Noah: the movie, the story, and the God(s) behind the story
A brilliant piece from Paul Nuechterlein, here:
http://theologypeace.blogspot.com/2014/04/from-noah-to-easter.html
Quotable:
And it’s growing more urgent that we do so, because we now possess the technology to destroy ourselves with our own violence. Actually, that’s precisely why flood stories are so universal in human culture. Since our beginnings as a species, we’ve feared wiping ourselves out through our own contagious violence. A common image for this fear has been an all-engulfing flood. The Genesis story names this flat-out: “The earth was filled with violence.” Just like the flood by which God supposedly uses in trying to stop it! But god using a flood belies that age-old human answer of trying to stop violence with violence.
Without going into all the details of the anthropology here, let’s at least name God’s startling alternative to our human answer of stopping violence by inflicting a counter-violence. God suffers our violence on the cross, shows it to be impotent compared to God’s life-giving power of love on Easter, and enacts the healing power of forgiveness in the giving of the Spirit. The cross and resurrection is God saving us from the flood of our human violence that threatens to destroy us.