Chaos, chaos, chaos

I'm actually finding the Bible a lot more interesting than I was expecting. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe I'm supposed to struggle reading this, the way God intended. (I know I'm not supposed to approach this material that way, but it's hard to help it.) One of the things I am most curious about is something the Bible never seems to truly address: How is God communicating with Noah, Abraham, Isaac and the others? Is He their physically, is He a white cloud above, is He a disembodied voice? Who knows? Could be anything... Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, the baboon from The Lion King, anything. One thing is common: the people know it is God they are being spoken to from.

Something else (or should I say someone else) I found interesting was Jacob. First off, it's kind of odd that God is playing favorites at all, and second off, He seems to have chosen the cunning trickster. I find this fascinating. The God of the Old Testament seems to enjoy flawed, almost unremarkable people. Like Plotz noted, there doesn't seem to be anything special about Abram, other than he has a hot wife apparently. And Jacob appears to be a confidence man, conning his kind brother out of his inheretance. It leaves one to question reality. What does the God from this Bible (or the people writing it) really want from us?

It's almost as if the chaos of Genesis' storyline is actually making a statement in itself. Life is chaos, our lives, everything chaos, chaos, chaos. We can't control it, we can't change who we are, we just are here. Completely and unmovably and nothing, not even God, can change that. Life just happens. There really is no more to it than that.