In some ways their interest in Noah makes me happy. In other ways it amuses me. But there is a place inside me, the place where I understand what happened when Noah built that ark, where I wonder how much of the truth of that 'story' to share with them. I grew up learning about Noah's ark. I heard the stories. Watched the videos. It's portrayed as a cute story. A feel good time when Noah saved all the animals.
The truth is far different.
It was a very dark time. A time that most people today, the very people that teach Noah's ark to children, would not have wanted to experience.
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” Genesis 6:5-7
Where is the feel good story in that? Where is the God of love so many people know today. When I read those verses I see that man was so wicked, so evil, that the Lord regretted making all men. He was sorry that He had created them, so much so that He was going to completely kill out not only every human on the earth but also every animal. I see that the Lord was grieved by the actions of men, by the conditions of their hearts, and that He planned to release His wrath on all the earth as a result.
But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6:7
Sometimes I marvel at that. In the entire world...Noah found favor. One man out of how many? One man wasn't wicked. One man's heart wasn't filled with evil. What kind of man must Noah have been?
I have a pretty good idea. Scripture spells out for us what is evil and what is good.
20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23
Evil things= evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.
Sometimes I think about what a world so evil the Lord wanted to destroy it would look like. And I don't have far to imagine. Because all the things listed as evil above are prevalent in our society today. When I think of what the world must have been like before the flood I imagine there was more murder going on, maybe in plain sight of everyone but beyond that...what was different from today?
Even with that though...that isn't what makes me stop and really just think, just imagine, what it was like. It's when I get to the part that only Noah found favor with God. Only Noah wasn't wicked.
Can you imagine being the only person on earth that wasn't filled with that much evil? Can you imagine the isolation? The longing for others to be like you were?
I can. And it floors me. I know how I felt in years past when I could clearly see a difference in my faith and in the 'Christians' around me. I know how much I held back because to share the faith I had, to share what was so much a part of me, pushed people away. I didn't understand it. Didn't know what made me so different than them. Was I wrong? Or were they?
If I was wrong there was nothing I could do to stop it. I didn't know why I saw things the way I did but I couldn't change the way I saw it. And I was alone with my beliefs, with my faith, with my Lord. I am no longer in that place. My husband shares the same faith, the same beliefs. And I know what's different in my faith and I know where to find others that have that kind of faith, online if not in person.
And yet...I still just marvel at what life must have been like for Noah. Of how He must have hurt at seeing so much wickedness, at living in its presence. I can imagine the loneliness, the pain, the isolation he must have felt.
Then my mind goes onto a different track. One that makes me marvel in a whole new way. Here was a man that stood out among the entire population of earth. A man that found favor in God's eyes when He had stopped looking favorably on all men. When God created Adam he said it was good. His creation was good. He was happy with it. He even went so far as to say His creation was very good. When I think of that, I think of the crafts I've done, the quilts I've made, the stories I've written, and remember the sense of accomplishment when I finished them. There is something I made. It's finished. And I'm happy with the result. So I stop the work I was putting into it and call it done. I have no illusions that my paltry little crafts or stories in any way measure up to the work of creation but it is the closest I can get to imagining what it must have been like for the Lord. There was something He made, something He created. He worked on it until He was happy with it, until it looked the way He wanted it to, and then He called it good and He stopped working on it.
What does it take for something you once called good to so offend you that you destroy it? He didn't just grow tired of it, discover it was worn out, or outgrow it. He was offended by it. Grieved by it. What was once good in His sight now held so much evil He no longer wanted to look at it, to deal with it. And so He planned to destroy it. And yet...one man found favor in His eyes. One man stood out among all the others. One man was worth saving. And so He saved Him. Out of how many people that populated the earth at that time...God saved Noah.
