But the Egyptians are mere mortals and not God; their horses are flesh and not spirit. When the LORD stretches out his hand, those who help will stumble, those who are helped will fall; all will perish together. Isaiah 31:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 4, 2013): Isaiah 31

I think we have an unhealthy view of our medical professionals. It is not that we do not need doctors, or that we should not be thankful for the doctors and nurses in our lives. But throughout the length of my life I have met people that somehow have almost a supernatural belief in medical practitioners. We expect them to have the solution to all our ills. In fact, I recently heard one person express the opinion that if the doctors can’t fix you, then you must not be sick. (I recently had the same reaction with a computer that has now been replaced. I took it to a national chain store to have them diagnose the problem and was told that I was running too many programs on my computer. I computer friend then informed me that in computer lingo what I was really being told was that my ‘computer wasn’t running properly, but no one could figure out why.’) With doctors, an expectation of omnipotence is dangerous. Other people have even carried the view that if I have a health problem and a doctor does something to fix me, but my symptoms continue, then there must be malpractice involved.

All of our attitudes toward the medical profession carry one thing in common – they expect the doctor to possess all the characteristics of God. We want our medical professionals to be omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing) and infallible (never failing.) But that is an unreasonable expectation of anyone who is flesh and blood. And it is not just medical professionals that carry this expectation. Many of the prominent people of our culture (including pastors, although the misconduct of prominent pastors and priests in recent years has severely tarnished the reputation of the clergy) are expected to be perfect in the execution of their duty. It is not that we hold them in high regard, because our actions and attitudes betray us. We don’t necessarily like these people – but we expect them to be perfect in their decision making.

Isaiah continues his lament with regard to the Egyptians and he accuses Israel of this same attitude with regard to their Southern neighbours. They do not necessarily like the Egyptians, but they do seem to believe that their former slave lords are infallible. It might even be that this belief is dependent on the collective memory of the nation of that day when Egypt, at least when compared with the Israelite slaves, seemed to be omnipotent. In the midst of all of the evidence building up against the belief, Israel still seemed to believe that Egypt was the dominant power in the region. And so any hope that Israel had of survival was believed to be dependent on their alliance with this southern power.

The warning from Isaiah was that only God was omnipotent. Ultimately, both the rise and fall of nations were dependent on him. Any belief in the omnipotence of any created being or collections of created being was doomed to failure. In reality, only the Uncreated One could be all knowing, all powerful, ever present and never failing. Any others were only pretenders, and a faith in them could only result in our destruction and leave us in sorrow.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 32