Exodus: God vs. "gods" (Part 4)

So I started this a while back:  putting into the blog a complete Biblical synopsis of the fantastic Divine Drama that unfolds in human history contained in the pages of Scripture.  So getting back to it in lieu of another entry this week, it is appropriate for Exodus to be next simply because this is a week when we all should be focusing on thanksgiving (never mind that this is something that should be done throughout the year!)  To get back to the previous entry in this synopsis, you can go to part 1 and parts 2&3.  So here we go:

(continuing the Bible's fantastic story...) Where we left off at the end of the book of Genesis, the stage has now been set for the greatest and most spectacular event of the Old Testament: The Exodus from Egypt around the year 1446 BC, which is also recorded in other historical records besides the Bible.  God’s promise to Abraham is slowly but surely being fulfilled, for his descendants have indeed grown through subsequent generations and now number possibly close to a million people.

Two hundred years after Joseph, however, a Pharaoh who didn’t know about Joseph and his deeds in Egypt called for the enslavement of the Israelites because there were too many in his land (Exodus ch. 1).  He even instituted a heinous form of population control by instructing that all the Hebrew males must be killed after birth.

Eventually, Moses is born.  To avoid his death also, he was set afloat in the Nile river, and Pharaoh’s daughter eventually found him and raised him (ch. 2).  As a young adult man, Moses ended up fleeing Egypt after he killed an Egyptian who was beating one of the Hebrew slaves.  While in hiding in Midian (believed to be along the shore of the Red Sea), he marries, has children, and encounters God in the form of a burning bush (ch. 3).  “I AM,” or “Yahweh” in Hebrew (the “name” of God), gave Moses a great task:  to be his messenger to Pharaoh that God was putting an end to his peoples’ suffering and enslavement.  As a sign that God was going with him, his staff turns into a snake (ch. 4).  Moses is reluctant, and also fails to follow God’s decrees to his own peril, but eventually reestablishes the sign of God’s original covenant through circumcision.  Thus begins the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by God (4:21) in order that the people, through the coming signs and wonders, will know that he is indeed God (6:1-8).

The initial request by Moses causes Pharaoh to force the Israelites to make their bricks without the aid of straw, making the task much harder since they now had to gather their own (ch. 5).  What follows are ten plagues caused by God, so terrifying in their own right that most rational people would believe in the Lord: The Nile river turns to blood, killing its wildlife (ch.7); the land is infested with frogs (ch. 8); then come the gnats, flies, the death of Egyptian livestock (ch. 9), a plague of boils (lesions), hail, locusts (ch. 10), darkness, and the final plague: the striking down of all the Egyptian firstborn (ch. 11) in answer to Pharaoh’s initial decree to kill the Hebrew firstborn males.

It is here that God institutes the “Passover” meal (ch. 12, AND the foundation of the Lord’s Supper): to eat in haste while marking the doorposts of the Hebrew homes as the angel of death comes through the land, carrying out God’s terrifying plague and “passing over” the homes of God’s people.  Pharaoh finally relents, and orders all the Hebrews to leave his land, which they do immediately, being led by God himself as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day.  Upon encampment at the Red Sea, however, Pharaoh has a change of heart and pursues them once again.  The pillar of cloud envelops the Egyptian army (ch. 14) while Moses holds his staff over the water.  The water divides, and the Israelites escape across the sea on dry land, with “a wall of water on their right and on their left” (14:22).  Pharaoh’s army pursues.  God sends the water back into place and destroys the armies and chariots of Egypt.  The Israelites see the awesome power of God and trust in God, singing a great song of triumph in “Moses and Miriam’s song” (ch. 15).

God has rescued and delivered his people out of bondage and slavery!  This becomes a recurring and prominent theme throughout the Bible - delivery by God out of bondage and slavery!

Anger

Sigh.

Here we are a week after the election.  People are still stunned at the outcome.  People are still puzzled how the two leading candidates were both so seriously flawed in character.  On the one side, we had a candidate who often said things rude, insulting, and inappropriate.  On the other side we had a candidate who, as it turns out from leaked documents, was complicit in rigging the primary elections, cheated in the debates by getting questions ahead of time, and lies about the lies they have told.  Those on the winning side voted because they were fed up with being referred to as "flyover country," while those on the losing side are grasping at anything and everything, including the hope that when the Electoral College meets to make the results official, enough of them (that would have to be at least 37 of them) will switch their vote to give it to Clinton.   It's wishful thinking and it has been rumored since George Bush's first term, with the contested Florida outcome.   Those on the losing side are calling the winning side stupid (and this after they were referred to as deplorable, irredeemable, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and the list goes on...).  Rumors abound of those who are truly acting racist and hateful in targeting minorities for harassment, assuming this is what Trump stands for  (sadly, conflicting reports on many of these cast doubt on which ones are accurate and which ones are not).  All the while those who supported Clinton are rioting, burning, looting, and assaulting those who are either identified as or at least suspected of being Trump voters.  Correction on that:  At least in one city (though I suspect it's true across the nation), over 70% of those arrested in these protests didn't even vote.  And of the protesters, many are being bused in and/or paid to protest, responding to ads on Craiglist and other places.  Sadly, these as well have conflicting reports in the media so it is difficult to know fact from fiction.  And speaking of the mainstream media, which got all the prediction polls wrong, and which even by their own admission was now horribly slanted toward the democratic candidate, what little credibility they had on unbiased reporting has now vanished with the majority of Americans.  To top it off, people share things without ever bothering to check their truthfulness, and there are a lot of fraudulant "clickbait" sites out there these days.  I've just provided a whole bunch of sites that you even need to check me on, because the internet is such a cesspool of deception and lies!  To quote the article linked just above:  "folks are being fed what they want to hear and they’re eating it up like a starving person. The most important thing in a functional society is a well-informed public. What we have now is not only uninformed but misinformed masses. That’s something that should scare us all."