Another daughter recently expressed a thought I've heard before from others...what about the babies? What about the children? What were they doing that was so evil that God had to destroy them? That's a question I've had a hard time answering in the past, one I still struggle with today. Although I know the answer...God looks at the hearts of men. He knows what they will be and how they will act and believe long before they're ever born. I know that. I know every baby ever born is a sinner at birth. And yet I still struggle with my very human nature to see babies as innocent. I have a one month old niece. I saw her a couple of weeks ago. She was tiny and sweet and very innocent. There was nothing bad in any of her actions. She didn't even know she was a person let alone understand what she was doing. She was innocent. But I know that she was born with a sinful nature.
To think of tiny babies being killed by the flood for the evil that men were doing...it's hard to think about even though I know there's more to it than that. I know the Lord looked at those babies and saw only evil in their hearts. He was able to see what man never could. He knew what those babies would one day become, knew what their hearts would hold, what their actions would be.
As I responded to my daughter I remembered a headline news article I had seen not all that long ago. I didn't read the article but I did read the headline, and I saw the disturbing picture attached to it. In that picture was a very small boy holding a gun. The caption read something like...five year old taught to kill Christians. I remembered that...and was reminded that evil starts young. I thought of children I have known that were taught from infancy to use drugs. I thought of other children whose parents trained them from babyhood to fight. These children may have come into the world in a way that made them seem innocent but the longings of their hearts and the things they were taught from birth made them evil long before they had a chance to grow up. That little boy in that picture never had a chance to be anything but evil. Not only was he born a sinner but evil was taught to him in such a way that he never realized what he was doing was wrong. Will he change when he's older? Possibly. Only the Lord knows that boys future. But right now that little boy is being groomed to do evil.
When I told my daughter of that boy she was horrified. Shocked that someone so young could do such a thing. Horrified that the parents or whoever was raising him would teach it to him. We then talked about those 'innocent' children that died during the flood. How they were being taught the ways of their parents, the ways of their society.
Just this past week I saw several posts about public schools teaching gender neutrality and about the girl scouts letting little boys that think they're girls, or want to be girls, into what has historically been an all girls organization. This is where our society has gone. It is the place where America is. And the children of our society are being taught from birth, from childhood, to not only accept it but embrace it. It is no longer seen by the majority as something bad, it's no longer something that's there but unspoken. It's now written right into curriculum's and programs. It's plainly stated and openly taught. What chance do those children being taught those things have to withstand evil, to believe differently? If the child does somehow pick up a different set of values they aren't going to be allowed to express them. They'll get into trouble, be labeled as a troublemaker.
Among those articles was the decision that at least one school district has made to allow boys that identify as girls to use girls bathroom and locker rooms. My mind just staggers at that very thought. I remember what it was like in public school, changing clothes in the locker room. I would have been horrified to have to do so in front of boys, no matter if they thought they were girls. I would still be horrified today if I had to share a locker room with men. I'd be shocked and uncomfortable at best if I were to walk into a bathroom and see a man in there. A couple of years ago we vacationed in Florida and stayed at a campground. It was a nice campground with so-so bathrooms but they were always clean and were built in a way where you had privacy while in there. One day several boys came into the bathroom looking for their mom who was in the shower area. After talking to her they proceeded to use the bathroom then left. Nothing wrong in that. Except that these boys ranged in age from about nine to 12 or 13. As a mother to a young son, who has never been in a men's bathroom, I can understand the need for these boys to be in the women's bathroom. And they were polite and showed no indecent interest in any of the women or girls in the bathroom. But there comes a point where boys in the girls bathroom is wrong. The girls in the schools that are allowing that will have no choice but to accept it. They will be forced to share bathroom and changing facilities with boys whether they want to or not. As a result they will be trained to accept that which goes against the very nature of male and female. There is a time and a place for boys, and men, to be in a women's bathroom, and for women and girls to be in a men's bathroom, but forcing children to accept boys in what has been labeled as a girls area just because that boy wants to think he's a girl isn't it. It's in those times where a man has a little girl in town and she's been in the women's bathroom too long and he needs to check on her. It's in those times when a woman in town has sole care of a handicapped man and he needs help in the bathroom. It's at times when there are extenuating circumstances and there are no alternative options. But it isn't in those times that someone of one gender wants to be the other gender and so wishes to use the bathroom they shouldn't be in. That is simply encouraging wickedness and teaching it to children when they're young and easily impressionable.
