S4E10: Why we end up in the desert when God calls

After the Israelites escape the Egyptian army that pursued them, they find themselves in the desert. In one sense, this was expected since geographically and physically, Egypt was surrounded by the desert. Yet, the narratives in Exodus, just as in Genesis, are archetypal stories—that is, they describe a kind of templates or pattern of what happens whenever a people follow the call of God. Or to put it differently, that's how Reality works. Such people, at one point or another, will find themselves in some kind of desert. And they will hunger and thirst in that desolate place. But, what does that mean, and how can that be? We will begin exploring this idea that the Exodus account presents us in this episode of What do you mean, “God speaks”?

Update on the book: The publication is proceeding even quicker than anticipated, as I’m now reviewing the finalized edit until the end of October. If everything goes well, the book should be out around Christmas time! The title has changed, to differentiate from this podcast series. It is titled, “GOD”? What’s That? A Translation Guide on “God” for our God-less World. 

Stay tuned for future updates!

Chapters

• 0:00 Baptism of water and the desert that await us
• 2:58 How Genesis and Exodus are “archetypal” narratives
• 10:58 Outside of “Egypt,” only the desert awaits you
• 20:56 Egypt is “civilization” itself and what that means
• 31:12 What the “desert” outside “civilization” means
• 37:59 What God unfolds in the desert

Transcript

It’s a profound ceremony. You are taken to a body of water: a pool, or perhaps a lake or a river. You wade into the water with your guide, who then asks if you are sure, if you are ready. You say yes; you believe in this now. Your guide somberly responds, so be it, and then plunges you into the water. As the water covers you, you let go of everything you want to part with, everything you want to move beyond. And as you are lifted out of the water, they are left behind, washed away. This is the Christian rite of Baptism—by immersion—in which you ceremonially confess your faith in Christ, and the salvation he has brought you. With it, you’re taking your first step toward a new life. A new world.

But, nothing’s ever that simple. Because once you leave the waters, you will still be, well, you. With your old problems. Your old personality flaws are still there. So are your old flashpoints with your neighbors and family. Your bills are still due. So are your assignments. But, you also won’t be the old you; you won’t respond to these problems in the same old way—or so you’ve decided. No running away from it with alcohol or other coping substances. You’ll not respond with lies, or slurs, or excuses. In a way, your new life is a lot harder than your old. After all, you can’t resort to your old solutions. And you shouldn’t because they’ve been failing you and making your life worse—or so you say. But without them, what is there? At least they were something. 

You’ve been given a new start. An empty slate. But an empty slate is, well, empty. In a way, it’s like you are now in a desert.

That’s where Israel found itself after they passed through the Sea that God parted for them. They had escaped their pursuers; they were free. Their old life as slaves to an Empire had been washed away by their passage through the waters. But, where that placed them was a desert. So, let’s explore the meaning of that story in this episode of,  

[ music / ] … "What do you mean, God speaks?" where we explore important ideas, insights, and stories in Christianity, for the skeptics who want to understand religion, Christians who have questions about their own beliefs, and everyone in between. I am Paul Seungoh Chung, and this is our tenth episode of the fourth season, “Why we always return to the desert, when God calls.”  

[ / music ]

The stories that we return to, and tell over and over, tend to be about us. It may on the surface be about adventures and dramas of extraordinary people, in fantastic places and events. Say, the magical world of Harry Potter, or more recently, K-Pop Demon Hunters. But, if we find ourselves telling these stories again and again, it’s because they resonate with us; they connect us to something deeper and more permanent in our lives. In that way, they are about us. And the stories that resonate with an entire people or culture—or maybe even all of humanity—are connecting us with something even more universal; such stories are “mythical” in the “academic” sense of the word.

That’s what scholars mean when they call the narratives in Genesis “mythical”—which is what we’ve explored in Season Two. They’re not saying that these accounts are false, though they are saying that these are not some “scientific” accounts of specific past events. Rather, they are pointing to the wide-reaching “universality” of the themes and ideas of these narratives; their “scope,” so to speak, is grander than that of science— more primordial. So, for example, the Genesis Creation account can be true, regardless of the specific cosmology we adopt—which can be that of the Stone Age, or that of our modern scientific age, or that of the Hebrews living in ancient Levant, or that of the E.T.s zipping along in their flying saucers. It’s conveying something true in all of those; it’s less about how our cosmos physically came about, but about what every possible kind of cosmos is really composed of and that whatever it is, and however it came about, “scientifically speaking,” it is something that’s being spoken by God. So again, it’s the idea that all of reality is God speaking. And likewise, the Genesis account of the Creation of humanity is describing more than just the biological species of “Homo Sapiens”; it’s describing what composes every sentient being capable of connecting with God in a profound way—any biological, or perhaps even non-biological Life. 

