Broken Covenants: Trust in a Fickle God

Written By Pink Flowers

Is it me or does God have trouble keeping his word, y’all — for realz?

I been back in the Bible. I guess I’m hooked on it like some folks get hooked on Law and Order. I play it like the soaps. Every time Jon Sherberg starts spitting verses, I hear something brand new. Like today, I was making my morning lap around Belle Isle, getting in my steps. I got Genesis on loop and catch a couple things I missed the first time through. First off, it’s cool as fuck to think we all kids of Noah, who came down in direct line from Seth. I’m still confused who Seth laid up with to have kids though since the only options for partners were Adam, Eve and Cain (or Abel’s corpse).

Anyway, so the sons of Noah all go off and establish they own kingdoms, but quick as fuck they start to fighting with each other. God even seem like he’s trying to stir the pot— like he do at Babel when he see everybody getting along, speaking one tongue and God think “They might get too powerful if I allow them to understand each other.” He blasts they tongues and scatters them, turning them even more into “enemies.” Seem like God got favorites even though these mo’ fo’s was all Noah’s kids. So, it’s pretty shitty how only some of them got “chosen” while others he turns into red guys.

I ain’t no Bible scholar, so maybe I’m getting it “wrong,” but I’m listening to the words and what they wrote makes God out to be a pretty shady, petty, ruthless and fickle something or other. He keeps making promises about how he’s gonna bless folk with generations like sands on the beach, then he turn creating strife between them descendants. He tell prophet after prophet to sack this and rape that. God rip pregnant women to pieces and feed children to wild animals by the score.

I don’t wanna make light or be critical anybody religion. I’m asking for realz—what’s up with God? Why he so mad all the time? Why he gotta instigate, and play favorites? Don’t God, who infinite, got enough love for everybody and everything—or can he only love one set of people at a time? I really want to know.

Hit me up.

Pink Flowers

Pink Flowers is a Black trans artist, peacemaker, educator, and pleasure activist whose work lives at the intersection of embodiment, governance, and cultural transformation. Trained in Theater of the Oppressed, Art of Hosting, and Navajo-informed Peacemaking practices, Pink designs spaces where conflict can be addressed, power can be examined, and joy can be reclaimed.

Her artistic and pedagogical practice draws from African trickster cosmology, Brazilian Joker traditions, shamanic ritual, and cooperative economics. She is the founder of the award-winning Falconworks Theater Company (2005–2021), which used popular theater to build civic capacity and participatory leadership in historically marginalized communities.

Pink served for over five years as a trained Peacemaker in the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, facilitating restorative processes within the New York City court system. From 2015–2018, she worked in cooperative business development with the Center for Family Life, supporting worker-owned enterprises in immigrant communities.

She currently serves as Director of Education and Training for the Inter-Cooperative Council in Ann Arbor, where she leads leadership development and conflict engagement initiatives. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Stretch Festival in Berlin and the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference.

Across ritual, performance, mediation, and institutional design, Pink’s work asks a central question:

What becomes possible when we refuse shame and choose conscious power instead?

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