(no subject)

[slammerkinbabe]

The other day, I read Madeleine L’Engle’s Many Waters for the first time. I’d read the first three books in the Time Quintet, but when I was a kid I started Many Waters and was really bored almost immediately. Reading it as an adult, I wasn’t bored, but I was confused, because she decided to take on the topic of Noah and the flood and yet dodged all the challenging parts of the story. It’s not just that she doesn’t explore in any kind of depth the consequences or, really, any of the disturbing aspects of the idea of God wiping out the entire world. The characters who are fated to drown are drawn as not very nice people, but they’re not drawn so harshly as to make it seem okay that they’re all getting axed by God. But she basically passes that over without making the reader feel like the flood is anything particularly cruel. And then she sets up this thing where Noah’s daughters are not allowed on the ark, only his sons and their wives, which, I mean, is a seriously fucked-up detail. And she spends a lot of time painting one teenage daughter of Noah who is expected to drown in the flood. Which I liked, because it made the point that the flood was both capricious and cruel in drowning at least some people who weren’t dominated by evil. Except L’Engle, IMO, totally chickens out in the end and has the girl get beamed up to heaven before the flood starts. Seriously? You set up the play and then just walk away?

(Another issue: the twins remark several times that the flood was pointless because people are as evil now as they were then, but L'Engle doesn’t get into that in any depth either. And dude, that is such a good point.)

I know that a core aspect of L’Engle’s faith is that God is kind and merciful. Which is a vision of God I’ve always liked, but it’s also a vision that involves tossing out most of the Old Testament. And that’s fine by me, because I’m not someone who thinks the Bible is some sort of incontrovertible history/biography of God. My understanding of God casts a wider net, draws from different traditions. But if that’s not how L’Engle’s faith works, fine, cool. What I don’t get is her taking on one of the cruelest stories in the Bible and then refusing to address its cruelty. Why would you choose to write about the flood if you’re not going to engage with the emotional and moral implications of the story?

I saw the movie Noah in the theater and was actually kind of impressed by it, though Lord knows it wasn’t perfect (rock monsters, srsly?). But it didn’t pull its punches too much in confronting the horror of God’s killing everybody on the planet except for half a dozen people, and Noah’s single-mindedness in refusing to question the morality of every dictate he (thinks) he’s hearing from God is an interesting and, I think, illuminating take on the story. It wasn’t a movie that I was super-impressed by in the theater, but I find myself still thinking about it months after I saw it, so I guess it was doing something right. And I think the something was its willingness to face all the aspects of the story of the flood, including the troubling ones, honestly and thoughtfully.

I’m curious as to whether anybody reading this has read Many Waters and what their (your) thoughts are on it. I thought it was surprisingly facile for a Madeleine L’Engle novel, which was disappointing. But maybe I’m missing something.

Comments

[ticktockman.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, I'm Jewish, and I'm perfectly willing both to rebut and to risk offending you. You must get offended pretty darn often on the internet, since you're setting the bar that low.

If you start with the assumption that the Bible is about a superpower who did everything that God did, but isn't all-wise, then it would be pretty hard to read the story of Elisha and the bears and not think about that superpower as cruel. If Elisha had been my servant, and a gang of children had teased him about being bald, and I responded by releasing two bears which then killed 42 of the kids, you would think me to be cruel, and also to be a criminal, an asshole, a sociopath, and a madman.

It's only when you start with the assumption that God is infinitely wise that you can make an argument that God's slaughter of the 42 boys was justified, and the reason it was justified was because God did it, and God is wiser than we are.

Likewise, God slaughtered 7000 sheep and goats, 3000 camels, 1000 oxen, and 500 donkeys in order to win a bet with Satan. The animals had done nothing wrong, it was just that they were the property of a man God had chosen to torment in accordance with the bet. Likewise God slaughtered a large number of men and women because they were servants to Job. Likewise God slaughtered 3 more women and 7 more men because they were the children of Job. And so it goes.

If this were done by any man, or any old garden-variety superpower, we would deem him cruel. But because we define God as not-cruel, therefor this slaughter perpetrated by God was not cruel. And because you hold that God is not-cruel, you are offended by anyone who doesn't see it your way.

Go ahead and be offended. And then go ahead and say that you COULD find it offensive, but that you're not going to argue the point, because, um slammerkinbabe isn't Jewish, and has already reached a conclusion, and by not-arguing you are terminating the conversation and having the last word.

*daha*

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

Tl;dr.

I'm talking to SKB. I don't know you and don't care what you think one way or the other. Arguing on the internet is stupid- you're a case in point. ("Daha"? Seriously?)

You may now have the last word! Maybe someone else will read it.

[ticktockman.livejournal.com]

Right. You've just done the typed equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Nah nah nah I can't hear you."

*daha*