Now, these two examples may actually be too universal for most of us to grasp in a tangible way. But, the next set of narratives in Genesis are more immediate to how we live even now. The Fall of humanity describes our estrangement with God—which is about how every one of us falls into fear and apprehension toward what reality can unfold in our lives—and God is Reality. Then, Cain’s murder of Abel deftly describes our root motivation for hatred and murder, which grows out of this; Noah’s Flood then is about how our human world will unravel itself when this hatred and violence reaches a critical mass; the Tower of Babel is about the futility of setting up a single, homogenous civilization to rule over all peoples, for all times. So, to put it succinctly, these stories are about how reality unfolds for all human beings. And it’s about how, too often, we are driven by fear to live with lies, hostility, and violence, until reality then unfolds what we fear—the unravelling of our world. This, by no means, is saying that there’re no basis in history for any of these stories. Stories that our modern society consider mythical may very well be rooted in some ancient memories of things that physically happened; there’s even a scientific field that investigates this possibility, called “Geomythology.”[1] But, if there are such historical basis, the stories have been transformed over many retellings so that what they convey have become resonant for every age and place. 

It is, however, the stories that follow these primordial accounts in Genesis that interest us more for this episode. They are what one biblical scholar called, “mythicized history.” They are not about all of reality, or all of humanity. It’s about a single line of people, starting from a single individual and his family. Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and his sons, whose children become the people of Israel. But their stories are also “mythical” in that they’re a kind of archetypes of a very particular kind of life—a particular way of living, and thus relating to Reality. For the name, “Israel,” means the one who wrestles with God. The ones who personally encounter God, speak with God, journey with God, and the struggles in that journey. And their story is a “template” of the stories of every individual who’ll encounter God—then and now. That’s the life-stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, in the book of Genesis: they’re archetypes and templates. 

Yet, in the same way, so are the accounts of Israel’s Exodus and the three books that follow it: Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But, story of Exodus expands the stories of individuals and their family to the scale of an entire people. So, it’s asking, what happens if an entire people, a whole society, a civilization, encounters and speaks and journeys with God, just as individuals like Abraham did? That is, what does reality unfold if an entire society relates to Reality in a personal way and follow its voice—the voice of God speaking to them? How do they respond and wrestle with what unfolds, collectively, and why? And that story is not only theirs, but the story of every society that relates to Reality in the same way, by journeying and wrestling with God. 

Now, their story still begins with a single individual, who hears God calling and speaking to them—which in Exodus was Moses. Such a person is retracing the life of Abraham and his heirs, which is why God first calls to Moses, saying, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Yet, as Moses followed what God was speaking to him, the people of Israel was freed from their enslavement in Egypt. And then, they in turn followed him into the very same place where God had first called him and spoke to him. That is, an entire people joins that single individual in his journey of speaking and wrestling with God. That’s what happens after Israel passes through the waters of the parted sea.

Yet, when they did so, the place where they found themselves was a desert. And because this is a “universal” story, an archetype and template, this means the following. Every one of us, every people and every society and every civilization, when we hear and follow what God is—what Reality is—speaking to us, we will find ourselves, at some point, in some kind of desert. 

But what does that mean? 

[Pendulum ] 

Well, firstly, there’s a very simple, physical and geographical reason why Israel found itself in the desert. Because lands immediately outside of Egypt and its influence was a desert. To the west of Egypt is the great Sahara desert. To the east is the Arabian desert, which extends to today’s Sinai Peninsula. There was only a narrow strip of land out of it that was habitable—Canaan and the Levant—but its borders were militarized and fortified, and were under Egypt’s influence anyway. But the important question that we often forget to ask is why? Why were the lands outside a desert? Because there actually is a reason for that. And it’s because Egypt remains the most ancient and enduring civilization our world has known so far. So, at its height, its rule reached every inhabitable land around it, until it either hit the desert, or other powerful civilizations, like the Hittite Empire in Anatolia, or the city-states of Mesopotamia like Babylon, or to a lesser extent, the fortified militarized cities of Canaan. Only the desert remained of the lands that Egypt had not claimed and occupied. 

