Genesis 6: God's broken heart
Read: Genesis 6
I find it ironic and slightly puzzling that the story of Noah's Ark features so heavily in children's toys, books and decor. Many children, including those not from Christian families, have played with a Noah's ark set. My children have a much-loved matching game based on it. And yet, I find it one of the hardest stories in the Bible to read. Why did God wipe out the majority of his people?
When we look at the story, we can see the answer plainly: The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. (Genesis 6:5-6). When we speak of 'regret' we tend to refer to having made a mistake, but I don't think we can quite put it like that with God. Being the one who knows all things, he must have known that humanity would turn away from him when he made them with the capacity, but this kind of sovereign view and knowledge is one that we cannot possibly imagine or understand.
What we can feel some kind of understanding of, some kind of affinity, is the very real grief felt by God at the marring of his creation - the corruption of the thing he called 'good'. God is not some impersonal life force, he is spoken of here as having heart, and real emotions. God is not some despot who creates and destroys life cheaply. The world God created was not a 'throwaway world' - he put his heart into it and it broke his heart to see it damaged. And that is what it was - the passages preceding this, both immediately at the beginning of chapter 6, and also in chapters 3 and 4, have charted the way in which humans have tried to be gods - wanting power over goodness and evil, and life and death - which has lead to murder, polygamy and vanity, as well as disease and death. As God says to Noah: the earth is filled with violence because of them (Genesis 6:13).
However, as we see in Isaiah's description of Jesus: a bruised reed he will not break, a smouldering wick he will not snuff out (Isaiah 42:3). God did not destroy the world with the flood, but cleansed it. He took one family, lead by one man who truly sought him and trusted him, making a covenant with him, so that humanity - the crowning jewel of his creation - would not be destroyed.
Of course, the question on our lips is, was God's love not powerful enough to save those individual people who perished? The first reassurance we can take, although this does not answer the question in full, is that God will always save those that seek him, by his grace, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Acts 2:20, quoting Joel 2). We will see this in action in just a few chapters' time, when Abraham questions God over his destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah - God saying he would spare the cities if he found just a few righteous people, and then sending his angels to rescue Lot and his family (Genesis 18-19). And in terms of God's power being enough to turn those people from their rebellion - love is chosen, and God gave people that choice.
We see the sovereign God sitting in right judgement, but we also see the personal God, grieving the loss of his people - it is a poignant foreshadowing of the ultimate pain God would feel when he gave his very self - ripping himself apart in every way possible, to cleanse the world of wickedness, except that this time, the wickedness to be destroyed in a flood of love and righteousness would be put in Jesus. Is God's love powerful enough to restore his creation to glory? Yes! But we have a choice as to whether we want to be part of that new creation.
Next: Genesis 7: the Ark in the Storm
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