(SEMI)WEEKLY PODCAST ROUND-UP

July 27, 2023

THE HARDENING OF PHAROAH’S HEART

Written July 9, 2023 - Posted July 27, 2023

After listening to Tyler Staton and Tim Mackie’s discussion on the Exodus Passover and the thorny telling of God hardening Pharoah’s heart.

As the story goes, Moses and Aaron are working to get permission from the the Egyptian Pharoah, to release them from bondage so that they may worship their God in the wilderness. “Let my people go” is the famous refrain. In response the story toggles back and forth between Pharoah hardening his own heart, and God hardening Pharoah’s heart from letting the Moses and his people go, which brings on the 10 plagues. Over the years I’ve heard many well intentioned attempts to make sense of this riddle, God making someone do something, only to then punish them for it. Some of which I was able to find semi-satisfying. But on this particular day I found the attempt, which was done with even more thoughtfulness and care than almost any other treatment I had heard hitherto, still particularly unsatisfying. The idea usually being some form of God being justified in doing what he did because of X, Y, or Z reason. Which got me thinking about the grand and mysterious question about how does God act in the world, and how does he relate to us. Which led me to the only satisfactory answere that I could muster: what if God hardening Pharoah’s heart and Pharoah hardening his own heart are different ways of saying the same thing. And it is good. Beause, If God Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart in the way we normally imagine, that is, because he is all powerful and he will do what he wills with his creatures, and moreover, if we are in rebellion, and he acts on us (and is justified in doing so), by either callously or helplessly handing us over to our rebellion, or punishing us further by creating in us an even more obstinate will than we had previously. If it is in this type of way that God acts on his creation, where he creates in us a will that may otherwise have not existed, let me suggest that God could have then unhardened Pharaoh’s heart in just the same manner. Thus creating evil when good could have been created. To my mind, the implications of this are vast, the worst of which is would be that God does evil or at least is arbitrary in who he is good to.

However, what if, in fact, what was hardening Pharaoh’s heart was God’s goodness. Kind of like a reaction to something; a “you made me do it”, but using different language. What if God wanting to free the oppressed, God wanting to heal the wounds that the Pharaoh had inflicted (thus requiring Pharaoh to risk losing his riches, and admit he was wrong), God wanting Pharaoh to give back to God what was already his - freeing both Israel and Egypt from this relationship of bondage, what if it was this that made Pharaoh’s heart hard. I was imagining God as a vast flowing river, then imagining someone flowing effortlessly with the river, and someone swimming against it. The river holds both, it doesn’t stop one from swimming against it, or one from resting in it. However, one is sustainable and the other is not. And which would be correct to say: The river is tiring out the one who swims against it, or the one who swims against it tires themselves out?

It’s easy to cast a stone at Pharoah in the story, but how often do we harden our hearts in the same way. How often, in reaction to a little pinprick of God’s good prompting do we look away from those in poverty, hold back the riches of forgiveness, keep for ourselves what we do not need. When he says “give as I have given, forgive as I have forgiven, surrender as I have surrendered.” And in response, even if just for a moment, we hold on a little tighter to what we believe is ours: time, money, a kind word. You can see that it is a little nudge of God’s goodness that creates in us a hardness. When we sense it, it demands a reaction. Either to flow with it or react against it. A sort of reaction to or away from the good. So is it not God’s call that hardens us? Without the call would we not be ignorant? Yet isn’t God always calling? In this way, to say God hardened Pharaoh’s heart or Pharaoh hardened his own heart is to say the same thing. And in fact you see the language being used interchangeably. So rather than trying to justify God willing an already cruel will in Pharaoh, but because it was after the 3rd, or 4th, or 5th time, God is justified in forcing Pharoah’s will to be obstinate, perhaps we could say that in each instance of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, we could say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and vice versa. It brings to mind the saying, I believe of St. Paul, who says something a kin to, “showing love to your enemy is like heaping burning coals on their head.” As we see in this picture, doing good is described as almost the opposite. But clearly this is not the case. It also brings to mind the thieves on the cross. One thief looks at Christ’s vulnerablity and “hardens his heart”, so to speak, looking for a God who is powerful in the classic way we think of God’s power. A God acting upon his creation/subjects as he wills. Interestingly, this is the power actually displayed in Pharaoh. A ruler who acts on his subjects rather than letting them find freedom. As we see this hardness only can lead to destruction as we see in the fate of the Egyptians. This hardness cannot last though. In fact this type of hardness leads to it's own destruction. And once destroyed we can see God as he was the entire time…waiting in mercy, calling us out in love, ready to restore.

