A Thought For The Week Of January 23, 2017

"The Lord had said to Moses, 'Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you ...'" (Exodus 11:9a) For the last little while I've been doing some personal study with the Book of Exodus, and most recently with the series of plagues that were said to be sent on to Pharaoh and Egypt. It's really  a very ugly story. That's what keeps coming into my mind as I reflect on it. Ugliness. The series of plagues is bad enough. That they were ascribed to God is bad enough. But when you come to the end, the very idea of God literally killing all the firstborn of Egypt is nothing less than ugly, and I'll concede that before anyone else. What's especially problematic in the passage is that we're told that the people of Egypt - whose firstborn are about to perish - are favourably disposed toward the Hebrews. The Egyptian people aren't the enemies of God's people. Pharaoh is, but his people aren't. And yet still the people of Egypt are going to suffer this dreadful plague.  What do I make of this? Obviously my interpretation of Scripture and my general understanding of God tell me that God didn't kill the firstborn, although I'm willing to grant that there may well have been a plague in Egypt and that a lot of children may have died as a result. But, tragically, that's nature and not God, and the worldview of the times just assumed that God was responsible. I don't work with the same assumption. But I do assume that there is a moral of some sort to the story; a lesson to be learned that' s still relevant today. In the last few days there's been a lot of reflection on political and national leadership and how it's exercised. One thing we learn from this story is that when a nation's leaders do something stupid or act before they truly think their actions through, it's usually the nation's people who suffer the consequences. Leaders have great responsibilities and governing wisely and making sober and thoughtful decisions are essential to fulfilling those responsibilities. Pharaoh was a fool. He was stubborn. He insisted on doing things his way no matter what the consequences would turn out to be. Our prayer for leaders - whether Donald Trump or Justin Trudeau or Theresa May or Vladimir Putin or any other leader - should be that they will govern and lead with a humble spirit and always keeping the best interests of their people in mind. If there's one lesson I take from this ugly series of events, that would be it.