I've been reading a lot of existential literature lately: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. One popular and concise definition of existentialist thought is the statement "existence precedes essence." In other words, we first fundamentally exist and from there determine our own sense of meaning, value, and truth: essence. Under this paradigm, there is no essence or reason that precedes the fact that we exist; existence is the solitary starting point. Of course, in a lot of existentialist literature, the point is not to look at things from a strictly existentialist perspective, but to waver back and forth between the apparent meaninglessness of a lack of pre-existing essence and the urge to find an underlying reason for the nature of things. Likewise, my thoughts here aren't about classical existentialism but more broadly about figuring out, in a given place and time, "Why am I here? What, if anything, am I supposed to be doing here?" In both of the aforementioned plays, the main characters spend a lot of frustrated dialogue conversing in circles, noting where they are and what they seem to be doing, and trying to figure out why they are there, whether it be for some pre-determined destiny or whether life is something you're supposed to make into your own magnum opus. It is true that the idea of "existence precedes essence" is pretty antithetical to our lives having been foreknown and designed by God before time began, but there are times when you ask, "What am I doing here? What, if anything, am I supposed to be doing here?"
What we know from Exodus 2 is that Moses, raised as Pharoah's daughter's son, killed an Egyptian in defense of a Hebrew, escaped the wrath of Pharoah, and fled Egypt in exile to the land of Midian for forty years before returning to lead the Hebrews from captivity. When you think about Moses in the wilderness for forty years, the question of what he was doing there almost proffers itself as an existentialist quandary:
Was he there because God had planned to cultivate him into a guide and leader for the Exodus of the Hebrew people by training him as a shepherd for four decades?
Was he there because he wasn't where he was supposed to be? Was he hiding from the role of emancipator that God had chosen for him, to the point that God had to appear as a burning bush to wake him out of his lethargy or latency?
Was he there simply as a logical consequence of his actions: killing an Egyptian and fleeing the country? After all, it's only in verse 24 that God "remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob." Was Moses simply in the right place at the right time for God to give him the part?
Was he there because God didn't really have a specific plan for him, other than to stay alive for forty years until the time was right to march back to challenge Pharoah?
See, we know that Moses was there in the wilderness for forty years, and the big question is why? The question is important to me because it seems to me that I've been living the last year in a sort of recurrent spiritual wilderness. I haven't been well connected to Christian community or teaching or discipleship; for the last year, it's mostly felt like God and me out there alone, where it can either be amazingly intimate or terrifyingly lonely. Is it for a reason? Is it a preparatory stage for greater things? Is it somehow punitive or correctional? Is it just because that's the way life is sometimes, coming and going in phases and seasons?
There's biblical precedent for all of the above rationalizations, so maybe the answer is yes. And it is true that trying to parallel my experience with Moses's is violating one of my cardinal rules of biblical teaching: you study the biblical text, you determine what truth is there about God, and then you apply that truth to your life, without skipping the middle step. But a lot of biblical teaching, most notably Jesus's teaching, is parabolic in nature. We are supposed to identify with the characters in the stories that we accept as stories of truth.
Let me know when you figure out why Moses was out there in the wilderness.
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3 comments:
I usually find Ellen White's counsel on this helpful, and indeed it is: http://www.whiteestate.org/books/pp/pp22.html (read pp. 247-251).
I think your experiences are somewhat typical of us post-grad Owls. Although, each of us have our own manifestations of this wilderness feeling. I actually tend to liken mine to another forty years: those wandering between Egypt and Canaan. It illustrates the constant feeling I have of desiring Egypt through a delusion that bondage was the better life because I'm not able to grasp the assurance and goodness of the Promised Land.
So maybe this time is yet the next trial in the Refiner's Fire; a forming and reforming of character that we may be prepared for better things. Or maybe we've got it all wrong, and it's something entirely different. Maybe, instead, we're asking the wrong question: we shouldn't be wondering where we are and what God's doing with us (if anything), but instead focusing solely and completely on building a relationship with Him and advancing His kingdom. Easier said than done.
Moses was stuck in the wilderness for 40 years because he was still a slave, and only free men could enter the promised land. A new generation had to be born in the wilderness to replace the old generation of slaves. Source: An old rabbi friend of mine...
Robert...I think Matt is talking about Moses' first 40 year period in the wilderness, that is, Midian, and not during the wanderings before entering the promised land after the Exodus. No?
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