Boils and Locusts and Frogs - Oh My!

 

Exodus 9:10-12 NIV

So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on people and animals. 11 The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians. 12 But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses.

I was scrolling through Facebook and noticed a post from a young friend that said,  “Rewatching the Prince of Egypt because its a masterpiece and also brings up fun religion stuff. Like how it is literally worded that god hardened Pharaoh’s heart for no other reason than to torture the people of Egypt with plagues. Like yeah dude thats messed up. Even if it was real, that is not okay 🙃 why would you think god is good when he did mostly evil things?”. 

She has a point.  She’s talking about the God I learned about growing up.  The big Old Testament stories we tell about God are filled with examples of God’s anger and  ruthlessness.  God destroyed all the humans and animals on the earth except those on the ark.  God told Joshua to tear down every city in the Promised Land so the Hebrews could have it, killing everything living and destroying every single item they found there - to wipe all the people living there right off the face of the earth.  God regularly punished the people of Israel for being unfaithful by having some other nation defeat them in battle, then helped them when they came crawling back.  And let’s not forget Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities with all their occupants - even babies! - totally destroyed because they broke the law of hospitality. These are pretty ugly stories, and it’s easy to see why that God, the one we tell those stories about, doesn’t really look “good.” 

The stories were written from the perspective of the people God saves.  The stories were told to remind the people just how powerful their God is.  “Look - our God loves us so much he will kill for us!  Our God is so powerful that even mighty cities cannot stand before him. Our God is so powerful that even the Pharoah, the most powerful human we know about, must bow to God’s will.” And, “Our God loves us so much that even when we do everything we are told not to do, we are forgiven and rescued.”. When those people were telling the stories, they weren’t thinking about the other people as anything other than the enemy, the oppressor.  This was their God, after all. Not the god of all those other people.  When they told these stories, they were only thinking about making it really clear that their God loved them, and favored them above all others.

The stories we don’t tell as often are the quiet stories, the stories of God answering the prayers of infertile women, or God telling the people they must take care of the widows, orphans, and alien residents among them, or God’s constant reminders to the leaders of nations that they were responsible to care for all of their people. God said, “I don’t want your sacrifices, I want you to be just and merciful.”  We talk about God kicking Adam and Eve out of the Garden, but don’t mention the part about God making them clothing to protect them from the elements.  We talk about God smiting the enemy, but not about God’s instructions to love the enemy, even to give them food and water.  We even talk about God sending his own son to be killed for us, without mentioning that Jesus was not just God’s son, not just human, but also divine, also God.  We don’t usually remember that God was willing to die in excruciating pain  for us.

Dear God, we do love to tell the stories from the Hebrew Bible of you smiting and punishing evil doers, or just people we think of as the bad guys.  Help us remember to tell the less exciting stories of your forgiveness and mercy, and your compassion for those who suffer, so that everyone hearing will know that God is good.  Amen.