31 And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as ye have said.
32 Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also.
33 And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men.
It seems to me that Verse 31 is saying that Pharaoh did not even wait for the next morning to speak with Moses and Aaron. That he called for them by night seems to suggest it was within mere hours of discovering that his own firstborn had been slain, and also all the other firstborn of Egypt.
Pharaoh had previously declared that he and Moses would never again see each other face-to-face and Moses had agreed. So while it says that he called for Moses and Aaron, and gave them permission to take the Israelites out into the wilderness, I wonder if all this was relayed by a spokesperson, or whether Pharaoh kept his back to the prophet.
In any case, Pharaoh delivered very few words to the prophet. He only said enough to show that he was finally fully complying with the demands of the Lord. He was allowing for the men, the women, the children, the flocks and the herds to leave, the entire group with no exceptions. For the first time he was not trying to limit or compromise or go back on his word.
At the very end of his declaration he also made one small petition, “and bless me also.” This is a brief and piteous request, and I wonder if God would have granted it. However, as we will soon see, Pharaoh nullified any potential act of mercy by trying to wage war with the Israelites one last time.
For now, though, all of Egypt was united in its desire to be rid of the Israelites. It says that they were “urgent upon the people,” pushing them out in haste. Such a turn of events! Where once the Egyptians had refused to let the Israelites go, now they absolutely required it! This shows greater power in God than if He had slain every Egyptian and brought Israel out of the ruin. It is one thing to force someone to do something against their will, but it is a much more significant thing to change their will to your own.
I have mentioned before how I lived many years under the power of an addiction to lust. Though I hated myself for it, I did things that I felt ashamed of, that I knew were wrong. I never was under the delusion that my objectification of women was an okay thing, yet I did it anyway. Because of my guilt, I would try to compensate in other areas. I would try to balance out my evil with extra kindness and devotion in my community and church.
But I never felt satisfied. In fact, I believe I was experiencing what it means to be cursed. To me this means that all of your actions, no matter how good on the surface, simply do not count. You may strive and flail, but it is as if you are running on a treadmill, all your energy leaving you in the same place. Like Cain, I tried to bring my fruits to the Lord, but He just would not accept my offering.
All of this changed, though, when I finally made confession. I told my wife what was going on in my secret life, I told my church authorities, I joined a recovery program, I went through a process of repentance, and I truly felt the atonement of Christ wash away my uncleanness.
And then I felt a sudden change. I felt the reality of God’s words to Cain: “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?” I felt the curse lifted, and now anything good that I did actually felt like it mattered.
Surrendered to Christ)
Sin is one thing that can keep our good works from reaching their full potential, but so, too, can refusing to surrender to the Lord. During my study of Pharaoh’s interactions with God and Moses, I have been thinking about this concept of surrender. Genuine surrender to the Lord is the first and fundamental basis of any true discipleship. Trying to do good while still holding back a part of your heart will always lessen the value of that good.
I know many who want to be basically good people, but who resent any notion of surrendering their will to another. In their desire to retain autonomy, to be their own master, they refuse to give themselves fully to God. They expect God to be content with the gifts that they decide to give Him, never seeking to understand what gifts He actually wants them to give. As a result, they live uninspired lives. They never experience the joy of being moved by the spirit to approach someone they normally never would have approached and saying to that person what they normally never would have said. They live according to their assumptions, not according to His genuine knowledge.
Surrendering ourselves, heart and soul to God, is necessary to be a part of His kingdom. And being part of His kingdom is necessary to having our good works sanctified for the building up of that kingdom. Trying to do good autonomously is like a swirl in an ocean, not necessarily worthless, but ultimately dissipating before it can accomplish much. Trying to do good as a pure vessel of the Lord is like being part of a flowing current, permanently and meaningfully changing the world for the better.
It is good to do good, but it is best to do the best good. And the best good can only be done by one who has repented of sin and fully surrendered to the Lord.
8 And Moses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh: and he said unto them, Go, serve the Lord your God: but who are they that shall go?
9 And Moses said, We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go; for we must hold a feast unto the Lord.
10 And he said unto them, Let the Lord be so with you, as I will let you go, and your little ones: look to it; for evil is before you.
