One thing I’ve always loved about the Grecian gods. They love, they laugh, they screw, they fight with each other, they party like it’s 1999. If Man is made in the image of the gods we can recognize the kinship immediately.
The God of the Bible? If Man is made in his image the only one we can see any likeness to is that pain-in-the-ass old neighbor up the road, who’s always scowling out his window, shouting at all the kids and generally acting like he’s had a gigantic rod up his ass since birth. This is not a god I feel like praying to.
But OK, I haven’t read 90% or more of the Bible so let’s not make any hasty judgment calls. Maybe I’ve missed a bunch of his qualities. Hence the question: Does God ever lie or laugh in the Bible? I’d have a little more respect for the guy if he did.
“When the Lord saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time, he was sorry that he had ever made them and put them on the earth. He was so filled with regret”
Well, God does let the Devil play games with Job. “He’s my most faithful servant? OK, I’ll take your bet. You torture him with boils and pestilence, death and calamity, and we’ll see if he curses my name…”
Our religion teacher once mentioned how bland the gospels were - when Jesus is a child and gets lost at the temple, do you really think his mother says “son, thy father and I have been looking for you…”? Of did she say “You little schmuck, where the hell have you been for three days???”
Moses had to strike the rock twice to bring forth water, instead of commanding the water like the Lord told him - therefore he was barred from the holy land forever. God appears to be a holy dick.
God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and then stops him at the last moment. So technically this would have been a lie, telling someone “you have to kill your son, I order you” and then “never mind, I was just f***ing with ya!”
It’s not clear to me that the use of puns in Jesus’ discourse is even meant to be humorous – it might have simply been a rhetorical technique, an easy mnemonic. Certainly nothing else suggests he was being funny.
The idea of humor and holiness seem to be at odds in most people’s minds. Way back in the 1960s, Playboy ran an illustration accompanying an article about Jesus that showed him laughing. They later reported that it was their most-requested image reprint:
This, from a magazine that runs nudes and cartoons. I suspect it’s because the image of Jesus laughing was practically unknown back then. The Buddy Christ and Dogma were years in the future:
