This week, Jewish populations around the world celebrate Passover, a holiday which commemorates the time God unleashed a bunch of plagues on Egypt and murdered all the Egyptian children, except the Jewish ones who God knew not to kill because of animal blood smeared on their doors (he couldn’t tell who was who otherwise!).

While the Jewish people do not celebrate the baby killing, of course, they do celebrate their people’s escape from slavery, which happened in large part because of the baby killing. But hey, who doesn’t like to see slave-owners get their comeuppance? I’ve heard the look on Pharaoh’s face after he realized his son lay dead was priceless.

The tale of Exodus demonstrates God’s bipolar personality with masterful stroke. One passage describes Moses receiving the ten commandments, including the “Thy Shall Not Kill” one, and only a few pages later God then totally murders a bunch of babies and kids, destroys everyone’s crops, and drops an ocean on the Egyptian soldier’s asses.

It’s a beautiful hypocrisy that sets the tone for what readers can expect in the rest of the Bible, i.e., poor characterization, ethical hypocrisy, and inconsistent narrative plotting.

We have a God character that only makes sense given the time it was written, when the ideal hero needed to be a strong-man who demanded obedience above all else and wielded impressive force, striking fear into enemy hearts. At the same time, God demanded everyone else behave like a saint, or else!

The Old Testament God embodies the old parental adage, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

In summation, God’s kind of an irrational dick throughout all of the early Biblical books, demanding others to kill and sacrifice their lives for him over and over again, while he took vacations for hundreds of years at a time.

Typical dad, am I right?

Thankfully, his peacenik son Jesus came around and brought a little pacifism to Old Testament 1000-year blood orgy. Although, God asked him to be tortured and die a painful death too.

Typical dad, am I right?