The Way God Works

Go and assemble the elders of the Israelites, and tell them: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to me and said: I am concerned about you and about the way you are being treated in Egypt; so I have decided to lead you up out of the misery of Egypt ...  Ex 3:16-17

Yeah right.  I wonder what really happened.  Most likely, Moses never saw God in the extraordinary way described in the scriptures.  He never saw a burning bush.  He never heard a voice.  Except maybe in his mind. 

An alternate telling of the story might have him burning to do something for the enslaved Israelites.  This is the way God works.  Using ordinary human beings.  OK extraordinary human beings.  Giving gifts.  And the human being does the work.  With help and encouragement from God.  The work will feel right.  The individual will be so certain in the rightness of his cause that he goes about his or her work filled with joy.  A peace that surpasses all understanding.  He or she feels fulfilled.  Think of Ghandi.  Think of Martin Luther King.  They knew the danger.  Yet they stepped forward into the limelight and set their people free.  This is what Moses did.  Neither Ghandi nor MLK saw a burning bush.  Neither heard a voice.  It is not part of the story.  Yet God was with them.  If they lived at the time of Moses, the writer of scripture may have made up a story about a bush and a voice.  It reflects faith that God was involved.  Looking back, we can see that they were right to have acted as they did.  They led great movements.  They succeeded against overwhelming odds. 

But many of us want our Gods to be magic.  We want to see explicit involvement of God in our affairs.  Hey the writers of the scripture just gave the people what they wanted.  For the rest of us, the burden is greater.  We know that we should not wait for a burning bush and a voice.  We know God does not work that way.  Rather God’s spirit is present in our hearts.  We start to see things as God sees them.  That slavery and oppression are wrong.  That misusing the resources of the earth and leaving it barren and polluted is wrong.  That the distribution of wealth is out of balance.  That creation is wonderful.  That everyone is meant to share.  That everyone deserves love and a satisfying life. 

Some may think that God only talks to great leaders like Ghandi and MLK.  But God talks to everyone.  God pushes his or her agenda through each person.  We need to love ourselves and others.  Just how to work in creation and redemption is likely to be different in each life.  Everyone needs to see things as God sees them, do things as God does them.  And God’s range of involvement is incomprehensible.  Mostly we work on a human scale.  With things we can see and feel and think about.  God works on a scale from photons and atoms to the whole universe.  Galaxies, planets, countries.  On our scale, God works mostly with the human heart. 

So did Moses lie when he told the assembled elders of Israel that God sent him?  Did he feel funny saying that?  When I do a good thing on my scale, when I wash dishes or pay a compliment or do something else to make someone feel good, to edify people, to affirm them, do I announce that God sent me to do it? 

There would be an alternative, namely that God only works for large groups.  Has no interaction with individuals unless they are the leaders.  I imagine that many peoples believed the large group theory, as if God doesn’t have time to deal with individuals.  Each tribe and village had its own gods. 

There is a lot to think about, and maybe I’ll change my mind.  But I wonder what consensus we could have, taking into account all we know about human psychology, which would include mob psychology, and group psychology, and gang psychology.  Male bonding (as in the army on the battlefield, or on the job site) and female networking.  How much of the village gods could be understood by what we currently think in psychology.  The reality hasn’t changed, only the words we use to describe it. 

So history includes an extraordinary story of the Israelites slaves getting sprung from Egypt.  And the leader was Moses.  A footnote in history.  Almost lost to history.  Not a big deal to historians.  Only important because it got described in scriptures a long time after it happened.  They made up stories to convey their belief.  A burning bush, a voice from heaven.  Hey, it’s magic.  God must really move us.  God singled us out.  We are specially chosen. 

Not true.  We are all equal in God’s site.  This is a tenant of my religion.  No chosen people.  We are essentially on our own.  Traditional religions don’t help much.  And their scriptures give a distorted picture which essentially blocks us from perceiving the wonder of it all.