God’s Greatest Hits: The Top 10 Asshole Moments

An absurdly petty and cruel punishment. Here we have a woman fleeing for her life from a city that God himself is obliterating in a fiery apocalypse, and yet she’s struck down merely for glancing back at the destruction. Think about that: in the midst of chaos, panic, and probably the most traumatizing event of her life, she makes the entirely human mistake of looking behind her—and God turns her into a literal salt statue for it.

And what about Lot? For a man already traumatized from fleeing his home, witnessing the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and losing his possessions, this act would have been devastating. God didn’t just destroy Lot’s wife—he stripped Lot of his partner, someone who had shared his life and struggles.

The idea that an all-powerful, all-knowing God chose to solve humanity’s wickedness with planet-wide genocide feels more like the tantrum of an insecure deity than the act of a just one. Out of potentially millions of people, only eight—Noah and his family—were deemed worthy of survival. Are we to believe that everyone else, including innocent children, was so irredeemably evil?

The treatment of animals highlights the cruelty of the event. Were all the world’s creatures equally deserving of destruction? God’s decision to kill them for humanity’s sins feels arbitrary, as does saving only a few. The flood isn’t a tale of redemption; it’s the story of a cosmic dictator who mismanaged his own creation, couldn’t handle imperfection, and vented his frustrations by wiping the slate clean.

What's worse - is it was temporary. Humanity went back to the way it was before the flood within just a few generations.

a petty and disproportionately violent reaction from an egotistical deity. The Israelites, having just escaped slavery in Egypt, were understandably confused and scared when Moses disappeared for 40 days on Mount Sinai. In their desperation, they crafted the golden calf—not as a direct rejection of God but as a misguided attempt to feel connected to the divine. Instead of showing patience or understanding, God immediately flew into a murderous rage, ordering the slaughter of 3,000 people.

What’s particularly egregious is how God’s reaction ignored the underlying context. This was a traumatized group of former slaves trying to cope with fear and uncertainty in the wilderness. What kind of deity expects blind, unwavering loyalty without offering reassurance during such a crisis? Moreover, if God is omniscient, he surely knew they would falter, which makes his outrage seem performative—a way to assert dominance rather than address their needs.

A cosmic game of sadistic one-upmanship between God and Satan. The entire ordeal begins not because Job did anything wrong—on the contrary, he’s described as "blameless and upright"—but because God wanted to show off. When Satan questions whether Job’s faith is genuine, God immediately offers up his most loyal servant as a test subject, essentially saying, "Go ahead, ruin his life, just don’t kill him." It’s not about justice, love, or morality—it’s about God proving a point, regardless of the collateral damage.

In the process, Job’s entire world is obliterated. His wealth, children, and health are all stripped away in quick succession, not because Job sinned, but because God allowed it to happen. Worse, Job isn’t even told why he’s suffering—he’s left in the dark, confused, and in pain, while God watches from the sidelines, unbothered by the destruction of a faithful man’s life.

This was God acting out of insecurity and a need to maintain control. Humans, united by a common language and purpose, dared to build a tower reaching the heavens—not to challenge God directly but to express their creativity and ambition. Instead of celebrating their ingenuity, God allegedly felt threatened by their unity and potential, fearing they might become too independent or powerful.

So, instead of encouraging their progress, God scattered them, confusing their language and dividing them into factions, ensuring they couldn't collaborate.

This was nothing more than a sadistic power play—a way for God to test just how far someone would go to prove their loyalty. Despite being all-knowing and fully aware of Abraham's devotion, God demanded a horrific act to satisfy some divine need for obedience.

Talk about a cruel manipulation, forcing Abraham to choose between his love for his son and his fear of divine wrath. Worse, the test feels unnecessary—after all, an omniscient God would already know the outcome. Yet, God allowed Abraham and Isaac to endure the emotional torment of the situation, as a display of dominance or a perverse lesson in submission.

The killing of Egypt's firstborns during the tenth plague is an appalling example of divine cruelty and reckless power. God’s decision to wipe out an entire generation of firstborns—regardless of age or species—seems less like a moral lesson and more like an arbitrary act of vengeance. The Bible doesn’t clarify if the firstborns were infants, children, teenagers, or even adults, nor does it specify whether animals—who had no part in Pharaoh’s oppression—were equally guilty. God’s wrath indiscriminately swept through homes, leaving a trail of death and destruction for what could easily be seen as a vindictive power play, punishing the innocent as much as the guilty.

If such an act were to occur today, the consequences would be staggering. In modern Egypt, roughly 30% of the population is under the age of 18, and assuming the firstborn designation still applies across the board, this could result in the death of over 3 million children alone. Add to that the firstborns of adults, who may make up a similar portion of the population, and the death toll could soar well beyond 6 million people—all for the sake of an unprovoked display of divine retribution. This is not an act of justice; it’s a grotesque demonstration of absolute, unchecked power. The killing of innocents to make a point feels less like a divine intervention and more like a psychotic tantrum from a deity seeking to remind humanity of its power, regardless of the cost.

Yet another example of divine pettiness and vindictiveness. After leading the Israelites out of Egypt, God’s people—who had already endured hardship, oppression, and miraculous acts of salvation—dared to question God’s plan when faced with the prospect of entering the promised land. Instead of offering reassurance or guidance, God lashes out in anger, condemning an entire generation to die in the wilderness as punishment for their lack of faith. The punishment? To wander aimlessly for 40 years, not because they had committed some terrible crime, but because they voiced their fear and doubt—a perfectly human response given their dire circumstances.

What’s truly cynical about this act is the sheer absurdity of it all. The Israelites, having been rescued from slavery, were essentially condemned to die for their failure to trust in God’s seemingly arbitrary and harsh plan. God’s decision to let them wander for decades, watching them perish without ever reaching their intended destination, feels less like a justified act of justice and more like divine cruelty. Meanwhile, the next generation—who hadn’t even been alive to witness the miraculous events of the Exodus—would be the ones to inherit the promised land, making it clear that God's actions were not about redemption, but about asserting dominance and enforcing blind obedience.

Creating a world full of suffering if he loves us so much is not only a contradiction but a glaring flaw in the supposed benevolence of a divine being. If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving, then why would he design a world where pain, illness, violence, and death are not just inevitable but pervasive? It seems more like a cosmic experiment or a cruel game where human lives are pawns in a drama of suffering and survival, with God watching from a distance—if he’s watching at all.

If God truly loved humanity, why would he allow natural disasters to ravage the innocent, children to be born into poverty, and diseases to wipe out entire populations? Why wouldn’t he step in to prevent suffering on a massive scale, if he had the power to do so? The answer seems to be that God’s "love" isn’t really love at all—at least, not in the way humans understand it. Perhaps God's love is more about maintaining control and ensuring unquestioned loyalty, testing humanity’s devotion through suffering rather than guiding it through compassion.