God the Monster

This summer, when I posted on X about my lifelong conviction that the god of Mormonism is a moral monster, someone told me, very helpfully and completely accurately, that I would love God’s Monsters by Esther Hamori.

God’s Monsters is the first work of religious scholarship that has made me LOL repeatedly. It relies on detailed close reading and considerable wit to provide persuasive analyses of troubling Bible passages. To wit: Isaiah 45:7, which says, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”

Go ahead and look it up yourself: It really says that God creates evil.

Mormons insist the Bible is “the word of God as far as it is translated correctly,” so they have a special “get God out of jail free” card here when it comes to biblical statements they don’t like. My LDS-issued Seminary bible says God declaring he “creates evil” just means god created the heavens and earth.

But that’s not very persuasive after Hamori documents how God told King David to take a census, then killed 70,000 people in three days because God was pissed that (wait for it) David took a census. See 2 Samuel 24.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote an essay about “Divine Malfeasance,” and fourteen years ago, it was published. I cite Richard Nixon’s claim that if the president does it, “it’s not illegal” in order to reject it (which is also how Hamori begins her conclusion). I also discuss Job’s story as evidence “that self-loathing and despair were appropriate responses to greater knowledge of God and his workings.”

Those who insist we must call God’s actions righteous because he said so aren’t thinking about what righteousness even involves. Hamori concludes that “Throughout the region, the defining trait of gods isn’t goodness–it’s power.” (Probably true of most gods.) Hamori writes that “God has already demonstrated that his loyalty isn’t to human beings.” But I think even that understates things.

I always felt that the Bible was an account not of God’s love for humanity but God’s contempt for humanity. I don’t mean just the Old Testament, either. I mean the whole thing. You don’t require the murder and torment of your favorite kid before you’ll let your other kids into your presence unless you find your children contemptible.

I also mean “always.” Even in junior Sunday school, I never understood why people would use the story of God drowning everyone except Noah and his family as proof that God loves us.

So in a fundamental way, my religious upbringing meant I was always really confused. People would point to this monstrous, raging, hateful being, and tell me that it was the epitome of perfect love, so more than anything else, I should want to live with it forever. And I was just like, uh, no.

So if someone claims that God is always the source of good and Satan always the source of evil, this book will help you mount a substantive rebuttal. It’s also fun to read.