Leaving Egypt thus meant leaving the reaches of civilization. Or to put it differently, it meant going outside the realm of human beings. And in the Bible, the desert is very similar, thematically, to the Sea, which Israel had just passed through to escape Egypt. [2] That may be odd thing to say since physically they’re the exact opposite; one has little water, and the other is well, full of it. But, how both realms confront human beings is remarkably similar; they are both “outside” the world we humans live; and they are both “empty” and “desolate.” Of course, neither the Sea nor the desert is actually empty. But they are empty of the things we humans need to sustain our daily lives. And though there are people who are adept at traversing the sea or the desert, they are not fully “at home” there. Seafaring peoples still have homes on land, and their ships are essentially miniatured land, floating on water. And those who dwell in the desert are nomads. And both the sea and the desert lack water—yes, water. That is, drinkable water. Water that’s life-sustaining for us humans. And that’s the problem that immediately confronts the people of Israel after they escape Egypt; there’s no water to drink. 

Well ok, it took some time before they hit that point. At first, they were elated and in awe at what God had just unfolded. For the Sea, the realm of untamable possibilities—of chaos—had swung open for them like a gate; and then after they passed through that “gate” of parted waters, those same waters had surged back into place and closed shut upon the Egyptian army that had pursued them. So, they were now finally free from slavery, just as God promised. And Myriam, the sister of Moses, led them to sing these words: “I will sing to Yahweh, for He is highly exalted; Both horse and driver He has hurled into the Sea.” This song, called the “song of the Sea,” is written in a very archaic form of Hebrew, different from the rest of the book of Exodus. Now, you may remember that Exodus, like the book of Genesis—specifically, their final versions that we’re reading today—were likely written down around five hundred years before the time of Jesus, according to biblical scholars. So, this seemingly out of place archaic-Hebrew has led many of these same scholars to believe that the song is a direct preservation of something that was passed down from many centuries before that final edition. Perhaps from the time of that very event itself. Others believe that this is a literary device; adding in archaic writing for stylistic reasons. Though that raises the obvious question of why here, and not anywhere else? Cauz there’re other points in the book where this archaic style would’ve fit even more—like when God speaks the “Ten Commandments.”

Anyway, it is then that the Israelites realize something important. They were free, yes. But, they were also in a desert. I mean they knew that, but they weren’t prepared for what that actually implied. As they journeyed away from the Sea and into the desert, they found no water. This continued for three days until they finally found some, but that water was bitter and unfit to drink—I suppose it was contaminated by something. Their anxiety then turned to open grumbling and hostility toward Moses who had brought them to this place. But as Moses desperately prayed to God, God showed him a piece of wood, which neutralized whatever that was in the water and made it drinkable.

They traveled further and found an oasis—with twelve springs and seventy palm trees, Exodus notes that number, for some reason. This was a short respite, however, as they then left that oasis to journey deeper into the desert. And again, there were no water, and obviously no food either. Without food nor water, their patience finally ran out, and they cried out angrily to Moses and his brother, Aaron. “If we only died in Egypt; if only Yahweh ended our lives there. At least there, we had plenty of food to eat—even pots of meat! Here there’s nothing. You’ve brought all of us here just to die!” And they also argued against them, saying, “And where’s water? We’re dying of thirst!”

Then, Exodus reports that they uttered this following question. “Is Yahweh among us or not?” Has God really been speaking to them? Journeying with them? Is what Moses heard and followed and then led them here into the desert—was any of that true? Or were they all deluded, out of touch with Reality—with God? Or did God—or whatever that spoke to them—lie to them? 

Is Yahweh, That Which Is, and unfolds everything that happens, really “with us”? 

