catapult magazine

Read this issue’s Bible study verses: ../issues/backIssue.cfm?issueid=20#study

What are the painful realities we must face of living in a broken world and what tools do we have for dealing with them?

Is it interesting to think that Moses and Aaron are the spiritual foremans of the people? From the labor foremen’s position: drive the body harder, complete work that was once difficult and now seems impossible. It’s interesting to interpret this passage depicting the struggle of priorities between the spiritual and material realm. Here Aaron and Moses are saying, “Let my people go!” but from the bondages and the impossibility of committing one’s life to the corporeal world. Would it not be equally relevant to word the spiritual foreman’s words thusly: “Allow my people to free themselves from a strictly material view of the world and allow them to investigate the connectivity that spirit brings to all existence.” And was the next part of the story just that?…a spiritual journey in the desert, a test of faith, a leap into the unknown?
So perhaps the healing of the factions, the brokenness begins when we alter our perspective to see connectedness rather than enslavement and subjugation to purposes to other than that which is authentically our own. Each journey is unique. If we are king in our own stories, we must be our own leader, not a keeper of dependents and slaves. If we are the slaves, let us not search for a leader that is other than our own self. With this freedom to enter into and leave any relationship [with self, with other…] comes greater freedom and healing when our spirit is not bound.

Why do you see this story in terms of corporeal vs. spiritual? The Jewish escape from Egypt was meant to be a very corporeal escape to an actual real promised land, right? Or are you thinking of it in relation to our Christian journeys out of bondage to sin?

This story of Israel in Egypt is fascinating. I didn’t realize until recently, while reading theologian N.T. Wright, that escaping disaster is a very prominent Jewish theme (The Flood, Sodom and Gomorah, Egypt, Babylonian exile). For Christians, being “saved” has that same sense of escape, of avoiding immanent destruction.