It Was Like Spiritual AIDS or Something

Genesis 6. Oh man, not Noah’s ark. I never liked this story growing up. Adults always seem to trot it out for children too, just because it features animals. “Hey, kids! Here’s the scientifically questionable story about how God wipes out nearly all of humanity! What fun!” But the Bible is full of things we'd rather not know. Later, Lot's daughters get him drunk and rape him, making them the worst daughters of all time. We’ll get there. It’s gonna be gross, so brace yourselves.

Earlier, I sighed at this part of the story, because God wiping humans out didn’t get rid of violence and evil hearts. He knew it wouldn’t, but he killed everyone anyway. Because of the long life spans, the population had to be huge. It’s hard to imagine that things were that much worse back then than in the Holocaust or today. Jesus said in Matthew 24 that the last days will be like the days of Noah. We certainly have violence, evil hearts, a growing population, and an obsession with immoral sex, but we’ve always had these things in the world. What is God’s breaking point? How bad do things have to get? And what did the flood fix for an omnipotent God who knew we’d just come back, hearts blacker than ever?

My running theory for a long time was that humans were so evil that they were going to pass this more potent kind of evil to their offspring. It was set in their DNA and God had to cut it off. I got this theory not from Christianity but from Eastern and New Age spirituality. Some of these people assert that spiritual maladies and emotional patterns are passed on through generations. It seems this was the right direction in which to head, although there are other theories. I knew about the Nephilim and the flood, but I didn't connect one as the reason for the other until recently.

In Genesis 6, we hear about the Nephilim, who are described as offspring of the “sons of God” and the daughters of humans. This describes unions between human women and supernatural creatures, such as demon-possessed men, angels, or fallen angels. What’s my evidence for that? Well, the phrase “sons of God” is used three times in Job to clearly refer to angels. There are also indicators of this theory in Jude 6.

The apocrypha also asserts that they were angels. The apocrypha in Christianity means Christian text that are not canonical. The book of Enoch, an ancient Jewish writing that qualifies as apocrypha, details the lust of the angels. While this book is not part of the Bible and I don’t often work with apocrypha, it is not outlandish to think that there is some truth somewhere in these books, especially when it doesn’t contradict the Bible and what we know for sure.

Enoch says that these unions led to the birth of giants. The Nephilim sound awesome from Genesis 6. They sound like big, strong, famous, superheroes. We get no further details in typical, frustrating Biblical fashion. What does this have to do with the flood? This angelic sexytime was one of Satan’s tactics to thwart the birth of the Messiah.  The angels corrupted the bodies of women, and the Messiah was to come from a woman so that he would not get the sin curse passed by the man (Genesis 3:15).

This is the best reason I’ve heard for God having to start over. All of the women had their bodies and souls touched by demonic supernatural forces, and a sinless Jesus could not come from these lines. Also, the human race would be even more corrupt than they already were by the fall. The population became so polluted that God quarantined some pure people on an ark and eradicated the virus. Otherwise, why were these details included at the beginning of the flood story? It makes sense that these details were the reason for the flood story. This has completely ruined the movie “Meet Joe Black” for me.

God saw that all the “thoughts of the human heart” were only evil, all the time. That’s right, your heart has thoughts. Also, people were getting too violent. Fight clubs were springing up everywhere! God decides to leave a remnant (as usual): Noah.

The KJV describes Noah as “a just man and perfect in his generations” who walked with God. “Perfect in his generations.” Meaning that he didn’t have the spiritual virus that was being passed around? Noah’s daughters sound like a nightmare, but his sons were probably pure of seed, or whatever. In the New Testament, Noah was described as a “preacher of righteousness.” Apparently, he garnered no converts.

God clued Noah in, made a covenant with him, and gave him specific instructions for ark building. God’s measurements made the ark about half the size of the Titanic (a little bigger than that, actually). Noah did everything God said to do, despite not ever seeing rain. 

There is some debate over whether Noah got every type of animal or every species of animal. Either way, there was more than enough room for plenty of animals. I’ve heard it said that the ark could have carried roughly 136,000 sheep in half of it. Scientists admit that they don’t know how many animal species there are today, let alone how many animal species there were at the time of the flood. Time makes more as animals breed. Noah probably didn’t get every type of animal, but he got enough that we have animals. This isn’t the part of the story to nitpick.

 Ancient writers independent of the Bible confirm the story of the ark, and there are flood myths in other countries. There have been more modern claims by people who say they found it or saw its remains. You can look those up yourself and evaluate their authenticity, if you question them. I don’t much care. I’m more into questioning the philosophical/ethical/day-to-day parts of world religions, not the scientific parts. There are still miracles and mysteries.