Because if so, why are we in this desert, and everything seems so much worse than before? Surely, we have every reason to stop following this God! And it is this question, this quarrelling and disbelief, which becomes a template story for the most prominent pitfall that the people that journey with God falls into. This is referenced again and again in the Bible—a hallmark of such an archetypal idea. It is called quarrelling at Masah and Meribah where they hardened their hearts against God—the wording here is the same as how Pharaoh hardened his heart regarding the plagues. And the Bible references what they did there in Numbers and Deuteronomy, and then in the Psalms, and again in the New Testament, when the letter to the Hebrews quotes one of those psalms.[3]  

That psalm, the 95th, sings: O that today you would listen to God’s voice! Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as on that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me; they put me on trial, though they had seen what I did.[4]  

That is the temptation of the desert. And it is in fact a temptation passed down from the Fall of humanity way back in Genesis. We previously explored the idea that the first human beings fell when they learned to be suspicious of God—to react with fear and hostility toward what reality unfolds and the Voice, which speaks to us through that. We become afraid that this Voice is lying to us, or that it never actually spoke to us; we fear that it is hostile to us—or at least, it does not care for us at all. And so, we put God on trial—we put to the test the Voice that has been speaking to us. And we quarrel against the ones who speak with that voice, blaming them for our current troubles, and harden our hearts against what they say. After all, we say, they made us follow this Voice.

But in all this, we also forget the things that reality unfolded around us so far, which had led us follow this Voice of God in the first place. Things we called “miracles” back then, things, which convinced us that it really is God speaking to us, that God was rescuing us out of a world descending toward destruction. So, Israel forgot the plagues that unravelled their previous world—Egypt—and the waters of the Sea that parted for them. Or rather, they remembered, but dismissed them because of the difficulties that they now faced. And they said, the world that had enslaved us was better than this. 

And as the archetype or template story, the Exodus account is saying that this is what happens when we follow God’s Voice. We’ll find ourselves in the desert. And we cannot avoid this desert. But why? I mean for the Israelites, it was because, geographically, outside of Egypt was a desert. But what does that mean for the rest of us?

[Pendulum] 

To say that only desert exist outside of Egypt, was to say that Egypt encompassed all human civilization. Outside it was nothing: nothing in terms of what humanity have built for itself. Yes, there were obviously other civilizations too elsewhere, but this is about how it would’ve been like to the Israelites in the Exodus account. But this account also reveals that Egypt, like all things we humans have built for ourselves since our Fall in Genesis, was heading slowly yet inexorably to judgment and destruction. Its destiny was that of the world that had unravelled in Noah’s Flood. There was a fundamental flaw in its society, in how it built itself, in how it was relating to Reality—to God that spoke to it. And the plagues God unfolded were something that Egypt itself would’ve recognized as the signs of this fatal flaw; signs that it had betrayed the Ma’at, their own principle of truth and justice, which they believed kept their world from unravelling.  

Because even our very best can hide underneath it our very worst. That was what we considered at the close of the first half of this Season. In the last few hundred years, humanity has seen an unprecedented progress in our knowledge, power, and quality of life. Right now is arguably the best time to live in all of human history—at least for those of us in wealthy, modernized nations. But that progress has also brought us to the brink of global destruction—from world-ending wars and environmental catastrophes. And we’re not even counting the past horrors during colonisations and wars, mass-murder, genocides, and enslavement of millions of people. 

And this is not at all to dismiss how far we’ve come; the horror is that even with such tremendous progress, these things have happened and continue to happen. And new wrongs and failures are being made even now from the very progress that has enriched our lives, and their consequences are becoming more and more dire and far-reaching. What might our unrestrained use of A.I.s bring about? What about our new entrenched and increasingly hostile ideological divisions fueled by our use of SNS? 

And likewise, Egypt in the Bible was the pinnacle of human civilization. And indeed, its accomplishments were borne from its truthful engagement with Reality—with God. So, in Genesis, it is Egypt that God speaks to, specifically through Joseph and the Pharaoh of his time. And that enables them to use their capabilities and ingenuity, to save not only their nation from a great famine, but even the neighboring peoples around them. Yet, as Egypt prospered and grew, it strengthened itself through increasing exploitation of a people it came to disdain—foreign, uncultured, vagabond Hebrews, the people of Israel. Egypt’s disdain and tyranny toward them, in turn, shut the ears of its Pharaoh to what God then spoke to Egypt regarding an impending judgment—an echo of the Great Flood of Genesis, an indiscriminate, total destruction. The first nine plagues were but warning-signs, which he thoroughly ignored. Then, that destruction truly began with the death of Egypt’s future: their firstborn. That’s the idea of the plagues of Egypt. 

