Saturday, 14 November 2015

Letter to Moses (Exodus 10 - 13)


Dear Moses,

I am writing this short letter asking simply how did you cope with the horror which was going on around you?

I am angry God kept hardening Pharaoh’s heart and that more people had to die. I really don’t know if it was the only way that freedom was possible. If so I struggle to understand that.

I hope in some ways this is a narrative put together to explain history, but don’t know if it was. I struggle with this passage deeply.

I could go through the different plagues and festivals but I feel that is not appropriate. I want to know how God’s will could be the slaughter of innocent children.

People tend to try and explain it away saying it was cultural, or it was necessary. I don’t believe the slaughter of the innocents could have been necessary and I don’t believe a God of love would choose to do this.

I am writing to you struggling with what kind of God I worship. If this is true that God did kill in this manner does it mean that mean he still justifies violence which takes place in his name? If he does I cannot worship this God, yet he is not the God I know and so I have to question this account.

The only thing I can take from this is that I come from a nation who has to take responsibility in our past for acts of barbarity and violence too. Perhaps this is another group seeking to explain the worst parts of their history too, where in the complexity of trying to obtain freedom they had to undertake acts of atrocity. 

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