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Help! How come the innocents, not the perps, get hurt?

Help! How come the innocents, not the perps, get hurt?

Last updated on: January 19, 2017 at 3:15 pm by Christy Thomas

Help! How come the innocents, not the perps, get hurt? 2017-01-19T15:15:36-05:00 Christy Thomas

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But one leader, totally absorbed in him or herself and the need to hold onto perks of leadership and prestige, can wreak havoc on the larger civilization.

Dear Thoughtful Pastor: I am reading about Prometheus and the good stuff he did for humanity. Zeus does not punish Prometheus for his trickery but punishes humankind, the innocent bystanders instead.

I was wondering about similar cases in the Bible where the person who does something wrong does not get punished for it. Moses and the Pharaoh come to mind. There, a bunch of kids got skewered, but Moses and the Pharaoh were not at fault at all. There must be many more examples.

That leads me to ask, “What is the Bible trying to tell us?”

Chess game with only the two leaders left standing

Only two left, the rest have perished

I’m assuming you are referring to movement from slavery to freedom as recorded in the book of Exodus.

Most of us know the story, but a quick recap helps: After a few misadventures, Moses, born to Hebrew slaves but reared as a child of the Pharaoh, ruler of Egypt, takes on the leadership role. He will, under God’s guidance, free the Israelite slaves and get them out of Egypt.

Clearly, such a move would be financially disastrous to a nation built on slave labor, so the Pharaoh heartily opposes the idea.

Moses and the Pharaoh’s magicians get into a series of “Whatever you can do I can do better” encounters. In their disputes, unimaginable hardship falls upon both the Egyptians and upon the Israelites.

First, both Moses and the Pharaoh’s magicians turn the River Nile to blood, leaving the water undrinkable. Plus all the fish rot, leaving it totally stinkable.

Second, both order a plague of frogs that get into everybody’s bed and bread.

However, from here on out, the Egyptians were unable to match the plagues announced by Moses.

Third plague: every piece of dust in Egypt metamorphosed into gnats. Fourth, swarms of flies ruined the land. Now, from this fourth plague on, only the Egyptians were affected. The slave/Israelite section, called Goshen, was spared.

Fifth, every single horse, donkey, camel, goat and sheep owned by the Egyptians were hit by a deadly disease and died. Sixth, every Egyptian and any other animal they still owned were covered with festering boils.

Repeatedly, the narrative indicates that the Lord God kept hardening the heart of Pharaoh so he wouldn’t let the Israelites go. And the price of that stubbornness keeps going up for the hapless people of Egypt.

Seventh: the heaviest hail ever experienced in Egypt. Somehow, there is still viable livestock, and some Egyptians, who by then were beginning to believe Moses, managed to save what they had left by getting them into shelters. However, the hail killed all the plants and shattered every tree (except those of the Hebrew slaves)

Eighth: houses full of locusts (who ate what remained of the food). Ninth: three days of complete, absolute beyond inky-black darkness.

And then comes the ultimate piece-de-resistance: the death of the firstborn child of every single Egyptian family and the firstborn of any Hebrew family who does not explicitly obey instructions given by Moses to keep them safe.

The damage to the people boggles the mind

The damage on every level boggles the mind. But the Pharaoh and Moses emerge unscathed. And that, I believe, is the core of your question. What IS the Bible trying to say to us? Why all the collateral damage? Is this really necessary?

The writer of Exodus excelled in using hyperbole (i.e., exaggeration) for effect. All the livestock, for example, were killed in several different plagues. Not to mention that everyone in Egypt probably would have died immediately had the River Nile actually turned to blood and stayed that way for a week.

So, seeing the hyperbole as a literary means of making a point, what’s the main idea we readers need to grasp?

The Moses story has often been told as a child’s story, of good outperforming bad. But this dark list of vengeful actions does ask us to pause and think carefully here.

To some degree, this sounds like an early version of “My dad (God) can beat up your dad (god).”

Power speaks. We want God to be powerful. And we humans have a strong need for vengeance when we feel we have been mistreated.

One possible takeaway: The LORD GOD, the pre-existent great I AM, takes the side of the least powerful: a group of exhausted, bedraggled, trampled-upon slaves.

I don’t think I have acknowledged before the horrors visited upon the Egyptian people by their leader. But one leader, totally absorbed in him or herself and the need to hold onto perks of leadership and prestige, can wreak havoc on the larger civilization.

Look at human history. With boring repetitiveness, a leader’s insatiable need for power and riches end up wiping out their own fiefdoms. Actions don’t happen in a vacuum, especially when coming from decision-makers at the top of the power heap.

The final takeaway? Unaccountable leaders, especially those needing to validate their power and invincibility, will always bring destruction. The people who pay the most are the ones who are least powerful.

ask-the-thoughtful-pastor [Note: a version of this column is scheduled to run in the January 20, 2017, edition of the Denton Record-Chronicle. The Thoughtful Pastor, AKA Christy Thomas, welcomes all questions for the column. Although the questioner will not be identified, I do need a name and verifiable contact information in case the newspaper editor has need of it. You may use this link to email questions.]

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