Let’s talk about floods
Much of the first part of this post is inspired by Rob Bell’s entry Flood in his series entitled ‘What is the Bible?’ on Tumblr – which is well worth a read. In fact, feel free to read that instead of my post today!
He starts…..
Let’s talk about floods. Because the ancients did. The Sumerians told flood stories, the Mesopotamians told flood stories, the Babylonians told flood stories-stories about water and its destructive power to wipe out towns, cities, civilizations, and people were not unusual in the ancient world.
There were even stories about people building boats to survive these floods.
How else could people in those ancient times explain the unpredictability and wild forces of nature, the destructive power of unexpected surges of water? God was angry and this was their punishment. Some people still describe the inexplicable as an act of God or divine judgement against a particular group of people – like the UKIP councillor who blamed legalisation of gay marriage for the widespread flooding earlier this year.
And who hasn’t looked at a global situation of conflict and suffering with despair and wished that God would wipe that particular slate clean and start again? How much easier and more exciting is it to keep restarting with a blank piece of paper on a creative project than revising draft after draft after draft?
So a flood narrative was not unusual back in the day. What is unusual is the second part of the story but we’ll come on to that tomorrow.
I am engaged in a project in which I am trying to bring certain Bible stories into a contemporary context. This is nothing new – the whole of the superhero culture that we all know and love does this time and time again by reinterpreting the battle between good versus evil and introducing a lone saviour…..I watch with interest films such as 2012 to see how they reimagine the ancient story ( and with enjoyment because I love John Cusack!). Ooh and then there’s Evan Almighty, another great family film with lots to discuss over a bowl of popcorn. My interpretation was sparked by the character of Japheth in the recent movie ‘Noah’ (which is pretty wacky, weird and wonderful but great for opening up the discussion…….)….just how would a sensitive teenager make sense of what was happening and the role his father was playing? This is what I came up with – see what you think…..
Introduction: It’s hard to say how old Noah’s sons were at the time of the flood. Everyone lived longer in those days. It says that Noah was 600 years old. It’s impossible to say how many of those 600 years were spent as a teenager. In a sense though, we always revert to being a teenager around our parents, so treating Japheth, the youngest of Noah’s three sons, as a teenager in this scene is not unreasonable. This exchange between Japheth and his father is the one we all know and love: How can I be sure that you know best? How can I trust that you know what you’re doing?
Scene: A young man is thrashing around on a camp bed, moaning in his sleep. An older man runs in when he hears his son shouting out.
Jay: Hold on, I’m coming! Don’t give up….don’t die……please don’t die!
Dad: [sitting down on the edge of the bed and gently shaking his son to wake him from his dream]
It’s OK, Jay, you’re safe. I’m here. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s all going to be OK.
Jay: [propping himself up on his arms]
But it’s not, is it Dad? It’s not OK.
Dad: Jay, you’re safe. Nothing can harm you here.
Jay: Yes, I’m safe. Our family is safe. But what about all the others out there? What about all my friends? What about our neighbours? Who knows what is happening to them right now? Who knows if they are even still alive? Nothing is ever going to be OK again for them.
Dad: There’s nothing we can do for them now, son. You need to find a way to stop thinking about them.
Jay: But I can’t. That’s the problem. It’s not so bad during the day. You keep me busy checking and cataloguing all the thousands of DNA samples in the vault. I don’t have time to think. But at night, I can’t help myself. My dreams are populated by bodies. Most of them dead, some of them barely alive. My friends stumbling around like the walking dead, their flesh falling away from their bones, their unseeing eyes searching for help. Searching for me. Their parched, oozing lips voicelessly mouthing my name.
I can’t stand it, Dad. I want to help them. I want to save them from this atrocity. They were good people like us. They were kids. Let me find a way to rescue them, if it’s not already too late. I can’t live with myself if I don’t.
Dad: Jay, you know I can’t let you do that. This is the way it’s meant to be. This is the way it was always meant to be.
Jay: But how? It makes no sense. How are we the only ones down here? How can we be the only ones allowed to survive this apocalypse?
Dad: God chose us for a reason, you know that.
Jay: God! God? You still believe in God? You complete fool, how can you? What kind of God would allow the people that he created to suffer and die in this way? What was the point in creating them at all? And why choose us to live? What’s so special about us? We’re just an ordinary family.
Dad: I don’t know. I can’t explain it to you. I just trust that God knows what he’s doing.
Jay: And you, do you know what you’re doing? How long are we going to be stuck in this manky bunker?
Dad: I don’t know.
Jay: And how will we know when it’s safe to come out?
Dad: I don’t know.
Jay: And how do we know what we’ll find out there? Are we the only people left in this town, in this country, on this continent, in the whole world?
Dad: I don’t know.
Jay: And what are we going to do with all these animal DNA samples that we collected? How are we going to populate the planet with animals when all we have is thousands of test-tubes?
Dad: I don’t know.
Jay: [totally exasperated]
You see, you don’t know anything. You think you’re doing the right thing, but really, you’ve no idea. This could all be some horrible mistake.
Dad: I don’t know what to say, son. I wish I did. This is how it is. There’s nothing you can do to change that now. I do trust that God knows what he’s doing and will show us what to do, but in the meantime, we wait. We get on with our work. You need to get to know Anna better. Your mum chose her for you. She’s a lovely girl. Stop fighting the inevitable and go with the flow. That’s all any of us can do right now.
Jay: Grr…this is all so lame. Just go away and leave me alone. I should have been able to fall in love in my own way and time. Who wants their mum to choose their girlfriend for them? It’s wrong. It’s all totally messed up. How is any of this ever going to come right?
[lies down and puts pillow over his head to stop any more conversation]
Discussion questions
- Does this remind you of an incident in the Bible at all? If so, in what ways?
- Sometimes it’s hard to believe that the adults around us know what they are talking about. Can you think of an example?
- What are the reasons that people give today for not believing in God?
- How can we make sense of the disasters and atrocities that happen in our world?
- Have you ever felt that you have been ‘spared’ when others around you are suffering? How did that make you feel?
- Do you relate more to Jay or his father in this scene? How hard do you find it to go with the flow?
Write a description of Jay’s world as you imagine it to be a year after this conversation.
