Texts of Terror Tuesday: Noah's Ark

Welcome to Texts of Terror Tuesday, the day where we look at a scary Bible passage and wrestle with it. "It's not Tuesday," you say? Well, that's how these texts of terror are. They confuse, they seem to lie, they seem to describe a God different from the God we meet in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, it's only appropriate to have Texts of Terror Tuesday on Wednesday.
That, and I was really busy yesterday. But I digress.
I want to start by looking at Noah. Quick summary: God creates a flood that wipes out the whole world, because they are all sinners, except for Noah and his family. They're supposed to put two animals on the ark and for forty days and forty nights, they hang out on the ark until God makes the flood go away. (Genesis 6-9, New Abridged Jessica Version). 
Most people have heard this story, but if you stop to really think about it, it's scary. Why does God kill everybody? Does God only love "good" people like Noah? Why all the animals on the ark? Is this story only for those crazy creationist folk? Why is this even in the Bible?!
I want to start by saying I don't think this passage is for little kids, who are just learning to meet God, who think in black and white terms and can't grapple with the complex character of God. This is for grown-ups. And I'm not sure I'm quite grown-up enough to understand, let alone explain, this Noah story. But I'll give it a shot.
Genesis 6:5-7 says, "The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry he had made humankind in the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, 'I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-- people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.'"
My Bible's commentary says the word "grieved" is the same word used for the pain of childbirth, and that a more appropriate translation might be "anguished." God is really, really hurting here. The pride of his life-- humanity-- has totally turned away from him. And it's killing him. I think it's something like when a parent watches their child grow up and turn away from them and get into self-destructive behaviors, only multiplied across God's thousands of children, raised exponentially because his love for each lost child is greater than any mother's love we can imagine. 
And God is regretful, too. Have you ever worked really hard on a project only to see it fail? That paper you wrote got lost in cyberspace, or nobody showed up to the big event you spent weeks planning. Well, God's big project of creation failed. And God's miserable about it. 
Because really, it's hopeless. "Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was evil continually." They've made their choice. They don't want God in their lives, they don't want to love others, and they never will. God knows it, and he's in agony. Clinically depressed, a psychologist might say.
But God has Noah and his family. So he has Noah make an ark and put the animals in it. Why not just take Noah and his family up to heaven? Humans have been just terrible, after all. But God wants to start over. He wants to give humans another shot, because as wayward and self-destructive as humans are, God loves them. A lot. And he's willing to start over, risk the pain again, because he just wants to be in relationship with humanity. Even if he has to go through a lot of crap to get there.
Notice, too, that Noah has to actually build an ark. If I were Noah, I might have been tempted to say (and definitely would have thought), "Lord, if you can make a great flood, why can't you save me some work and build this ark for me?" But it doesn't work like that. God wants partners, not pets, people who will work with him, not just receive from him. So Noah had to build that ark, every last plank. 
And why the animals? Who really cares about them? God can just make new ones, right? Well, no. God wanted Noah to participate in this plan, take care of the animals too. Apparently even animals matter to God. Maybe, in our modern day tendency to ignore nature or bulldoze it over to build out suburbs and skyscrapers, we have grieved the God who wanted to make sure every last species made it on the ark.
Now, I'm no vegetarian, nor do I feel any guilt about killing a spider. But I could definitely appreciate God's natural creations more, since apparently God cares about nature. A lot!
And there Noah waits in that ark, waiting, waiting. Why is this taking so long? he's thinking. God made the world! Why not just get this flood done real quick? I don't know. Cliched as it sounds, Noah had to trust God. When we're in the ark, caught between the past and God's plans for the future, waiting, waiting, and the dove comes back to us... we trust. God will get it done, at the right time.
Fundamentally, I think the story of Noah's Ark is a love story. Yes, it's a warning that judgment will come upon us if we turn away from God. But a few caveats: these people didn't just forget to say their prayers or say a bad word when they stubbed their toe. "The earth is filled with violence because of them"; they were "continually" evil. And furthermore, God didn't like wiping them out. He was agonized, anguished, depressed about it. But he didn't have a choice. They weren't going to change. They literally chose hell for themselves, shook their fists at God and refused his kingdom. And God's not going to force people into heaven. The Flood was the most loving thing he could do, so he could start over and try this humanity thing all over again.
God still stands before us, begging, pleading that we not turn away from him like these people did, because it would break God's heart. And like Noah, he calls us to build arks, to enter these crazy plans of his and wait, wait, wait for his timing to come.
Do I think the Great Flood really happened? No. I think it's an inspired story that challenges all who read it while proclaiming the tortured depths of God's love for every lost child. And that's more real than any literal interpretation could be.
So, thoughts? Do you think I let God off the hook too easily? Is this still a text of terror for you? What are some other texts of terror in the Bible?