Letter to Noah - (Gen 6 - 9)

Dear Noah

Are you real or were you an illustration used to explain the impact of a natural disaster like the flooding which must have occurred after the ice age ended? I start by rushing in with that question because you are one of those difficult biblical characters. If you are an illustration rather than a real person then my faith is not tested in the same way as if you were real and it really happened like the bible says.

If you are the story of how human kind survived natural disaster and rebuilt you are an inspiration. If you are real was God a monster who got reformed or is God not perfect?

As you can see I struggle with your story. I am going to start at the beginning now though. Gen 6: 1-4 talks about the Nephilim being sons of God. They seem to be like the Greek Gods in terms of how I see them. Yet, Jesus was the son of God also. Was Jesus the last Nephilim to walk the earth?

Yet Jesus seems different, these guys seem to be polygamous and in keeping with the culture of the day they seem to treat women in a really dodgy way, just taking them without consent to be their wives.

It is all so beyond my understanding I struggle to get my head even around that part of your story. In terms of the children who were part Nephilim and part human I guess they would have been like the half bloods in Harry Potter.

That brings me to the first problem with the flood thing. Is this, your story, the first story we have chronologically about wiping out mixed blood lines. Is yours a story about God committing genocide deliberately in order to restore a pure humanity?

You see it talks about the level of wickedness on the earth but those sorts of reasons have been given by people who oppose other groups in society in my time and there is not so much truth about it. Rather, it is a myth created often to justify hatred against other groups in society.

In terms of God being sorry he had made anybody apart from you that must have made you one heck of a guy. How was it living counter culturally walking with God in a society which wasn’t? People now talk about how difficult it is living in a secular society but that seems to have nothing on what you were living through and how different your life seems to have been to those around you.

How did you feel when God gave you the instructions for the ark. Did you have what we would describe as a WTF moment when you wondered what on earth was going on? Yet you did it, if you did it.

I like the conservation aspect of the story that you are told to keep one of every species to stop them dying out. Yet, what about the others?

Again the time thing seems interesting here. I know numbers have certain significances in the culture you come from and for those who wrote the bible. What significance is in this story would be interested to know more about, but that I guess I can read up on at some point.

If the flood as written was real what was it like to see those around you die? Even if not real what was it like as the waters rose. I have no experience of flooding but what I see sometimes on the news seems horrific….can’t imagine what it must have been in your society.

As the earth went back to what it had been and the winds blew (Gen 8:1) I wonder what that must have been like.

At the end of it was the alter built a sign you were just greatful to be alive? (Gen 8:8) I have no idea how I would have felt. In modern terms you may have had post traumatic stress disorder and perhaps that’s why you ended up getting drunk afterwards….I do wonder at this. The holy man, gets saved and ends up drunk and ashamed and then curses one of your sons who saw you were at the end of the day an ordinary guy. I struggle with you Noah at the end of the story (Gen 9:25).

I have a couple of other questions too. What was it like to eat meat for the first time and to kill an animal for food when you hadn’t before? Did you struggle to do it or was this a case of God compromising and giving approval to something that you’d already started doing? (Gen 9:3).

The rainbow as the sign of covenant in Gen 9:12-15 is special to me as I guess it must have been to you. God has shown it to me at various significant times in my life and at times I know have been significant for others too. That I guess is one of the reasons however difficult it is and however much I can’t understand I keep the faith. God shows me even in the dung of life he is a God of love and there for me. That's not just the image for today, it's what I have to sustain me when I'm struggling.

I think it is God being love which is why I find your story so hard. How could a God of love destroyed so much? Why???? Was it really all so awful he had to wipe it out pretty much? Even then I struggle.

I think I can only keep my faith if I see this as an illustration and see you as symbolic – somebody used to explain history and what we now regard as geology and science to those around you. You are the story to answer those difficult questions about how humans survive in times of natural disaster and to quell the fears about it happening again.