Day 68: There Are No Heroes In This Story

Read: Genesis 9:18-23

The flood is over, humanity is restored, at least in some respects, to the way that God had intended for them to live. Finally after so much downward spiral, things are finally looking up. Except, not really. We can’t even go one whole chapter with things being chill.

After Noah family gets off the boat, some time passes and like Adam, Noah becomes a gardener. He plants himself a really nice vineyard and enjoys His crop. He really enjoys it. So much so that he gets drunk. And not just a little bit tipsy kind of drunk. Noah gets all out-clothes-flying-everywhere kind of drunk. Granted, Noah did just live through the whole world being destroyed but come on bro. 

Noah gets absolutely smashed and is passed out naked in His tent because of it. His youngest son Ham see his dad in this sad state and decided to go out to and gossip about it to his brothers. They take the information and walk backwards into their dad’s tent and cover him up. And just like that, with one generation, the world is already spiraling back downwards. 

This part of the Noah story is often omitted from Sunday school lessons, VBS, Conferences, and honestly most sermons I’ve heard preached on the flood. And Noah isn’t the only story that is often censored this way. The result is sometimes this idea that there are good guys in the Bible and bad guys in the Bible, but that’s mindset really just comes from our superhero obsessed culture. There is only one good guy in the Bible and he is also fully God. Everyone else is just bad.

This reality may seem depressing at first but really, it’s just freeing. I remember growing up with the pressure to use the label “heroes of the faith” who did all these incredibly huge things for God and didn’t have any flaw (at least that we talked about). This kind of way of talking about people in the Bible can alienate us from relating to stories that is not too much different than our own.

They go like this: We kinda suck, we lie, cheat our neighbors, make promises we don’t keep, gossip about each other, and sometimes we get so drunk and lose are clothes. But in all of that God still uses us. He still redeems us. Yes there a consequences for sin but the ultimate consequence has been paid by the real hero. 

Have you been holding onto a  “hero” complex? Spend some time with the Lord and ask Him to release you from that. God never asked you to be the hero, He has already saved the World.