And then there are those who are so upset they need cry rooms, therapy puppies, coloring books, and the like.  We have a cry room here at church.  It's for infants.  And all of the hate, and all of the anger, and all of the division (of which our soon to be former commander-in-chief created and furthered much of it) is getting old, and is threatening to destroy this country from within.  This is to say nothing of the hatred spewing from social media, including many liberal elements either wishing for or directly calling for assassination (which is a federal crime, by the way, to even suggest such a thing).

It is rather funny in a pathetic sort of way, really.  I mean, the same conditions existed in 2008, except that in this instance, it was the liberal, progressive candidate Barack Obama who won the election.  Do you remember when all of the conservatives then rioted, began burning flags and buildings, and beating up liberals?  Neither do I.  And yet today, it is those who claim to be the most tolerant and inclusive bunch who unfriend people on social media all because they voted differently (hatred and anger), one day claimed that "love trumps hate" and the next day demonstrating that they really didn't believe that by their anger and hatred in looting and destroying property and livelihoods, and refuse to accept the election that was the clearest margin of victory in recent history.  (and no, I'm not going to debate the electoral college here as it, like our system of governance, provides checks and balances and distributes the power of the people in an effort to be the most equitable).  How do we overcome this great divide?  It's not with giving free reign to any anger felt on either side.

Now I will say that for me to be saying such things might seem odd to some of you, as I've dealt with anger management issues often in my own life.  But yet the difference is in recognizing it, and seeking to overcome it:  to live in accordance with the Proverbs that identify anger being the fire in which we burn, to paraphrase the consequences of anger.  Specifically, the proverb quoted in the banner photo:  "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but the wise man keeps himself under control."  If love really does trump hate (and it does), then it would seem the place to begin is there:  to put aside anger and thereby stop playing the fool.  Of course it is easier said than done, as too often, we believe our anger to be righteous and thereby justified.  But no angry outburst or display has authority to destroy other's livelihood or person.

What is the answer?  Can the increasing divide in this country be healed before it comes to another civil war?  Of that, I am uncertain.  What I am certain of, however, is that the love of Christ has sustained this country in the past, as well as directed it in a unified path.  Yes, sometimes that path went into dark territory, and this nation has many sins to confess from it's past.  Yet the strength of any nation is its' willingness to recognize those sins and seek to correct them in the future.  One of our greatest sins today is not the a-morality, the vulgarity, the perverted and deviant behaviors celebrated as normal, but rather simply that we have, collectively, turned our backs on God.  Psalm 33 says "Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance.  From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth...No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength.  A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.  But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love..."  (Psalm 33:12-18).

So don't be foolish and let anger be the fire in which you burn.  Be wise and thereby live to put an end to hate and division, in letting love triumph, despite the flaws that we all have in our character.  Make America great by putting God at the center of our lives.  These are my thoughts today.  Thanks for reading.

Bogus

The internet is a Cesspool of deceit and chicanery.  There, I said it.  Sorry to be so negative, especially considering where this blog ends up (that is, on the internet), but it needed to be said.  The contradictory posts on websites and social media surrounding presidential candidates, that are even seen on mainstream media news sources on both sides, demonstrate that there is no longer any such thing as truth these days.  One such post was a perported Twitter statement made by a certain Presidential candidate in 1990.  (Twitter began in 2006, invalidating any "tweets" from 1990...)  Quite frankly, I'm sick of it.

One of the more common things seen swirling around the internet these days are photos, memes, and the like that often attribute quotes to famous people, and especially the founders of the United States.  Today's case study is just such a quote, from a website called "Go Left."  I am presuming that it intends to make the case that religion should be kept out of politics, which is generally not borne out by anything the founders stated, either in the official charters of this country, or in their personal writings.  Here is the image in question:

 

A part of the quote I would take as at least a partial truth in terms of what the founders intended.  (All Heresies in the church itself always contained a kernel of the truth, but then morphed into things never intended by the original kernel of truth)  But the whole quote is problematic, and doesn't seem to be borne out by many other things Jefferson said both publicly and privately.   Now attempting to verify anything found on the internet is itself a difficult task, much like salmon swimming upstream to spawn.  But the best place I could find as an actual source came from two locations.  One site shows it to be personal commentary by website's author on a number of other Jefferson quotes related to church and state.  Clicking on the link will yield the quote at the top of the page, not itself attributed to Jefferson.

From there it gets more troublesome.  I stumbled on a US News blog from 2009 in which it automatically assumes that a reader's use of this perported quote is factual and true, and so they quote it as the basis for their entire post.  Now what is fascinating about this is that the quote is also source cited as from a letter Jefferson wrote in 1808 to the Virginia Baptists.  Both a government site showing the original letter and the printed text of the letter (linked above) match, and nowhere within that letter do those words from the meme quote exist.  Yet multiple "quote" sites not only attribute it to Jefferson, but they also attribute it as coming from this letter, linked above.  Not only can you find multiple sites that obviously have never actually checked the source on it, but if one looks hard enough, you'll find previous efforts at debunking this mythical quote as well!  And from all this:  bogus and intentionally deceptive quotes and news are born.

P.T. Barnum perportedly said "There's a sucker born every minute."  Oddly enough, we cannot even be certain he ever said that.  Regardless, it appears whoever first said it knew what they were talking about.  The more we buy into the internet as containing truth, the more we are intentionally deceived and tricked into believing that which is simply not true, nor had it ever been.  Remember this commercial from a few years ago?  Let's not be like the young lady dating her "French Model."  Let's seek the truth in all things, and let's assume that if it's on the internet, it's likely bogus.