On Smiting.

The earnest conversation about whether God exists or not seems to ride roughshod over the more cogent point that he is a certifiable psycho with serious bonding issues.

Do wot?

er, just wondering…  about the smiting of your bride, the Chosen People. You don’t seem to be happy with your new choice…

Chosen People doesn’t do it for me. I tried. Really. I been patient. Cannot fault me there.

You’re disappointed and angry.

Ja man.

How long were you separated from  …..

DON’T MENTION HER NAME.

from your…er..ex before you got together with your new bride, Chosen People?

Not long.

Three quarters of a page in Revelations actually.

I don’t know. I said, not long.

Do you think er,… perhaps you should have taken an epoch or two to you know, find yourself again, work through some issues, learn from the experience?

Learn? I know all..

Of course, oh Mighty One.. it’s just that maybe your disappointment is in the hastiness of your re-marriage after, the er… thing that never happened with you know who… ahem.

Speak plainly or be smote!

Yes, its exactly this smiting thing I’d like to ask about, oh Great One, who is so…. great. You’re clearly, well, upset. Perhaps regretting your decision. It stands to reason oh munificent and resplendent lord of hosts, that if you beat your wife then she’s not the one for you and that rather than your wife being unfaithful it is your own secretly harboured wish to be in the arms of another, the loss of whose embrace actually constitutes such a torture as to unleash…

KILL THEM ALL……..

Exactly, the smiting. Now you have been a bit over the top haven’t you?

KILL THEM ALL .

The thresher’s at Edom didn’t really deserve to have their house burned down for using iron threshing rods did they?

KILL THEM ALL.

The iron rods were somehow… offensive to you?

KILL THEM ALL.

And Lot’s wife, who doesn’t even get a name…

Well it was just the one.  I let the others go. Am I not infinite in my mercy? Usually I take them all, sheep goats the lot.

You killed someone…?

Yeh, Lot’s wife.

But, how…why?

Well , she disobeyed me, mon..

By…

by looking at her burning home with all her stuff in flames, mon.

You burned her home..

Yeah, bitch. I burned it. Burned it right down, mudderfukka. Down to the ground, mon. They went down in that town. Know what I’m sayin’?

But why?

Mixing it up with other gods, mon.

Let me understand, you burned down her house as a way of appealing to her devotion and then killed her with an ironic twist for displaying the least of all human gestures conveying loss of something dear to her heart?

I turned her to salt, mon..Bamm!

er, okaaay,,, why the salt. I mean what’s that about?

Are you mixing it up with me, mon? Boooyakasha! Walk on before I’m beat you.

No,.. er, sorry,, I just wondered, just interested in your divine inventiveness and curious about what might motivate, I mean inform, no, er…. what you are trying to teach your faithless children, oh lord, by your great and mystical symbolism, you know, of the salt.

Its just salt, innit? you want me to explain when I already show?

But this is the problem, oh Great and Mighty One.

Wot?

Its not simply that your Chosen People feel unheard and, well frankly treated very badly, but we’re all a bit concerned that you don’t seem to be thinking through your own great wisdom either.. Oh Great One, which is maybe why things went so pear shaped with your first wife, Hokmah, back in the day….

DON’T SPEAK HER NAME.

And then you did that most human rebound thing, got all cranky very quickly, you know… nudge nudge, new woman not quite what the old one used to do for you and boom, centuries of smiting.

They strayed from the path..

No, oh lord, we were never on the path, could never live up to …Her, no matter how she cheesed you off…and giving people the freedom to choose and then smiting them if they don’t choose you, is not really a choice is it?

Don’fugwidme mudderfukka.

But I’m worried and seriously anxious, oh Great One. You’ve lost Relatedness in more ways than one.

DON’T SPEAK HER NAME.

Sorry, its just that the whole salt thing is still bothering me. I mean, was there a choice in the matter? Could it have been stone? Or even different types of stone. You carry quite a range, you know. Or maybe, you could have turned her into a tree, you know, a bit of creativity, poetic justice and all that. After all, in punishment for her loving your mother whose groves were sacred..

DON’T SPEAK HER NAME. I warn you, I will smite you.

And when you are done, oh Great One, who will you play with then?

 

Published by

andywhite

Psychotherapist/writer/artist/ author of, 'Going Mad to Stay Sane', a psychology of self-destructiveness, about to come into its third edition. Soon to be printed for the first time, 'Abundant Delicious.. the Secret and the Mystery', described by activist Satish Kumar as, ' A Tao of the Soul'. This book documents the archetypal country through which the process of individuation occurs and looks at the trials and tribulations we might expect on the way. In the meantime..... Narcissisim is the issue of our age. This blog looks at how it operates, how it can damage and how we may still fruit despite it.

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