Purposeful History
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Exodus 20:2 NASB
Brought you out – It’s all about the evidence, right? Two important authors have some insights worth reading. First, Seth Godin. Then, Jonathan Sacks.
Facts are not the antidote for doubt
Drink enough water and you will cease to be thirsty.
And yet, a doubting person can be drowning in facts, but facts won’t change a mind that doesn’t want to be changed. More facts don’t counter more doubt. Someone who is shaking her head, arms folded, eyes squinted and ears closed isn’t going to be swayed by more facts.
Instead, doubt surrenders to experience. And experience can only happen if there’s enrollment.
If someone is willing to find the right answer, willing to explore what might be effective, what might be confirmable, then enrolling in the journey to ease doubt opens the door to personal experience. Which, magically, can let the light in.
Experience, working it out, touching it, studying it, repeatedly asking why with an open mind… these experiences engage us, earn our attention and gain our trust.
Doubt comes from fear, which is why it’s so difficult to earn enrollment. People don’t want to commit to working their way out of doubt, because doubt is a perverse variation of perceived safety, a paralysis in the face of the unknown. Earn enrollment first, a commitment to find a path, then bring on the process and the facts. Seth Godin
Now some application to the biblical world.
It is easy to think of the Torah as simply telling events as they occurred, interspersed with various commandments. On this view the Torah is history plus law. This is what happened, these are the rules we must obey, and there is a connection between them, sometimes clear (as in the case of laws accompanied by reminder that “you were slaves in Egypt”), sometimes less so.
But the Torah is not mere history as a sequence of events. The Torah is about the truths that emerge through time. That is one of the great differences between ancient Israel and ancient Greece. Ancient Greece sought truth by contemplating nature and reason. The first gave rise to science, the second to philosophy. Ancient Israel found truth in history, in events and what God told us to learn from them. Science is about nature, Judaism is about human nature, and there is a great difference between them. Nature knows nothing about freewill. Scientists often deny that it exists at all. But humanity is constituted by its freedom. We are what we choose to be. No planet chooses to be hospitable to life. No fish chooses to be a hero. No peacock chooses to be vain. Humans do choose. And in that fact is born the drama to which the whole Torah is a commentary: how can freedom coexist with order? The drama is set on the stage of history, and it plays itself out through five acts, each with multiple scenes. Jonathan Sacks
The Pentateuch provides a narrative on context for the people of Israel coming out of Egypt. It answers the fundamental questions presented in the Genesis narrative about the angel of the Lord and Hagar. “Where have you come from?” and “Where are you going.” Neither Hagar or you and I can answer the second question without answering the first. That is to say, the meaning of the text is not the event but rather the impact on the lives of those involved. This is true of all history. History is a record of the impact of the events usually understood within the culture of the victors. Even in our personal histories, not having the narrative supplied by parents so that my experience of the event is not just history but meaningful history means that I end up adrift, without an identity that allows me to integrate experience with purpose. Without this the event is simply an occurrence without connection.
Trauma is the disconnection between meaning and the associated experience. Trauma is emotional feelings without continuity. If I don’t know where I have been, I cannot know where I am going. In the biblical text, God has to supply a new narrative—a new integrating story. The Torah is purposeful narrative. God answers the question “Where have you come from?” with the narrative of the Torah. The Torah is about continuity, not event recording. It’s true in the sense of narrative with purpose, not simply a newsreel of events. These people need to know where they have come from if they are going to become what God intends. This is tribal history—the deepest form of myth. But it is not fable. It is identifying saga. “Who am I?” “You are the one whom God has chose in this particular way . . . . .”
Topical Index: evidence, myth, saga, story, Exodus 20:2, identity
Surely HaShem shapes us, not with facts, but by experience. And that experience is what makes us have knowledge of Him. From where has He taken me? Where is He leading me to?
Everything around us is always a message from Him… Come back to me!!! Teshuvah!!!
Leave out your doubts… have trust in Me!!! Walk in Emunah!!!
“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” Job 42:5 NIV
Skip, I think you sewed a whole shirt for me this morning. Too good for words.
Jude 5 is an interesting parallel verse to consider in light of this TW. First, here’s the NASB: Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.
Let’s compare the NASB to another mostly ‘literal’ translation, the ESV: Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
Now, there’s a mindbender! How is it that the translators of the ESV decided to put Jesus in the text where the NASB has Lord, while Exodus 20:22 states that it’s the Lord, your God who brought the people out of Egypt? Perhaps this can be explained as Jonathon Sacks states, “The Torah is about the truths that emerge through time.”
Time…….there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen
I like the inherent ambiguity in that quote!
Noted Greg Yeshua is the truth the life and the way , and no one comes to the father but through . Him thanks again Greg
Some explanation is in order for Jude 5. In the translation for the NASB, the Greek text underlying it, known as the “critical text” (CT), has “Lord”; whereas, the newest CT (NA28/UBS5) has “Jesus”. The older CT was based on the following commentary (Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2d Ed. [New York: United Bible Societies, 1994], p 657).
