Everybody loves the Bible. It's shit-full of good advice you can apply to your everyday life, from "Turn the other cheek" to "God hates fags."

What many people don't know, however, is that it isn't just the thing referenced in velvet Jesus paintings—it's also this enormous goddamn thousand-years-old book.

Some of it is still pretty applicable today. If you're looking for sage advice as to the moral and spiritual direction of your life, Jesus apparently knows the score. I've never spoken to the man personally—but he's gotten enough thumbs-up reviews from friends that I'm willing to agree that, fictional or not, brother brings game. A guy could probably pay attention to Jesus and do well for himself. Worst case scenario, you don't get to sleep with your neighbor's wife and everyone gets to slap the shit out of your cheek.

Keep in mind, though, that the Bible's about as thick as a phone book. For every chapter about Jesus sprinting across a lake to tell you how much he loves kittens, there's another about God making a smoking peasant fireball because they accidentally sacrificed a goat to Him with the wrong knife.

Once you wade past the shallow end of the New Testament into the back half of the Old Testament, get ready: it turns out God's a fucking lunatic, and He loves the taste of your blood. Old Testament God ain't letting Himself get nailed to any pussy crosses for your sinning ass; OT God wouldn't spit on you if your genitals were on fire. If He covers your eyes with boils to win bets with Satan, consider yourself lucky He didn't turn your city into a mushroom cloud for not praying to Him enough. Even a cursory reading of the Old Testament leaves only one conclusion: God is a hardass, and He will kill you without blinking if you step out of line.

It can't be too many more years before Christians get themselves a decent copy editor and start publishing the Bible with a quick paragraph about the Garden of Eden and Noah before seguing right to Jesus, thus bypassing a thousand pages of dense insanity completely. Until then, let's have some fun and dreg through the Bible's backlog. I'm willing to bet there's some chapters in there that'd surprise both of us.

The Book of Malachi

Synopsis

You've got to hand it to Malachi—the guy's got balls. Not only does he claim to channel the very word of the Lord; by the end of the first paragraph he's speaking for all of us too. The Book of Malachi offers us a back-and-forth dialogue between God and us, with Malachi subbing in the questions he assumes we'd ask. It reads a lot like if you were getting chewed out by the school principal, except every time it was your turn to talk, the retarded kid who got graded by putting Cokes in the Coke machine answered for you.

Everything Malachi puts in our mouths is total character assassination. God enters the chat with "I have loved you," which seems nice of Him and a strong conversational opener. According to Malachi, you respond by getting all up in God's face, asking: "How have you loved us?"

You honestly want to slap Malachi for misrepresenting you so horribly. If I'd been given an audience with God, I'd like to think I'd make some small talk first before I lubed up any fastballs. "You look absolutely exhausted," I might say, or "That glowing robe has a really slimming effect on you." I doubt my first words to the Lord would be "I know you used to do shit for me, but what have you done for me late-lee?", is my point. It's God, fuckstick. He just told you He loves you a whole bunch. At least wait till the poor bastard sits down before you start cross-examining Him like Matlock.

God bristles a little, understandably, then answers by proving His love for us. Given that this is the Old Testament, though, God proves said love for us in the most convoluted and insane way possible. God's proof of loving us, it seems, is because He loves Jacob but hates Esau. It's not entirely clear how that's relevant, but it's God, so probably you let it slide.

God goes on to explain that His profound hatred for Esau led Him to make his lands "a desolation, and his heritage a desert of jackals." Nice choice of words for God, really. As is typical of the Old Testament, God gets a little carried away explaining precisely how He intends to fuck up this milksop Esau for crossing him, and we get a lengthy section of the Lord laying out the many awesome ways in which He'll make sure Esau regrets the day he ever heard the name God.

At this point, you might be thinking this is less about God loving you, per se, and more about God really hating this Esau guy. Keep in mind Esau might be a fresh wound for him. You let it slide and nod.

God rounds out His speech against all things Esau by explaining that a son must honor his father; and since He's the father of everything, He should thus get honor and respect squared. He's still skirting the whole "How have you loved us?" issue, though my guess is He's still just steamed that you jumped on Him about loving you the second He got through the door (thanks, Malachi). This is His way of saying, "You know what, maybe fuck me loving you. Why don't you love me a little, huh, asshole?" Note for next time: ask about God's day first, then openly challenge His love for you.

Passages You Might Want To Skip Over

God spends the majority of the Book of Malachi getting a big head of steam on for all the people who don't have the time to worship the absolute hell out of Him. With no offense to the guy, He seems to hammer on this one nail an awful lot, and it's not a terribly attractive character trait. You sort of want to take the poor schlub aside and offer him some pointers: "Guy, chicks dig confidence."

After five pages of God getting little bits of spittle on his lip telling you the incredible number of ways He intends to destroy you for not worshipping Him, you can't help but conclude He could've trimmed the Bible in half if He'd just hired a better PR guy. Nike didn't get their market share by saying they'd give ass boils to anyone who didn't buy their shoes: they hired Michael Jordan and had him make slam dunks and yell "Nike cures cancer". God's a bit of a tool when it comes to self-promotion, it turns out. If it hadn't been for getting Jesus to product place for Him, I doubt He'd have lasted past 100 AD.

Conclusion

There's probably a good reason the Book of Malachi got shuffled to the absolute back of the Bible—they've got him after the index in some versions, right before the author blurb. If you're willing to take Malachi at face value, God came down from the heavens to dictate wisdom that humanity could study for centuries, but somehow got hilariously sidetracked and spent His alloted five minutes remembering how much He hated some guy named Esau before telling us all to worship Him or He'd beat on us like a tambourine.

Saner heads might suggest it wasn't God with the raging hate-erection for Esau, but rather Malachi himself, who probably got one too many bags of leaves upended in his yard, then decided getting what a colossal penis his neighbor was etched into the Bible was more important than God's message to His people.

Moral Lessons You Can Take With You

"You have wearied the Lord with your words," says God at one point. You can almost imagine Him clutching the bridge of His nose here. If there's one thing you can take away from the Book of Malachi, it's this: stop bugging God. He's not your fucking hotline. If you're going to act like a dick all day, don't waste the brother's time. God's got better things to do than listen to your bullshit.

Also, if you've got a sick goat and a healthy goat, sacrifice the healthy one, or God is going to absolutely beat your ass sore. Getting divorced? Watch out. He's not huge on that either.

Best God Quote

"I will rebuke your offerings, then spread dung on your faces." (Malachi 2:3)