lined up. But they don’t. So I don’t.

True, we can always ask the Spirit what a bible passage means. Sometimes he tells us. And sometimes he doesn’t. It’s up to him how much he cares to divulge, and (as is the case with apocalypses) sometimes he doesn’t care to divulge stuff at all. If he doesn’t see any good coming out of it, he’s not sharing. And we have to learn to be okay with that. We answer to him, remember?

If you don’t like not knowing, join the club. And work on your humility: The Holy Spirit’s under no obligation to tell us all. He’s the LORD. We’re not.

The flood story and theodicy.

As I said yesterday, when skeptics ask me about the flood story, primarily what they wanna deal with is the idea of a global flood. Earth doesn’t have enough water to cover all the landmasses, and the young-earth creationist explanations for whence and whither the water, generally sound stupid to them. Pointing out how Genesis states the land was flooded, not the world, quickly sorts that out to their satisfaction.

I have yet to run into a non-Christian skeptic whose problem with the flood story is that God flooded the world. I have met Christians who struggle with it though. Generally their problem comes from their Pelagianism.

Y’see, Pelagius of Britain believed humans are inherently good. ’Cause we were created good, y’know. Ge 1.31 But sin bollixed all that, and now humanity is inherently selfish and corrupt—but Pelagians can‘t believe that. After all, they know lots of good people. And optimistically figure all most people need is a nudge in the right direction, provide us good influences, and we’ll straighten right out. This being the case, nobody oughta go to hell; a loving God, if he’s truly loving, would universally save everyone. Right?

Wouldn’t that be nice. But ’tain’t so. Like I said, we’re inherently selfish and corrupt. We could have the best influences ever—like Judas Iscariot had Jesus of Nazareth—yet still figure we know best, rebel, betray, and die in despair and nihilism. It’s not that God doesn’t wanna save everyone; of course he does. It’s that people would rather go to hell than have anything to do with him.

So when Pelagians look at the people of Noah’s day, their issue is they don’t actually believe God when he declared humanity, except for Noah, was ruined.

Genesis 6.11-13 KWL

11 To God’s face, the land was ruined. The land was full of violence.

12 God saw the land. Look, ruin!—all flesh ruined its way in the land.

13 God told Noah, “To my face, the end of all flesh is coming:

They fill the land with violence before them. Look, the land is ruined!”

No, they insist, it wasn’t. A loving God could’ve unruined it… in some other way than flooding it.

To their minds, a loving God should’ve found another alternative than judgment and punishment. The problem—the dirty little secret of universalism—is the only way God could fix ’em without punishing them is to reprogram them. If rebellion is their freewill decision, all God needs to do is abolish their free will, and force them to love him. In so doing, God’s gonna destroy them—you know, like hell will. Only difference is, it’ll look like God never actually destroyed anything—but of course he did, just like a computer with a swapped-out hard drive. Looks the same; isn’t at all.

Y’know, replacing humans with Stepford humans is hypocrisy, and completely undermines God’s character. But universalists don’t care about that so much as they do their character, which they insist is inherently good. Better than God’s, too. (Not that they’ll ever say this. They’ll simply claim instead that the violent bits of the bible which they disapprove of, weren’t literal. Or inspired. Or otherwise count.)