And that is the way the conversation with my older daughter went. While my younger children were and are fascinated with the feel good side of Noah's ark, with the 'look what Noah did to save all the animals' side, my older daughter was questioning why God would want to kill babies and children. People that she saw as being innocent of all the evil that was going on in the world. As we talked about things like the little boy being trained to kill Christians, and children in America being trained to accept that which should never have to be accepted, she began to see it from a slightly different perspective. Those children should have been innocent. But they weren't. It was possible for them to grow up in so much evil that they see it as entertainment at worst and just the way things are at best. She still questioned the babies though. And I had no answer except to tell her that God could see what we can't. And what He saw was evil in the hearts of all men.
Babies aren't mentioned in the verses on Noah. Scripture doesn't tell us how many people there were on earth or how many babies on the earth at that time. The verses that tell us about Noah and the flood don't tell us anything about babies and children. We are left to fill in those gaps for ourselves. Chances are...those babies were born into so much sin that their hearts were corrupt even before they were old enough to know they were people.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Genesis 6:5
Chances are that verse speaks of babies and children too. But how do you explain that to children? The daughter asking those questions is in her teens. If she can think up the questions, she can handle the answers. And so I did my best to explain to her something that I can't fully grasp myself. I understand. I get it. But my human nature can't fathom the need to kill babies. Just as my daughter couldn't understand why God would kill them. In the end the only way to answer that, as with so many other questions, is to say...His ways aren't our ways. He has a plan for mankind, for His people, and it may never look like any plan we, as mere humans, would make much less choose.
And at a time when there was nothing but wickedness on the earth, when there was nothing but evil in men's hearts the Lord saw the same in the hearts of the babies and children. And in that time...there was only one man that found favor in His eyes. Only one man worthy of saving. Only one man that was to carry out the weight of the Lord's plan for His people.
What must it have been like for Noah to live in such wickedness? What must it have been like for him to survive among that kind of evil? How must He have felt to be that different from everyone else? So different that He stood out from the many on earth, no matter how few that many might have been. How did he feel when God told Him what was to come? When God chose Him?
What must it have been like to be on that boat when the flood came? To think of all the people outside the boat. To look at the empty spaces and know someone could have fit there. How small a space would you happily live in if it was the only way to save your life? If it kept you from drowning? Did Noah and his family hear the cries of the people in the flood? Did they beg to be let in? Did they beat on the ark trying to find a way in? What must it have been like for Noah?
What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,…Romans 9:22-23
When I read the verse above I'm filled with awe and pain. Awe that I was chosen to be a vessel of mercy and pain for those that were prepared ahead of time so that the Lord's mercy and power could be shown to me so that I could be saved. It hurts to know that it's very possible that there were people born, people destined for destruction, simply so that the Lord could fulfill His plan in my life, so that He could save me. And those thoughts are only in my head, in my heart.
What was it like for Noah to know that outside his ark, in the rain, in the flood, there were many people dying. Did he feel guilty for being chosen, for being saved? Did he want to open the door and let a few in? Did he want to take in the children and babies? Did his wife and daughter in laws cry over the loss of the children? Did they beg him to take in the tiny babies? What must it have been like? He may have been glad to escape all the evil and wickedness that the people outside the ark caused. It may have been a relief. How relieved would we be if we lived in a place where everyone was murdering and hurting others all the time? Was that what it was like for Noah? Was he relieved? Or did he hurt for those that were lost? Had he lived so apart from them that he knew none of them personally or did he have friends out there? Family? Did he ache for them? Pray for them?
What was it like for Noah when the flood waters receded and he left the ark to find a world unlike the world he had known before? What was it like to stand on dry ground, to look around and see nothing familiar? What was it like to look at the seven members of your family and know that there was no one else on earth?
What was it like for Noah?
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