And again, as the template story, this describes a pattern of human history. Even the best of our civilization has a rot that’s eating away at it. Perhaps it’s the way we view and treat each other; perhaps, it’s an injustice we’ve been ignoring; perhaps, it’s the way our economy runs, or the way we use or misuse natural resources. And there are warning-signs that Reality itself unfolds around us, which is precisely what it means for God to speak to us—that is, when we do not heed God personally speaking to us, in the form of the Voice that speaks most truthfully about what we’ve been doing. And when we ignore those warning-signs for too long, our world will unravel. 

For example, this is the narrative that current climate scientists and environmentalists are presenting us with today. They point to warning signs: more frequent droughts and heatwaves, rapidly melting glaciers and rising sea-levels, increasing intensity of tropical storms. And like river turning to blood, entire swathes of sea seems to die, as corals bleach, marine life disappear, and plastic wastes cover the waters. And they point to how we, as a society, have hardened our hearts. Because we have, at times, tried to work out a solution, but then we balked when we realized the actual cost of what we needed to do. Just like the Pharaoh in Exodus. And when youth activists accuse the world of destroying their future by ignoring climate change, they’re echoing the idea of the final plague that struck and destroyed all of Egypt’s firstborn, human and animal.

And this is not some random example. This is a school of thought in contemporary Christian theology, called Eco-theology.[5] Eco-theology explores the biblical idea that humanity’s relationship with God echoes their relation to Nature. Environmental crises we cause are not just material, but spiritual wrongs; they reflect our disdain toward the Creator—to God that is speaking our reality and all of Nature. Or conversely, in the case of the plagues of Egypt, disaster from the natural world can reflect our broken relationship with God. And our current climate and environmental crisis is one prime example it presents to explain the meaning of Exodus narrative for our time.

Of course, we can raise an obvious objection here. The plagues in Exodus were not naturally caused by Egypt’s refusal to free their Hebrew slaves. Whereas something like current climate crisis is supposed to be the natural consequences of our usage of fossil fuel. But then we’d forgetting the Christian idea that all of reality is God speaking, including every law of nature, and every natural happening that they govern. And that means God can also personally speak to us through naturally occurring things. Now, we no longer view contaminated waters or violent hailstorms as some warning-signs against mistreating and enslaving foreign migrants. But, the ancient Egyptians did. And that’s the point—Reality unfolds something that communicates to us, in a way that we can understand, where we are. That’s the idea of the Bible. So, if we can scientifically trace today the natural chain of causes from what we’ve done to the warning-signs in Nature, in terms of dying oceans, or melting glaciers, and such, this by no means make them anything other than what God is speaking to us. If anything, we have even less of an excuse not to listen; after all, God would say, you now know even better. 

But, having said all that, I also want to emphasize that the environment issue is just one example of what the Exodus narrative can point for us today This is important. We need to be careful to not to lock our comparison of the Exodus plagues to any one hot-button issue we’re facing now. Because this biblical account is again an archetypal template; it applies not just to what’s happening currently with our Environment, but it also to things like, say, how ideologies like Communism came to hold sway over many nations, even though there were warning-signs of tyranny and mass-murder: the purging of dissidents, building of political prison camps, and such. And so, an entire generation was lost in those nations. It may apply today to how we’re ignoring the warning-signs of the effects of SNS have on our politics and civil discourse. And on and on. God speaks—Reality unfolds—warnings. That there’s a rot even in the greatest of our accomplishments. And we tend to ignore them because it’s too costly to deal with it; because our wealth, power, ways of life, depend on it. So we cling to it, refusing to abandon it, even as it sinks us into the deep—the proverbial Noah’s Flood. That’s what Exodus tells us. 

And in that light, when the waters of the parted Sea closed shut upon the Egyptian army that was chasing their freed Hebrew slaves, and drowned them all, it also was a kind of verdict, spoken by God, through nature. For if these waters for the Ancient meant untameable possibilities that God sets upon our world, then what happened conveyed the following: There’s a path forward through that flux of possibilities for those who hear God speak and heed His warnings—the people of Israel who followed Moses. But this realm of possibilities is closed shut for those who do not, and refuse to—the Pharaoh and his army. For them, there is no path; only their inevitable destruction. 

[Pendulum]  

And it is with this context that we can understand what the desert outside Egypt means as an archetypal story. What Israel had escaped in their Exodus from Egypt was more than just their slavery; it was a way of life, a world humanity has built for itself, which nevertheless stood upon a fatal flaw in its relation to Reality—and its symptom was its inability to hear God speaking and its hostility to what God is speaking. And like Noah boarding his Ark, Israel was leaving that world.

