Where Are the Corpses?

Where Are the Corpses?

May 18, 2020

Scripture: Genesis 6:9 – 7:24

Ah yes. The story of Noah and the flood. God decides that people have become so wicked that God will make a great flood to kill everyone off so God can start over again with Noah and his family. We love to tell children this story, or at least a version of it. We put pictures of it, or part of it, on the walls of our Sunday School rooms. There’s a big boat for Noah, his family, and a pair of every kind of animal that lives on dry ground. Noah is a kindly, grandfatherly man welcoming all the animals aboard the boat. The animals are so cute, and everything is so peaceful. Sometimes we give our children a plastic toy boat with plastic figures of Noah, his family, and at least some of the animals so our children can play at enacting this story, or part of it, themselves. It’s a lovely scene. Some nice people and animals are going for a boat ride.

And I always want to ask: Where are the corpses? There ought to be corpses! Of course we don’t include the floating corpses of people and animals in our scenes of kindly Noah and the nice animals because, well, because that would be so unpleasant. That would be so ugly. That would ruin  our nice picture with the peaceful pairs of animals going on a boat ride with kindly Grandpa Noah. So no. No corpses please. Floating corpses aren’t appropriate for Sunday School children.

OK, corpses aren’t appropriate for Sunday School children, but what that means is that the whole story of Noah and the flood as it appears in the Bible isn’t appropriate for Sunday School or any other children. Folks, the story of Noah and the flood isn’t sweet and gentle. It is a terrible story of God’s wrath and the death by drowning of everything on land except the few creatures that made it onto the ark along with Noah and his family. Here’s how the story really goes.

It starts with God seeing that humans have become horribly wicked “and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5. God gets so fed up that God is sorry God ever made humans in the first place: “It grieved him to his heart.” Genesis 6:6. So God decides to “blot out from the earth the human beings I have created…for I am sorry that I have made them.” Genesis 6:7. Of all the people on earth only Noah “found favor in the spirit of the Lord.” Genesis 6:8.

God goes to Noah, and the text gives us a little more information about what humans are doing that is so awful. The earth “was filled with violence.” Genesis 6:11 and 13. God gives Noah instructions for building a big boat on which to escape the coming deluge along with instructions (somewhat contradictory instructions by the way) about what to put on it. Noah does as instructed and the flood comes. Whereupon “all flesh died that moved on the earth….” Genesis 7:21. Human beings and animals alike “were blotted out from the earth.” Genesis 7:23.

How this story ever got to be a gentle story for young children absolutely escapes me. First of all it gives us a picture of an angry, vengeful God, so angry and vengeful that all life on dry land (except Noah et al.) is doomed. It gives us a picture of humanity as so unrelentingly evil that all God can think to do about it is wipe humanity off the face of the earth (except Noah et al.). God then sends rains that  drown every land creature except those on the ark. Millions upon millions of people and animals suffer a miserable death by drowning. The God of the Noah story sure isn’t a God I want children to learn about. An angry, vengeful God produces angry, vengeful people or at least frightened ones. The God of the Noah story is not the God I know in and through Jesus Christ and is not the God I want our children to know and to love.

So once again: Where are the corpses? Where are the floating dead bodies of the women, men, and children God has just killed? Leaving them out of our depictions of the story creates a false impression of the story and of the God the story presents. So please. Let’s be done with the sweet pictures of a big boat, a kindly old man, and cute animals on our Sunday School walls. The story of Noah and the flood is a terrible story. I for one would be happy to do without it.