11 Not so: go now ye that are men, and serve the Lord; for that ye did desire. And they were driven out from Pharaoh’s presence.
I mentioned yesterday how Pharaoh’s question “…but who are they that shall go?” sounded to me like he felt a need to deny the Israelites something. Perhaps he couldn’t let them get away with everything that they wanted. Perhaps he had to find some lingering piece that he could hold onto to maintain his sense of pride and control.
And so when Moses responded that all of them would go: the young and the old, the sons and the daughters, even the flocks and the herds, Pharaoh might have felt compelled to limit that somehow. “Not so: go now ye that are men,” he told them, reducing it to the smallest demographic possible. None of the women, none of the children, none of the livestock, only the men. And then there was no further discussion. Moses and Aaron ware promptly “driven out from Pharaoh’s presence.”
Of course, Pharaoh might have seen this restriction as necessary to make sure that the slaves wouldn’t try to escape into the wilderness. Which, of course, was exactly what they planned to do, and what Pharaoh would ultimately have to submit to if he wanted the curses to end.
Pharaoh’s servants had pleaded with him to comply with the Israelites so that they could have relief from the plagues. Pharaoh had made an initial show of submitting to God, but couldn’t fully surrender himself in the end. He was still trying to restrict and control. I have to assume that he knew exactly what would follow: the Lord would refuse Pharaoh’s terms and send the promised plague. Pharaoh may not have wanted to fight, but he wasn’t ready to surrender, so he had to be broken even further.
7 And Pharaoh’s servants said unto him, How long shall this man be a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the Lord their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
8 And Moses and Aaron were brought again unto Pharaoh: and he said unto them, Go, serve the Lord your God: but who are they that shall go?
In yesterday’s verses we discussed how the noose was growing ever tighter on Egypt. The Lord was taking away all of their food sources, one at a time, with little remaining now for them to rely upon, and today we see something new come as a result. Previously, both Pharaoh and his servants had hardened their hearts, but now the servants stubbornness had been broken. They had become desperate, and they urged Pharaoh to let the people go.
Thus, Pharaoh was now being pressured from both sides: without and within. His kingdom had been being whittled away by the Lord, made more meager day-by-day, yet he had remained its undisputed leader. Now, though, dissent in the court could be the first signs of losing that control.
As a result, we see something else that is new in verse 8. For the first time, Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron back after they had prophesied of the new curse, but before they had actually summoned it. Pharaoh had interrupted his previously-established pattern and he told them to “Go, serve the Lord your God.” This is a very good sign. Pharaoh’s perpetual committing to let Israel go and then changing his mind reminds me of the behavior of an addict. Addicts are always swearing off their evil behavior, even thinking in their heart that they really mean it, but perpetually going back on their word. Breaking the pattern is the first sign that true repentance might finally be at hand.
However, even as Pharaoh was trying to change his old script…he could not leave well enough alone. We can see how Pharaoh’s mind and heart begins to turn back in the last sentence of verse 8. His reservations cannot help but make themselves manifest. “Go, serve the Lord your God…but…who are they that shall go?” As we will see in the following verses, this question of who will go is Pharaoh already looking for a way to impose a restriction on Israel’s departure.
This venomous question speaks deeply to me because it reflects the pride in my own heart. I see in it the desire to only partially comply with the word of the Lord, to look for some sliver of rebellion that can be held onto, even while ostensibly giving in to His will. Sometimes we are beaten and defeated, we have no alternative but to surrender, but we still try to hold something back, just so that we can tell ourselves that we are still our own true master. We will see how this plays out for Pharaoh tomorrow.
Our own self is the primary victim when we lie. First, we do something against our conscience, then we lie about what we did, which gives the message that our fake, external image is of greater value than the true self. This wounds us. We cannot be so dismissive of a part of ourselves without that part hitting us back later on. A war begins within.
Heavy waves of guilt come from one side, telling us that we must tell the truth and stop denying who we truly are, but from the other side comes stifling and suffocation, applying greater and greater pressure on the conscience to deny the truth and accept the fiction. And with all the guilt and the suffocating, we are only hurting our own self in between.
