The Law of Conservation of (Spiritual) Energy
“At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt…”, “…Pharoah summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord as you have requested.’” Exodus 12:29 & 31
Ten plagues it took for Pharaoh to change his mind: blood, frogs, gnats, flies, dead livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the firstborn.
A few days ago I wrote that the reason Moses asked for the people of Israel to be let go was to go in the desert to worship (“Worship in the Desert“). Repeatedly God told Moses to make that request of Pharaoh. Repeatedly God let Moses in on the fact that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart and that the request would be denied. But, Moses dutifully confronted Pharaoh knowing full well that it was a fool’s errand.
For those of you that follow my blog you know that I have a category of posts about scripture passages that are confusing to me or, frankly, I just “don’t get.” It doesn’t mean that I don’t accept them as the inerrant word of God, but I just don’t understand why God put them there…yet.
This is one of them. I have a hard time figuring out why God would purposely harden someone’s heart. I can consider it in my head, but my heart doesn’t quite wrap all the way around it. I understand, intellectually, that God used all of the plagues and the deliverance of the Hebrews from them for His glory, but my heart feels there must have been a better way. Obviously, there wasn’t a better way because if there was God would have done it that way. But, something nags at me that there must be more. I want just a glimpse of God’s thinking. I echo the words of Einstein, “I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are mere details.”
And then, there it is. Einstein…physics…a piece of the puzzle. Particularly, the law of conservation of energy. It states that energy may neither be created nor destroyed. It simply becomes a different form of energy: kinetic may become potential or heat become light, but energy cannot be created from nothing or annihilated to nothing.
God wanted the Hebrews to be free. While some biblical scholars don’t believe they were slaves in the traditional sense of being owned by individual slave owners, the Hebrew words used to describe them and their forced labor certainly implies a sub-human status in Egyptian society. Based on the Egyptians’ treatment of the Hebrews it’s not difficult to imagine them being regarded as possessions or tools as oppossed to living, breathing beings.
In short, the Egyptians regarded God’s chosen people equally useful either alive as forced-laborers or dead as fertilizer for their crops. Let’s go with the latter, for now.
If we regard the captive Hebrews as lifeless possessions exploited at the whim of the Egyptians, then freedom for them to worship in the desert meant “life” to them. In fact, in Exodus 6:6 God says, “…I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm…” Redeemed here is “ga^al” which could be translated as ”to redeem individuals from death.”
Are you still with me? Life is free…life is passionate…life is energy. Life without freedom…life without passion…life without energy is, at the risk of being obvious, dead. According to the law of conservation of energy if the Hebrews were to be set free from captivity, to come “alive”, then someone had to die. In this case, it was the firstborn of the Egyptians; in particular the firstborn of the King or Pharaoh that had to die.
Now, I know that this doesn’t answer my initial question of why the first nine plagues were necessary, but it does help with why the last one was. In order for someone to be free to live (spiritually), someone must die (spiritually).
If we jump into Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and speed from the Old Testament to the New Testament we find the same law of physics applies. Only now it’s God’s Son, the Firstborn of The King, that died so that others could be free to live. And, Jesus’ passionate love for us was so full of ”infinite energy” that His death was more than enough in exchange for the life of every man, woman and child in the world! But, He had to die so that we could live. And, we get to die to ourselves so that He can live through us. Jesus didn’t come to make people better, He came to bring dead people to life (please see earlier ”Worship in the Desert“ regarding “have to” and “get to”) .
And, “Jesus-life” is freedom. Before He brings us to life we’re just dead, possessions being exploited by some slavemaster: lust, drugs, porn, money, power, status, control…whatever it is it keeps us dead, it keeps us captive so that we can’t “go to the desert to worship the Lord.” Someone had to die so that I could live. Jesus was that someone. He died so that I could be free to worship.
That’s “why worship.” Worship isn’t to set me free; it’s because I am free. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Free to worship!