Likewise, the Christian New Testament speaks repeatedly of how the world itself—that is, this world we humans build—is corrupted and deceitful, and under God’s judgment; and that it is from such a world, such a people and generation, that the power of Christ saves each and every human being. This is summed up in the plea that apostle Peter makes at the end of his sermon at the first Pentecost, as reported in the book of Acts: “Repent and be baptized, in the name of Christ.” And “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” [6] 

However, the idea here isn’t just about an escape. Israel, as the people of God, are called to be something different, something more than their old world. Likewise, in the Christian Gospels, Jesus teaches his disciples that they are the “salt and light of the world.” Second letter of Peter writes that Christians are to not only “escape from the corruption that is in the world,” but “participate in divine nature”—that is God’s way of life. [7] And the overarching narrative arc from Genesis to Exodus even suggests that this connection between God and His people is what keeps the Flood of God’s judgment from returning; it is why God promised Noah that his world will not unravel again into a Flood even though humanity is always on the verge of bringing it about. Which also explains why in the Exodus account, preventing Israel from following this call of God is what unleashes the plagues upon Egypt in the first place.

But, now that they have left that world, what does it actually mean to be that “something different and more”? Because that’s not an easy question to answer, let alone live out. At the intro of this episode, we briefly sketched what it’d be like at an individual level. Because those who start a new life are faced with the daunting challenge of living in a completely new way. Yet, all they’ve known so far were their old way of life—their old inclinations and habits, their old obsessions and addictions. What are they to replace those with? And even if they know, how long can they keep that up? Because sooner or later, there’ll come a time when they’ll thirst and hunger for the relief these old things gave them, no matter the terrible toll they’d extract in return. 

And so, in the desert, the Israelites thirsted and hungered for what they had in Egypt, to the point that they began to feel that their slavery there was more preferable. 

However, this challenge becomes exponentially more difficult at the scale of an entire people or a society. For individuals who reject their old way of life, there may still be a new way of life they can readily join, already available in the community around them. Alcoholics have support of alcoholic anonymous; those who formed toxic relationships may still be shown genuine family ties and friendship elsewhere—or others who can show them the way. In Christianity, there is the Church, the community of believers who seek to follow Jesus Christ as Lord; and together, they follow his character, virtues, and teachings, as the light to guide the new life of those who join. Ideally speaking, that is.

But, what of the time before all these answers become available? Before there is a community or a society, which presents that new way of life for us? What if we are in that between-time, when we’ve just realized that everything in our human world we’ve depended on so far stand upon some fatal flaw? And we have yet to know what we must do, after we escape and move past all of that? When we realize everything we’ve built out of our lives must be corrected or left behind? A terrifying emptiness would confront them—empty and desolate of human Life, like the Sea. Like the desert. 

And it is here that our previous example from the environmentalists will present us with a vivid and useful illustration. Let’s take the most catastrophic scenario they propose. Say that our use of fossil fuel, and perhaps even our entire industrial, and economic system, in which we live is simply unsustainable. And that we are in course for a kind of environmental catastrophe that would end our human world. So, we must confront everything—our old practices, our old systems, our old ways of life; everything must be changed or left behind. But then what? After all, our lives depend on these things: our energy-hungry economy and way of life, the plastics that go into pretty much everything we make. How do we live without all of that? A single individual or a family may be able to live a more environmentally sustainable life—but they could do that because there’s an existing system that’s not collapsing around them from lack of power or a functioning economy. A change of that magnitude would be…. Well, it would be as if an entire nation, a people, were stranded in a desert without food of water. 

When Reality unfolds warning-signs—when God speaks that the world we’ve built is under judgment—and we seek to change, as individuals and as a people, we will find ourselves in that desert. This, I think, is something that many so-called reformers and revolutionaries of our day often forget or downplay. The cost of needed change. The pains and fears of being stranded in that desert.  

[Short Pendulum] 

However, this is only the half of what the Exodus account conveys to us. For just as Reality unfolds warnings, Reality holds also a limitless array of possibilities—and among it a path forward through the emptiness. That’s how Life is. Even when it seems we need to start over, and when that feels like being stranded in the desert, there’s a way forward for those who seek it. There are people today who champion a kind of “we can do anything” optimism; if a climate crisis faces us, they’d say we can come up with a more sustainable ways of life, or perhaps technological innovations may lead to some breakthrough in renewable energy, and so on. Yet, what remains unnoticed in such optimism is an assumption, so foundational and pervasive that we often miss it, that Reality is such that if we engage with it truthfully, search with perseverance and an open mind, we will find a way. That’s how Reality is. 

