Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Flood

2020-10-14 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Flood
Votey panel for Flood
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

The Joke

The comic depicts a conversation between God and a red-haired man (likely a stand-in for a biblical figure or everyman). God announces: "Dear God, did the flood kill every sinner?" and the response is "No." God explains that sinners are "basically a gas" — "they drop their phones, they forget their pants, they mouth off to you for no good reason. It's a no-go." When asked what God is going to do with them, God says "Humans are bad and I like them that way, kiddo." Then when asked about making them in his image, God fires back: "Does God watch reality TV to make himself feel better?" The man admits "No..." but then adds "But you watch it!" and God concedes "Ah well..."

The comic reimagines the biblical Flood narrative as a conversation about God's frustrations with humanity. Rather than depicting sinners as dramatically evil, God describes them in petty, relatable terms — they drop their phones, forget their pants, and are rude for no reason. The theological implications are played for laughs: God admits humans are bad but that he likes them that way, suggesting that human imperfection is a feature rather than a bug.

The Humor

The comedy comes from domesticating God's relationship with humanity. Instead of grand theological pronouncements about sin and righteousness, God sounds like an exasperated parent describing their messy teenagers. The comparison of sinners to "a gas" (they are everywhere and impossible to contain) is an amusingly deflationary way to describe the theological problem of evil. The reality TV exchange at the end is the sharpest joke — God denies watching reality TV to feel better about himself, but the human catches him in the lie, suggesting that even God indulges in the guilty pleasure of watching flawed beings make poor choices, which is essentially what overseeing humanity amounts to.

References

The comic references the biblical story of Noah's Flood (Genesis 6-9), in which God sends a great flood to destroy sinful humanity while preserving Noah and his family. The concept of humans being made "in God's image" comes from Genesis 1:27.

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