For I am a jealous people …
I finished Lester Del Rey’s collection of short novels a couple of days ago but I didn’t get a chance to write about his story that I was talking about in my previous entry yesterday because I got caught up in too many other things :p So I thought I might as well talk about it today since I still feel strongly about that story. As I surmised, the story indeed was about God siding with the aliens but it God takes a more active role than I had envisioned at the beginning of the story – God appears to the alien priests as he did to Moses and tells them directly that they have been chosen to inherit the universe and that they must wipe humankind off the face of the Earth. Setting aside the whole argument as to whether the story is blasphemous or not (since I have the feeling that some might consider it to be so), what interested me was the question as to what I would do if I was put in the place of Del Rey’s protagonist, the priest.
The story ends with the priest holding a mass where he tells everybody "God has decided to side against us, I can only say that he’s chosen a worth adversary" or words to that effect. The point of the whole story is that Man is the only creature that would fight against his own maker. I keep on thinking what I would do if I was in that position. Granted, in the story the aliens are made out to be totally inhuman beings who torture animals and people for fun and then eat them for food and even eat their own kind. So the humans seem noble to rise up against them but that just means Del Rey stacked the decks a bit.
I believe in a merciful God – a God who can understand the failings of humanity. While I’d be the first to understand if God were to decide to wipe out humanity because of our greed, stupidity, prejudice and the worst qualities in humanity that we seem to show more and more these days, I don’t accept it that God would choose a race that is essentially even worse than humanity to be our successors. So if God were to decide that humanity was just not worth salvation, I’d probably understand looking at the world of today but then again, I also believe that humanity has the potential to be so much more than we are because sometimes we show such courage, honesty, compassion, feeling and humanity that it makes me realize all over again what we as humans are capable of ….
I really don’t get into the religion thing. People can believe what they want. However, I do believe that sometimes the story that you describe in this post needs to happen. Many people on this planet need to have something happen to open their mind and eyes. For those of you that see the world as a great place, read this article from the local news.
http://www.newsnet5.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-191287320030116-090134.html
My husband is such a pessimist, and I am more like you in that I can see the potential for good in man, even though there are so many bad individuals. I am glad to know there is someone else out there that feels the same way. Just because there are individuals like the one in the above linked story, and even the so-called leader of my country (i’ll let you pick one), it doesn’t mean all of humanity should be damned. Some of us are worthy, and I hope I am one of them!
Your assertion of a merciful God is shaky at best, considering the clear evidence for how He commanded what we in the modern, secular, moral world would regard as unmitigated evil. As just one example, look at the genocide of the Canaanites by the Israelites as commanded by YHWH. The wholesale slaughter of not just men, not just adult women, but of innocent little children and babies as well. There are many more examples of *very* questionable behaviour on the part of this deity in the Bible.
Anyway, setting that aside, I wanted to say that I read this excellent novella many years ago, and it’s left such a deep impression on me that I still remember many details of it. I am not a Christian, but Del Rey’s story prompted me to read the Bible from cover to cover (I’ve been educated, yet remain unconverted – but at least I know exactly what I’m rejecting). At any rate, I found the end of the story is great and inspiring, when Amos tells his flock “I say this to you: He has found a worthy opponent.” (I’m paraphrasing from memory, but this should be fairly close to the original).
What prompted me to seek out mentions of this book and make a post is that I just had an epiphany of sorts about the title. You’ve probably already figured this out, but it just hit me: the title of the story is pure genius.
“For I am a jealous people!” is a play on the first (or second, depending on the version of the source) commandment of the Old Testament. God says “Thou shall have no other gods before me, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God!” (paraphrasing again). This part I already knew since the first time I read the story, but the ingenuity of the word play had escaped me till today. Basically, “For I am a Jealous People” is an admonition directed at God. The covenant works both ways – and in this case, it is God that has broken it. So Del Rey twists the first/second commandment to replace “God” with “People” with the implication that we (humans) as a liberated sentience are now admonishing the deity that broke the Abrahamic covenant and declaring our jealous rage in waging war against it. Very cool!