We cannot have peace if we are at war, we cannot have wholeness if we are broken in two. If we are ever to stop beating ourselves the war must end, which means that one side or the other must surrender. And when we come to realize this fact, then we must come to realize another: the conscience cannot surrender. The true, authentic voice will never be killed because it is simply our natural, resting state. It exists because we did what we did, and made of ourselves what we made of ourselves, and there is no way to undo those facts. To live a lie without frustrating and twisting ourselves is fundamentally impossible, because part of ourselves is inseparably tied to unchangeable reality. The only surrender that we really can make is to surrender the lie. Surrender the phony public image. Surrender to the truth.
In my last post I shared how I have at times been oblivious to the inconsistencies and hypocrisy inside of me. I explained that I have moments where some external factor reveals to me that I am not living in harmony with the ideals and truths that I hold most dear. I also shared how at other times I know what my inconsistencies are, and I am genuinely striving against them, but I am unable to achieve total self-control. I am being truthful in my purposes, even if not in my outcomes. These two states represent my lower states of truthfulness, and today I will conclude by detailing the highest state that I have lived in as well.
Living in Truth)
Thankfully, not all of my experiences have been obliviously hypocritical or frustratingly impotent. I really have had some moments and some areas where I have been in harmony with the truth I feel inside. Having had these experiences in some areas of life is what gives me hope of ultimate victory in all the rest.
Perhaps the strongest of these experiences came nearly six years ago when I committed to an addiction recovery program. I overthrew the lies I had lived with by fearlessly confessing to the truth. The result was that my whole being came into alignment with the sort of person I wanted to be. I was honest, creative, healthy, and hopeful. Who I portrayed myself to be, who I wanted to be, and who I actually was were all the same person, or at least they the closest to being the same person than they had ever been before.
All the credit that I deserve for this state of life was that I was willing to finally reject falsehood. I demanded the truth of myself, and then grace seemed to come into my being and make all of my different parts work together. This was union through divine intervention, as any true union must always be.
Comparison)
Having lived the full gamut I can certainly say which levels of integrity are more happy and joyful. Being oblivious to my hypocrisy had a seductive bliss to it, but eventually the truth always revealed itself, and then I was in for a sharp awakening. Realizing my fundamental failing has been, at times, a crushing experience, for I often don’t have any clue how I am supposed to grow past it.
Trying, but slipping, is actually better than being oblivious. It is more constantly agitated than being oblivious, but it does have a hope to it. Even though I keep falling back to where I started, there is a hopefulness in my scrappy efforts. I’m trying because I think I can make it, and I find a sense of self-decency because I’m really trying to live what I preach.
Best of all, of course, is actually living in the truth. There is such a massive weight that is removed when I feel that I am genuinely being the person I was born to be. It truly does feel like a gift, though, not an accomplishment. Overwhelming gratitude, therefore, is my single, constant emotion.
Have defined these different states of my life, I must confess that the mode of transitioning from one to the is largely still a mystery to me. It is something that confounds and at times frustrates me, how to go from oblivion, to striving, to inner peace. It is a quest well worth the effort of a lifetime, though, and I will continue to seek my way no matter what comes.
For the last week we have been exploring the different layers that make a person up, which ones we mistakenly identify with, and the one true identity that we should define ourselves by. We made this journey by moving from the outside in, first examining the external falsehoods, moving to the interior ones, and finally settling on the truth. This inward journey tends to be the pattern that the reawakened soul follows, digging through the layers to get back to who they once were. But, of course, all of these layers come upon the soul in reverse order. So, let’s take a minute to start at the core and work our way back out, just to make sure the picture is complete.
The Divine)
First and foremost, we have the divine. Our true identity, present in us from before our birth. We do not have to work for it, we do not have to earn it, it is just inherent in our innocent, infant state. Artists have long recognized the natural divinity of children, rendering them as angels and cherubs, holy souls under the direct purview of God, Himself.
The divine core is present in us from the beginning, though it should be noted that it can grow and expand throughout our lives. When we are living from this authentic core, we are able to develop and attach other virtues to our character. If we attempt to attach these virtues at any other level of being, they will never stick. Thus, the great prerequisite to real change in our lives is for that change to be able to communicate with this most intimate layer. If you really want to make lasting changes in your life, then you need to stay in this place.