THE TROUBLE WITH JUDGEMENT

June 2, 2023

The trouble with judgement is a common one. And common doesn’t really begin to scratch the surface, because the trouble with judgement may in fact be the trouble with our experience of reality itself. It appears to me that reality always and inevitably presents itself as paradox: a set of seeming opposing positions moving closer together but never quite touching, yet ever away from each other in opposite directions, only to find themselves moving closer together again at the most extremes, and somehow converging back to a center that never seems to quite hold. These paradoxes, this duality that seems to show itself wherever we look, leaves us feeling as though we are stuck in an inescapable maze or given a riddle that begs for a solution, but one we can’t seem to find, particularly if we are trying to find our way out with our own navigation skills, or our own intellect. These tools can help bring us to the door, but they can never fully get us to enter. As far as my experience has led me, Christ is the only thing that can bind the paradoxes of reality together. Or another way to put it is that Christ is reality, as he says "I am The Way, the truth and The Life."  In a very real way he binds all of existence together - "All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Just as Jesus brings together God and man, King and servant, finite and infinite, Judgement is no different. In Christ judgement is revealed as lavish, unending grace and forgiveness, of which there is no end, yet it also calls us mercilessly toward some mysterious yet very real ultimate beauty and perfection in love, burning away anything that is not made up of such things. As humans our tendency is to constantly, sloppily, be slipping from one side of a paradox to another, missing the mark so to speak. And this missing the mark - the sin as it were, is what lies at the heart of the human condition. When all the layers have been peeled back, this is at the core, that we are unable to fully participate in the harmony of reality. Somehow we’ve found ourselves outside of God, sick and hurting trying desperately to get back into harmony. To get back into Christ. [And the two ways in which we do this are two sides to the same coin. The first is that we create our own God to participate with, or our own way to participate with God. And maybe what lies at the root of this is convincing ourselves that a lesser God will satiate us. Or we can create our own path to God. The second is the idea that we can justify ourselves through moral perfection. That we can clothe ourselves so to speak.]

I think a great illustration of this is found in the story of the woman caught in adultery. Before going there, however, I’d like to try and show that judgement is inevitable. There’s no way to get around it. We judge things constantly, but most of the time we just don’t realize it as such. We judge whether a chair is good to sit in, or what food might be good for breakfast. We judge things even when we aren’t conscious of it. For instance when we eat, We put the food in our mouth instead of our eye and don’t eat our fork along with our meal, because food doesn’t go in the eye and forks aren’t good for digestion.  I’m not sure if there’s anything we can do in life without judgement. When I wake up I make a choice whether it’s better to go to work or get fired, drive my car or walk, which side of the car to get in and so on and so on. So the key isn’t whether or not to be “judgy”, the key is the “who-what-where-when-and-why” of how I judge. And as with all things in Christ there is a surprise twist or perhaps even twists. Paradoxes constantly being brought into harmony.

So now let’s turn to the story of the adulteress woman. She is brought before Jesus by a group of Pharisees and scribes, who ask Jesus whether or not the woman should be stoned as the Law of Moses commands, and as the story goes, Jesus says “he without sin cast the first stone,” and they all walk away in shame. Here we have our first twist. Those who judge with the wrong spirit (let’s say that they got the “who-what-where-when-why-and-how” of it wrong) end up bringing judgement on themselves. And in a strange way it’s their own judgement that falls on them, indeed their own. For Christ doesn’t even say that they have sinned, he lets their own judgement be a revelation to themselves. Then the next twist, Jesus turns to the woman and says, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you”. Here we have the judgement of Jesus. The true judge. And what is his judgment? His judgement is tenderness and restoration and forgiveness. His judgement is always these things. Which in a strange way doesn’t really feel like judging at all. Yet, and this is the final paradoxical twist of the story, he sends her off with a command, a command which in itself reveals that a failure has indeed happened. And not just any command, the ultimate command, a command that is greater and more burdensome than the one she has just failed. He doesn’t just say, “Go and don’t keep indulging in adultery,” the command is to be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect, to “Go and sin no more.”