Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 2 verses 11 through 15:
11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. 12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” 14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.
Moses' anger almost undid him in the beginning. Morally outraged at the injustice he saw his Hebrew people suffering at the hands of the Egyptians, Moses acted rashly and with vengeance in killing one of the Egyptians.
First he tried to hide the body in the sand, the next day he discovered that he had been found out. It would be Moses himself who would have to hide now in the desert sands -- for forty years.
The fight against injustice, oppression and brutality is a good fight; but it must be fought in a good way. It cannot be fueled by hatred or vindictiveness or a desire for revenge. As the Quakers say, if in fighting a beast we become a beast then Beastliness has won.
Yet another quote from Andre Trocme, pastor of the church at the center of the resistance movement that hid 3,000 Jews in French mountain villages during WWII. The quote is from a sermon delivered the day after France surrendered to Germany:
ReplyDelete"The duty of the Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the spirit. We shall resist when our adversaries will demand of us obedience contrary to the orders of the Gospel. We shall do so without fear, but also without pride and without hatred."