What the Exodus Story Reveals About Building Culture: Part 2

Here is the first part of this two-part Thinkpiece series called, "Cultural Warfare: What the Exodus Story Reveals About Building Culture."

Cultural Warfare: What the Exodus Story Reveals About Building Culture

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Media MosesJon Croft

The second part of this story brings us past the great deliverance from (and initial escape from) Egypt, including their slavery, abuse, and false religion.

But wait. I'm sure many may wonder why this story is relevant. Many may not know or may have forgotten, but our current-day Hollywood represents this same decadence, idolatry, abuse, and spiritual (not to mention "physical") slavery that Egypt represented to the Jews.

And, of course, the show Cultural Warfare with Jon Croft seeks to illuminate the connection between the journey here at Media Moses and the larger cultural crisis happening in the west today. Why do the political, social, and cultural issues persist here? We know why, and that is why we continue to discuss this subject until the rest of us all "get it."

Until our culture abandons Hollywood, and the social and moral decay it represents, and heads bravely into the dangerous wilderness, to once again worship God using our entire being (our art, culture, science, government, and personal individual private lives) we will continue to make excuses for the plagues we are seeing all around us as we live "here in Egypt." It will be our fault.

So, let's say you get it. Let's say that now you are, likewise, fed up with the sin and the resultant plagues of Hollywood. Ok, now what? Read the law, Pentateuch and the story of Israel's birth as a nation (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). After this, read the historical books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I & II Samuel, I & II Kings, I & II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, which can give us a greater context to all of this. The Prophets are also necessary and we can see that they have teeth because of the law. They cannot be ignored, and ignoring them have cost the lives of many people who considered themselves "pure" before God, though they were not. People like King Saul only deceived themselves. Their ignorance of the law and God's relationship to his people are glaring examples of why God's people suffer.

The Bible educates us so well about this, and speaking of which, we go through this article here on our Cultural Warfare #43.

So, what does the Bible say? It says that the journey out of sin is far more painful and difficult than many today would like to admit. We have been pampered as a nation that gets its wealth from Christians who suffered for their faith so you could have an iPhone and not be forced to carry water from the river three times a day to feed your barnyard animals. Truly a decadent society that does not regard the lessons that God sought to teach the Israelites in the desert.

Instead we speculate on the magical powers of science. What a waste.

Every form of sacrifice that God taught them, whether it was the passover lamb, or the tabernacle sacrifices, or temple sacrifices, that came later... every one was bloody and difficult. Why? It wasn't difficult for people of that time to do the work of butchering an animal. This was something that many of them did on a daily basis. No, it was difficult because this was valuable food that they had to give up to their God... the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If they didn't get a lot of good food, it's no wonder, because much of it would have to be given up... "sacrificed" in order to worship their God. It's like paying a substantial tax on their own goods and food. Does food grow on trees out there in this desolate country? Absolutely not. No.

So sacrifice is called that for a reason. But sacrifice doesn’t only come in the form of temple sacrifices. Sacrifice comes in the form of obedience, or in the form of FAITH that sacrifices ("gives up the privilege of") having understanding or knowledge for the sake of relationship. We often don't know why our loved ones act the way they do, or why someone likes some things but doesn't like another, but when they tell us to do something, and their explanations for "why" simply do not cut the mustard, we may be tempted to disobey or ignore them.

This faith we have in God... is just like that. It may be a sacrifice that gives up our need to know and understand "why." This was happening to the Israelites almost on the daily in the Exodus story, and forty years later the parents of the children brought up in that place were dead and buried. Why?

This signifies the 2nd phase of the Exodus story, the next generation who hopefully aren't as stiff-necked as their parents who "remembered Goshen" (instead of God). But this new generation only knew that visceral longing for the sweet "promised land" flowing with milk and honey. This is what they were there for, what they trained for, and what motivated them to do better, everyday. And so, it was them who claimed the land under Joshua, man of God, doing mighty deeds of faith in God's name.

They were primed for it, and were therefore in opposition to their own parents in many ways. Seeking, instead of familial identity, to own their new identity that Moses was helping to give them in the law and in his commands, teachings, and writings that were often given from "on high"... straight from "God's holy mountain."

These laws and teachings can be boiled down to two kinds, like the burnt offerings, and the guilt offerings, the ones eaten and ones not eaten, the ones that make us holy and ones that do not, we must understand the difference. These represent relating to God and relating to each other. They are about making us holy before God, and understanding that we cannot really be holy, even after all of this, without Christ.

But they are instructional on how important Christ is, and how important our relationship with God is. Readying us for the day that Christ reveals that all the law is summed up in these two things... loving God and loving neighbor. They were brought up to understand that only God's answer (in the messiah) can fulfill this law, and that we must follow Him, His guidance, and then (when He comes) the answers of His Messiah, if we are to make it out of this wilderness.

