Today’s Scripture Reading
(November 24, 2018): Deuteronomy 1
American Philosopher Henry
David Thoreau commented that “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The
obedient must be slaves.” Obviously, there are different reasons for being
disobedient, and different reasons for being held under the command of someone
else. For instance, a lot has been made during the course of history about the
responsibility of a soldier for their actions during times of conflict. A
soldier is trained to be someone who is obedient and under the command of
someone else. When someone higher up in the chain of command issues an order,
obedience to that order is considered to be a necessity, and not necessarily the
action of a slave. Unless, of course, there is something immoral about the
order. For a soldier, it is only in response to an immoral order that liberty
should be expressed.
The other reality is that sometimes
we can express our liberty in a way that can only harm us. I would highly
recommend that you not stand in front of a moving car. If you want to express
your freedom by standing in the middle of a busy roadway, the cars barreling
down the highway toward you might be able to miss you. But someone might be
distracted or see you too late, and the chances are that the expression of your
freedom might mean the end of your life.
Kadesh Barnea could be labeled as the place where Israel realized
their freedom. They had been slaves in Egypt. In Egypt, there was no way for
them to express their freedom. But at Kadesh Barnea, they exercised their
collective liberty by saying no to a plan to enter Canaan and take possession
of the Promised Land. And maybe that is the way that we need to view the Kadesh Barnea decision; it was the action of a
nation exercising its newly discovered freedom and not a moral failure on the
part of the descendants of Jacob. Because they did not enter Canaan, they
became a nomadic group of people wandering the wilderness. Normally, a nomadic
tribe this size could never survive; there just
wouldn’t be enough food for the tribe to feed itself. But God was still walking
with them, providing food in the form of manna from heaven every morning. They
were free. And they chose forty years in the desert rather than trying to enter
a land filled with milk and honey. This
was the choice of a free people.
Forty years later the people of
Israel found themselves eleven days away from Kadesh Barnea. They were going to
the place of the expression of their liberty one more time. And one more time
they were going to be given a choice. God desired that they would enter the land that
he had promised to them. But the people were free. One more time, at Kadesh
Barnea, they would face the same choice as their parents before them. They
could choose forty more years in the wilderness,
or they could enter the land. And no matter whether they chose to obey the
directives of God or disobey them, there would be consequences.
Disobedience might be the
foundation of liberty, but sometimes disobedience leaves us in chains. That was
the truth of what had happened at Kadesh Barnea forty years earlier. And it was
the possibility that Kadesh Barnea offered Israel in eleven days. But what was
certain was that Israel was going to have to go to Kadesh Barnea and face that
choice one more time.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 2
No comments:
Post a Comment