Genesis

Genesis to me can be summed up in one word – angry. The most potent stores in my memory are the stories of Noah and the flood, Cain and Abel, Moses and the wandering of the desert, and more. For this reason I remember Genesis as an angry book. God is short tempered, demanding, and quick to bring his wrath on his people. The effect this had on me as a child was that it instilled in me a fear of God. I developed a fear of going to hell. Genesis was introduced to me at a young age. The creation stories were told to me time and again, mostly because I was raised in a private religious school. So for most of my youth I heard and read genesis at school, and several of its stories bring me back to that age.
The story that had the greatest impact on me was the story of Moses and the Jews wandering the dessert for forty years. As I aged towards double digits it began to fill me with questions. How could God hold such a grudge over his people? Didn’t he know we aren’t perfect? Similarly the creation story and the lack of will power displayed by Adam and Eve baffled me. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t have just left it alone. And why did God have to drown the earth with the exception of Noah and his family. The explanations given in Genesis weren’t satisfactory in my young eyes. Of course as I got older the connection I had with the stories began to fade as I began to think for myself in regards to religion. Now my memory of Genesis is spotty at best but I doubt that I will ever forget these childhood stories. All though I will continue to remember them, they will just have less and less of an impact on my life. Genesis and its complex composition bring back images of the vacant look upon the faces of my young classmates. Other than that, their stories don’t hold much substance, yet.