Yet, here we must again remember, God is Reality. And so, not only do we engage Reality, Reality—God—engages us. And the Christian Bible testifies that God speaks and calls with ceaseless kindness and faithfulness to those who hear and speak with him. And when we follow God’s call, away from a world that’s perishing and into a life that will save it, God will also open a way forward. 

Then, the life-stories recounted in the Bible testify to something more. When God thus speaks with us, God is also journeying with us, hearing our cries, and answering our prayers. And such answers are not limited to things we can do or imagine. For Reality holds possibilities we cannot fathom, and can unfold things we never counted on; that is what it means for God that speaks us to be Reality—and declare his name to be Yahweh, the “I am that I am,” that unfold all things. 

So, when the Sea confronted the people of Israel and they cried out to God, they saw something no one had ever seen before: a great wind, blowing upon the waters, and parting them open like a gate for them to pass through. And when the desert confronted them, and they were overcome by hunger and thirst, and cried out, God answered. And they would again see things they could not have imagined before.

[ Music ] 

So when Moses prayed, as the people of Israel clamored outside against him, saying, “Is Yahweh, among us or not?” God spoke: “I have heard them. So at twilight, you will eat meat, and in the morning, bread. Then, you will know that I am Yahweh, your God.”

And Reality unfolded what was spoken. 

That evening, a vast flock of quails crashed into their camp. Dumbstruck, they dazedly caught the birds and ate their fill. Then, in the morning, a layer of dew settled around the camp, leaving thin flakes of frost-like substance on the ground. “What is that?” They said to each other. “That’s the bread God is giving you,” Moses answered. “Gather it, as much as you need today, and cook it.” 

And they called the substance, “Manna,” which meant, “What is it?” For they never saw anything like it before. And each and every morning while they were in that desert, this Manna fell upon their camp for them to eat. 

Then as they cried out for water, God led Moses toward a rock. “Strike the rock,” God spoke. And when Moses did so, a spring of water gushed out from where no one thought water would ever come—a rock in the middle of the desert. 

For though the people who hear God speak have left everything humanity have built for itself, that everything first came from their engagement with God. And that very God, speaking forth all of reality—even the desert—was now journeying with them. And the seemingly empty and lifeless desert to which they were called would become the birthplace of something new that would go on to fill the whole world.

So please join me next episode as well, as we continue this arduous and slow journey into the desert where God awaits Israel, and all those who follow in their footsteps. 

Thank you for listening, and please follow, subscribe, and share this series with others, and rate it on your Apple podcast and other platforms. You can also support this series at buymeacoffee.com—which you can go to by clicking on the line, “Support the show” in the episode description.

[1] For example, there’s an entire discipline called “Geomythology,” which studies oral and written traditions of mythical narratives, which may be describing actual geological events or truths, such as earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, land formation, fossils, and natural features of the landscape. 

[2] And so, the prophetic book of Jeremiah, uses the wording that describes the primordial Sea in Genesis—empty and void—and then connects that with how the land will become a desert, which is the imagery of the coming judgment of God.

Jeremiah 4:23–26: 

I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty;

 and at the heavens, and their light was gone.
 I looked at the mountains, and they were quaking;
  all the hills were swaying.
 I looked, and there were no people;
  every bird in the sky had flown away.
 I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert;
  all its towns lay in ruins
  before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

 [3] Numbers 20:1–13, Deuteronomy 6:16 and 9:22, Psalm 81:7 and 95:8–9. Hebrews 3:7–11.­ 

[4] The original wording is “tested” or “put me to the proof,” which carries legal connotation. I rendered it with the following words to emphasize what’s being said. 

[5] For the Eco-theological readings of the Bible, including that of the Exodus account of the plagues, see for example: Brueggemann, Walter. The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith. Fortress Press, 2002. Also see Habel, Norman C. The Land Is Crying: A Biblical Theology of the Environmental Crisis. Fortress Press, 2013; Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing. HarperOne, 1994

[6] Acts 2:28–40: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.”

[7] Matthew 5:13–16; Philippians 2:15; See also Galatians 1:4; Colossians 1:13–14; 2 Peter 1:3–4.