Essentially, the two earliest manuscripts, and quite a number of others, have “Jesus” in the Greek text. While a majority of the Committee stood against the evidence, a very vocal minority stood with the evidence. In the intervening years, and with alternate methods of textual criticism used and compared, the newest CT placed “Jesus” in it. Most modern English versions follow this, though not all. The NASB footnote reads, “Two early mss read Jesus”; however, that very much understates the evidence!
Block quotes. Show off. 😉
Yeah, but I messed up one of the italics tags. Mark said he’ll fix it, though
Gotta love brother mark!
Speaking of which…MAJOR shout out for Mark and his tenacious IT skills. He hadn’t done what i asked if he could do before, that being back up/pull off my (SHOCKINGLY HUGE) gmail account and move it in it’s entirety to a different location.
It took him a minute to unravel it for me and get it accomplished. I was singularly impressed.
His rates are entirely reasonable and he was absolutely easy to work with and by that i mean he tolerated my endless stream of emails/questions. My reputation as the email sending queen is well deserved.
Please consider him for your computing needs. #END PSA#
R U Experienced?
“If anyone is willing TO DO His will, he will KNOW of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.” John 7.17 [Emphasis mine]
Yes, experience is the best teacher. My advise? The same as His mother — Whatever He says, “DO IT!” And when we do His good will, He abides with us still, and with all who will trust and obey!
“Fear not,” fearful ones.. NEVER doubt the goodness of God!! Your Father loves you and wants the absolute very best for you!! Why, O tell me why.. are we afraid of the One who loves us all (and greater still, loves us each) with a Holy and perfect love? Do you* know you are loved?? Yes, are you “experienced?” Sweetly, sublimely the word of God speaks to each of us: ~ The One who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all–how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? ~ (Romans 8.32)
~Blessed be the LORD, who daily loads us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.~ Selah.
Hello everyone. As I was reading the previous entries a concept came to mind which was not yet touched upon. Life is not a straight line smooth and full of benefits although this is what is offered by Yahweh, when we are detoured off by distractions and pleasures of the eye the presence of God of what he left behind draws us back. As we continue forward we see similar distractions as before but will you remember they led us astray and we overcome the desires of the ungodly nature. So in closing the purpose of our history is to remind us of the choices we have made along with the choices of others so we can learn from them both. Someone once gave me two examples which are comparatively similar. 1 a person in a rowboat moves forward but they are Looking Backward from the forward Direction they are headed . The exact point of destination is known by that accuracy of the historical landscape behind him. Number two known as the game of telephone people are set in his Circle someone starts a short story then it is passed along through each member of the circle, how different the original story is compared to the unintentionally revised version. Lesson learned stay with the original source!!
Getting out of Egypt is less than half of the healing/recovery process. We still need to get Egypt out of us. That, my friends, will take a different kind of Moses. The look and feel of the wilderness can be just as terrorizing as anything else we might have experienced in the past and so we cry out; not so much for relief as much as we just want to go back to Egypt. When overwhelmed by challenge or the feeling that everything is changing, we want to go back to what is familiar, known, and unchanged. We want life to be predictable. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk states it like this:
“While we all want to move beyond trauma, the part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival (deep below our rational brain) is not very good at denial. Long after a traumatic experience is over, it may be reactivated at the slightest hint of danger and mobilize disturbed brain circuits and secrete massive amounts of stress hormones. This precipitates unpleasant emotions intense physical sensations, and impulsive and aggressive actions. These posttraumatic reactions feel incomprehensible and overwhelming. Feeling out of control, survivors of trauma often begin to fear that they are damaged to the core and beyond redemption.”
Perhaps we retreat and return to our Egypts not because we’ve determined this exodus is the wrong path, but because we no longer believe we’re worth redeeming. Could it be that Hagar no longer sees her worth or the worth of her yet to be born child? Maybe she feels like she’s invisible, unnotable, unknown. Perhaps staying the course through the desert – enduring the heat, the dry times, and the strain of it all – is actually what it takes to rid our bodies, our souls of our inherited dross. Maybe the wilderness is the only way to become human again. Maybe the “not going back to Egypt” is less about me and more about my children, my grandchildren – born or yet to be born.
Roderick, I have been struck speechless twice in one day. You blessed me!
Baruch HaShem!
THIS right here! Amen
I am an architect. On the day the recession hit Idea Studios I had six employees and three years of work to support them and myself on the books; that is singed or potential contracts. The work was gone in a day, I asked Yeshua “what’s going on he said “Sea Change”. The employees where gone in three days. I understood I was in uncharted territory, I also knew I could go back to Egypt or head into the Promised Land. I inquired of Yahh ” How do I get into the promised land?” He answered ” You rest into it”. That was 2007. I have spent the years since walking this out. I understand now that “into it” is activity, purposed, prayerful, submitted, obedient, activity. “Rest” is the spirit and peace that activity is done through. Absolute trust based on activities that are clearly ordained. Yeshua said “I only do what I see the father doing.” That’s the way into the land and out of Egypt based on my walk with Yeshua. I wanted to add some practical experience to your suggestions…
Truly grateful I opened this post by Skip today. And to all who posted. This Roderick thank you for these words, moving.
Hello Skip and others,
Roderick, your comment says quite clearly what is going through my mind as question and reaction to this reading. I really don’t need to say more; thanks.
David Russell
Baruch HaShem!