The events recounted in the Book of Amos take place during a very difficult time for God. You see, the people, they just didn’t care about God anymore. I imagine God was feeling exactly like Fanghorn (or Treebeard as he is sometimes called). Poor Treebeard expressed this quite nicely to Merry and Pippin in The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers after one of them asked which “side” he was on by saying, “I am on nobody’s side because nobody’s on my side. Nobody cares for the trees anymore.”
Unfortunately for everyone involved, God is not nearly as nice as Treebeard. You see, Treebeard decided to just hang out in the forest and take care of the trees for thousands of years while the world moved on around him and his fellow ents. It wasn’t until his precious trees were being threatened with complete destruction that he and the other ents left the forest to put some hurt on some orcs. Then he and the ents went right back to the forest and didn’t bother anyone else.
Yeah, God isn’t like Treebeard. After he discovered that nobody was on his side, he immediately started unleashing destruction upon the masses. He stopped all the rain except in one city, and when everyone went to that other city to drink, there wasn’t enough water for everyone. Then God gave all the plants mildew and parasites so all the gardens, vineyards, fig trees and olive trees died. God also sent diseases on a scale similar to the plagues of Egypt and He stirred up wars so the young men were killed with swords. Then God even took away the horses! It was so bad that the stench of all the death and decay filled the survivors’ nostrils! Because this still wasn’t enough, God even destroyed several cities Sodom and Gomorrah style.
Here’s the thing though: it didn’t help. All this evil God visited upon his people didn’t make them love him! OMFG! I can’t believe it!
No, seriously; I have major doubts about God’s intelligence at this point. God actually believed that if he made life hell for everyone they would not only start caring about him again, they would actually start to LOVE him! In recent news, I’ve heard that soldiers are dying overseas because God is punishing us for allowing gays in the military. I’ve heard that AIDS in an epidemic sent by God to punish gays and “loose” women. Does God actually think these things will make everyone “behave” sexually? Is God actually that stupid?
Apparently so.
Ref: Amos 4
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