The Wound)
Tragically, though, at some point the divine self is assaulted and taken from us. Though we are naturally bright, someone tells us that we are stupid. Though we are effortlessly kind, someone tells us that we are hurtful. Though we are inherently innocent, someone tells us that we are guilty. We accept these messages as true, because we are young and vulnerable, and they come from someone that we love and trust.
Part of the reason why childhood wounds hurt us the most is because they cut at the truest part of us. If we accept that at our core we are foolish and selfish and worthless, then there is nowhere else to go for reassurance. We see ourselves as fundamentally broken, and by definition, fundamentally broken means unfixable.
The Shame)
The pain brought on by this wounding cannot be overstated. It is entirely appropriate to say that these are the greatest assaults our souls will ever face in life. Being struck to our core, our survival instincts will almost certainly kick in. These instincts are simple and powerful, designed to find the quickest, most efficient way to remove oneself from the pain.
And all too often, the quickest, most efficient anesthesia is some sort of carnal pleasure. Whether the pleasure of sexual gratification, or of consumption, or of entertainment, or of mind-altering chemicals, or of getting new things, or of establishing control over another. All of these alleviate pain in the moment, but they do so at the terrible cost of tearing our conscience and hurting the hearts of others. We will hate ourselves for doing these things, but that hatred will only inspire the survival instincts to do them yet again to numb that pain also! A vicious cycle of self-hurt and hurt to others thus begins.
The Façade)
The pain of a broken heart and of a guilty conscience, the two most terrible burdens to live with. The instinct-based survival mechanism has tried to save us in its own way and utterly failed, so now our higher reasoning takes a crack at it, but its attempt is hardly any better.
We mistakenly conclude that we must create a new layer outside of the others, one that covers the shame so that no one else can see it and one that overcompensates for the part of our divine soul that was assaulted by the wound. So, if we were told that we were selfish, and if our shameful addictions have reinforced that belief, then we will likely create a façade of exaggerated niceness, straining to put on a show of compassion and consideration, not motivated by genuine love for other people, but by fear of having our ugly side seen.
Because the façade totally ignores the underlying issue, it is trying to erect a beautiful building on top of a fractured foundation, and it is doomed to fail miserably. Sometimes this failure is a sudden and public collapse, sometimes it is hidden from the world as we slowly erode from the inside out. In either case, its scope is all-reaching, shattering every branch and relationship in our lives.
Hope)
And thank God that it does. Thank God that our efforts to put a band-aid over a gaping laceration don’t work. Thank God that we will never find a workable solution without Him. And I literally mean “thank God,” because He is often the one who topples our house of cards to the floor.
Sometimes, when we are in the midst of trying so hard to cover our mistakes and wounds, we feel like divine intervention is tripping us up. Often that makes us incredibly mad! “God, I’m trying to make myself good enough, I’m trying to make this house beautiful enough, so why do you keep sending earthquakes to knock it down?!”
God breaks apart everything that we build so that we can finally give up. Routed and cut off from support, our marshalling ruined and our hopes in retreat, finally we throw our hands up and say “I surrender! Go ahead. Punish me! Break me! I deserve it!”
And then we see what a liberating captor God is.
One layer after another, God then breaks through the façade, the shame, and the wound. He blasts all of it away and reveals to us our shining, divine spark, long forgotten but never faded.
“I don’t care about the wrongs,” He tells us. “I don’t care about the lies. I don’t care about the shame. And I’m not here to condemn you, break you, or punish you. I’m only here for this!”
He takes that divine spark and puts it back into our hands. He gives ourselves back to ourselves.
“Now let’s try this again,” He says.
And now, with our true self restored back to us, we miraculously find ourselves effortlessly able to be the person that we could never make ourselves be by force. Where once we felt cursed in all that we did, now we are blessed. Certain defeat is replaced with already-won victory. Real change and real happiness come over us, and we are amazed to find that all this was ready and waiting for us at any moment.
Unveiling our shame and our wounds may seem a terrible ordeal. Our anxiety might seem sure that to do so will kill us! But this is the only way to get them out of the way and then unveil the divine, and once we have done this, then all the hard journey will have been worth it. At last, we are our ourself again, and we need never go back to playing pretend.
Spiritual Wanderings 