"Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made." (Genesis 7:1-4)
Why did God choose Noah and his family?
Here the Supreme Being is giving Noah instructions to counteract the great flood to come. This text clearly indicates that Noah had a personal relationship with the Supreme Being. The Supreme Being was giving Noah instructions, and Noah was following those instructions. This indicates not only dedication, but trust. Noah trusted in the Supreme Being. He loved and served God. This confirms that the Supreme Being is a person - a person we can have a personal relationship with.Noah's devotion was not only indicated by God's saying that "I have found you righteous," but was also confirmed by the verse following:
And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him. (Genesis 7:5)
Noah could have rejected God's instructions. He could have doubted Him. But he didn't because he was devoted to the Supreme Being. This devotion is why the Supreme Being entrusted Noah to carry forth the next generation.
The flood indicates the complete authority of the Supreme Being. Through nature, the Supreme Being has the ability to create and rearrange and restructure civilization as needed. We can see from the text that all creatures were not being wiped out. Rather, a certain segment of society and certain animals were being eliminated. This is opposed to aquatic creatures, birds and other creatures that can survive in the air or water.
In the end, a degraded part of human society was being cleansed and repopulated.
Genesis 7:21 confirms the event:
Every living thing that moved on the earth perished--birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.
Did God really wipe out all humans except Noah?
The translators and interpreters of these texts indicate that God is vengeful, gets angry at people and lashes out at humanity. Let's discuss this in a moment.But first we must ask whether the flood is a historical event. Did the flood really happen? The historical evidence of the flood is discussed with the previous verse. This indicates that while a flood did occur a few thousand years ago, it was not a flood that covered the entire earth. It was a regional flood, that covered a region of the Middle East.
Sure to those residents, it would have been considered the whole earth. But that's because the local people were not sailing ships around the world checking to see if everything was flooded. They just assumed that everything was flooded, since all the land around them was covered.
Does God really get mad at humanity and wipe out everyone when things get out of control? If we are speaking of God then how could things get out of His control. God is in full control all the time. How could anything take place out of His control?
Is this the same God that Moses, Jesus and others have encouraged us to love, serve and trust? How can they trust Him if things are out of His control? Or if He gets angry and is vengeful? How can we trust and love someone who is vengeful and lashes out towards all of humanity?
The fact is, the Supreme Being is not a vengeful or angry God as portrayed by the translators and scribes of these texts. And nothing takes place out of His control. He maintains control always.
Rather, the translators and scribes - most employed by emperors or ecclesiastical sectarian institutions - who have recorded, translated and characterized oral traditions of the ancient teachers - have mistranslated and mischaracterized those teachings, including this particular event.
They have portrayed the Supreme Being as a vengeful God in order to strike fear in the population, in order to gain followers and control people. This is what happens when scripture is handled and utilized by those focused upon their power and authority rather than truth.
Are we really supposed to fear God?
This mischaracterization of these scriptural texts is confirmed by the choice of words for the Hebrew word ירא (yare'). This choice is wrongly made throughout the Old Testament. In most of these sectarian versions, ירא (yare') is typically translated to "fear." But in this context, the word actually refers to becoming awed or having reverence. It means honoring and respecting someone - because they are awesome.Being in awe, and honoring and respecting the Supreme Being is not the same thing as fearing God. A person can certainly love someone they are in awe with or revere. But it is difficult to love someone while being afraid of them.
The reality is that the Supreme Being cleansed the planet of civilization due to the degradation of society. This degradation was making it difficult for those who were sincerely seeking to revive their relationship with God and return home to the spiritual world due to the influences of society.
What is the purpose of the flood?
The Supreme Being sets up this planet with a variety of choices and consequences for those choices. It is a place of learning, where every action has a consequence. This creates the ultimate learning experience, as we get to learn "real-time" how it feels to hurt or help others. These "real-time" lessons are ultimately consequences, enabling us to learn.You see, we are temporary visitors in this world. We are temporarily occupying a physical body in order to learn these lessons. But rather than the Supreme Being necessarily teaching us directly, He set up a system whereby we automatically learn by doing.
These physical bodies we each wear are temporary vehicles. And this physical world is a rehabilitation center. The physical world was created to house those persons who decided they did not want to live in the spiritual world, exchanging a loving relationship with the Supreme Being. Instead, we became envious of the Supreme Being, wanting to enjoy as He enjoys.
So He built us a place where we could virtually get away from Him. He gave us these physical bodies to act out our desires.
These bodies, however, are all temporary. They are virtual. They could be compared to a person's computer identity - a gravatar or internet handle. When a person signs on to their email account or a website they assume a virtual identity. When they play a computer game, they may assume an icon with this identity. This identity and icon are separate from the person operating the computer. This virtual identity can be changed or even erased from the computer without affecting the computer operator.
In the same way, we wear these physical bodies temporarily. When they die, we do not die. We simply move on according to our consciousness. This means that no one died in the Great Flood. Those persons occupying those temporary bodies simply migrated to new physical bodies.
The Supreme Being created the physical world as a rehabilitation center, to teach us about love. Because we became self-centered, we now need to be taught about love. This is why there are consequences in the physical world. If we hurt someone, we will be hurt. If we help someone, we will be helped. These are set up to help teach us the effects of our actions, to give us an awareness of others, and encourage us to consider and care about others.
Why is loving God and loving others so important?
Loving others and loving the Supreme Being is our natural position. We are not self-centered entities by nature. We are caregivers by nature.The Supreme Being is trying to show us our real nature so that we can return to our home in the spiritual world and our natural positions.
This means that through the faculties of nature, God has arranged the physical world to help us. He is like the teacher rearranging the classroom and we are the students in the classroom. He may call a recess so that everyone must leave the room. This gives Him the opportunity to rearrange and reorganize the classroom so that when we return to a better opportunity to learn.
This is precisely what the Supreme Being is doing with the flood. Human society - at least in that region - became degraded to the point where there were significant consequences to previous activities. This resulted in a cleansing in this region.
As we see here, God's relationship with Noah was different. Noah was dedicated to God, so God took care of Noah. He protected Noah and those animals around Noah. He helped Noah preserve his lifestyle despite the inundation.
This illustrates that a loving relationship was involved between Noah and the Supreme Being.
We each need such a relationship. This is the teaching of this part of Genesis. That each of us needs to take refuge in the Supreme Being. When we do that, God will look out for us.
This is part of our innate, natural relationship with the Supreme Being. We are caregivers of God - but He is also our Supreme caregiver.