We are set apart.

This is not only found in the New Testament, but found knitted from within virtually every story in the Old Testament, whether the law, the history, the poetry, or the prophets. Isaiah, and almost every prophet, speaks of (often in great detail) the Messiah and his purpose to usher in a new age for Israel and for the world. He is the longed-for hope for their nation.

The history speaks of how their kings and their leaders fail when they do not regard God's particular solutions for Israel, this solution being a divinely good king (or the messiah). The law speaks of the nature of Israel's relationship with God. It is not meant to be a formula for achieving perfection, or godlikeness, but an instructive explanation of who God is and what he likes. That in order to please God you must obey him, and do so in an intimate, trusting way. We are also to separate (or set ourselves apart) from the world, and it's sinfulness, while simultaneously respecting others and being an example of justice (and God's righteousness) in the world.

So, we struggle (or "wrestle") with the truth of God's nature and blessing. This is a necessary part of Israel's identity in the world. This means we embrace the difficulty of truth and our true purpose in the universe (which is where science really comes from). And this demands that our justice system live within a matrix of equality and truth before the law (race, class, and sex do not make us better before the law). The law in the Bible has all of these aspects contained within it, and so it teaches the proper posture an Israelite must have before God.

Again, it is not a materialistic chemical agent of change that makes us like God... no. Nor is it a metaphysical, or magical (knowledge-based) incantation that makes us like God... no. That is gnosticism. Only God, who is a real person, can decide to "make us holy" arbitrarily, through his mercy and grace. And He tells us why He does this and who He forgives of sins. Abraham (as the first Patriarch) gives us this example of who is justified before God, and how. Not due to magic, but due to an obedient nature towards God, our divine Father. This obedient nature calls us to faith in God, and then to act upon that faith. A spiritual and then evidentiary (physical) "baptism" results, later.

The poetry in the scripture has a masterful musical quality that teaches us to love God, and to long for the answer (that aforementioned "wrestling") within Christ. In reading and obeying it's musings we learn how to obey and love God better.

These are all masterful stories and teachings that only a divine being could have constructed to bring us closer towards a true relationship with our creator, redeemer, and Father God. Since they prophesied hundreds of times the exacting ways in which our Messiah would come to earth, and forge a path out of the rebellion of the Garden of Eden, we can trust it. These promises were fulfilled. Now, a path towards the cross and towards our new life in God's heavenly kingdom exists for us in the next life, if we trust in Him.

This is what the Exodus was about... a miraculous journey out of the hell of slavery that sin leads us to, and into the freedom of full expression within Christ as a creation of God. He doesn't create things to be bad, but creates them to be good. So, finding that inner purpose for our lives within Christ is also finding our OUTER purpose of acting properly in relation to God.

We must COME OUT of Egypt if we are to please God and to act properly as a created being living in accordance with our God-given purpose. We must, then, COME OUT of Hollywood. Hollywood is the modern representation of this system of slavery that the materialistic and gnostic cults of the world have constructed to enslave the mind of man (both gnostic and agnostic).

We must wrap God's law around our hearts, teaching us to love neighbor and to love God with all our heart, mind, and strength (a complete human living within God's kingdom). We must remember God's great redemption of us as a people, in the form of remembrances such as holidays, the written Words of God, the stories that God tells us, and the disciplines we submit our lives to, in order to embrace joy in God.

Then, we must advance forward to conquer villages, cities, and great giants who defy God's goodness, so that our nation will not perish from the earth. This is what Israel had to do under Joshua's leadership if they wanted to occupy the land that God already claimed for them.

And he has every right to make that claim.

And we have every right to make a claim upon our culture, healing from the old lies, answering them with truth, and constructing great stories that teach God's truth to our children. Our very language and holidays can reflect this truth. This is our birthright before God. It is not a physical birth but a spiritual one. The second birth, one that may be just as painful (if not more), but it is far more vibrant and enduring.

Christ is the answer that the law presents to us, he is the only one who could fulfill it. He is the answer to the question of redeeming the history of our nations, which presents once again the flawed nature of humanity. He is the answer to how we can love neighbor, as we love ourselves. For by washing the feet of our neighbor, we wash Christ's feet, and by putting others first we are making a statement of faith in God, who promises to provide our needs for us.

The answers you seek lie therein.

He is that answer. And his longed-for entrance to the scene in a troublesome time and place... a hypocrite religious people and an oppressive hypocrite empire... as he provided gentle answers to both... this was not by mistake. It gives us the answers we long for today as well.

Neither politics, nor religion are the answer... but He Is. And He always will be.

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