4.
Day
Care
Parenting
can be a lot of learning on the fly for us humans. We try something, it works
one time but then the kid gets bored with it and it never works again. We try
something else, and it seems to work for a while, until we find out that the
kid only obeys that rule when we can see
him and catch him doing wrong; outside the house, they get along on
another set of rules entirely.
Like, say, when they’re at day care.
Day
care. Finding a good one can be a
crapshoot sometimes, can’t it? When you turn your kid loose with a group of
other children raised in unknown circumstances to unknown standards, and you’re
paying less than the minimum wage for their daily supervision? Sometimes you
just get what you get, and you simply have to try and correct any problems once
they get home, right?
So
now, we’ve moved into the book of Exodus, and the Lord decides on an
eighty-year-old shepherd named Moses to go check the children out of the
Pharaoh's Day Care, and then lead them across the water towards home.
But
before they get home, Daddy has to sit them down and goes over the rules that our
family lives by. "I don't care what they do over there in the day care,
but in OUR house we do things THIS way!” Papa isn’t all that upset yet (although He’s certainly had reason
to be), but He wants to make sure that, before He moves the kids into their new
home, He’s had a chance to go over the ground rules. None of that pagan
ritual stuff for My children, no sirree-Bob! We’re going to make sure
that Our children are raised right. Gather ‘round, kids. Here’s how WE
want you to do things from now on…
And so the Ten Commandments are born.
And all the kids are amazed, with the lightning and the fire and the manna from
heaven and the voice of God that Moses translates for them into their rules of
behavior, and it looks like Daddy’s got them paying attention and following His
wishes without issue. So, He lets them alone to play for a while (like, say,
oh, forty days or so) while He takes “Uncle Moses” up the mountain to
square away some of the nit-picky details.
As you know, of course, their obedience
doesn’t even last until Moses makes it down off the mountain, because we humans
have the attention span of a goldfish on crack. No sooner had Moses disappeared
up Mount Sinai than we were looking for the next big thing – that “Jehovah”
stuff was old news, and we wanted something up-to-date to worship. Got any golden calves lying around, Aaron?
If you remember your reading of
Exodus, you’ll recall that after spending several chapters going over the
Commandments in detail, it’s hardly had time to sink in before they’re bored,
and the folks decided to come up with something more familiar to them –
something that reminds them of “day care” – something that looks like the
animalistic gods their former masters, the Egyptians, had forced on them for the
last 430 years. They had lots of gold (and that they only had because
their true God had arranged for the
Egyptians to literally throw their valuables at the Hebrews on the way
out the door as long as they’d take their plagues with them when they left), so
they threw it together and melted it down, stirred it up, and “out jumped a
golden calf!”, as Aaron would try to tell his brother Moses when he was asked
about it later. (Don’t forget this
detail; we’ll come back to it next chapter.)
If
you’re Papa God…what would You do?
Thinking about it from the perspective
of picking your children up from day care, it’s hard to stay too upset about something the kids
picked up while they were there, isn’t it? If your son comes home and a more graphic term for manure comes out of his
mouth, you’re going to be upset at him when he says it – maybe even warm his
behind if your physical instinct transcends your rational thought process,
although we don’t recommend that –
but in the end your anger will most likely settle not on your son but rather on
either the family of whomever he picked up the word from or the
day care itself for allowing such
terminology in the first place.
On the other hand, it goes back to our
previous chapter’s conversation: our children are supposed to better
versions of ourselves. They should
know better! We are likely to feel we have every right to be upset at them for using such language,
even if they learned it elsewhere, because it’s the decision making process
regarding whether to use words like that (rather than learning the word in the first place) that is in
question here.
Now, Moses knew that idols had
been an intrinsic part of the Hebraic life while slaves in Egypt. I’m sure that
he had hoped, however, that given the
vast and varied demonstrations of the true God’s prowess and love for them in
just the last two years, the desire for idols would never again come into play.
If
the Lord Yahweh had “hoped” that as
well, He undoubtedly knew what His stiff-necked people would actually do. Nevertheless, as we see in Exodus
32:7-10, our Father is still furious at His children’s behavior, and in His
righteous anger threatens to do as He did with Noah and his family and start
over with Moses (32:10).
It
seems momentarily as if Moses talks Him out of it in 32:11-13, although we know better than to think that. While
some versions of 32:14 say “the
Lord changed His mind about the disaster”, a more careful reading of
the Hebrew word that was translated as “changed His mind”, nachem,
implies something more akin to “relents”, meaning He chose to take the
option of continuing with this troupe of Hebrews, not so much that Moses convinced
Him to. Also, remember that Moses was the one who wrote down the events
of the Exodus, and in his mind he may very well have felt that he indeed did
talk God out of executing the tribes, and neither the Holy Spirit nor God chose
to dissuade him of the opinion.
But the truth of the matter is, the
Lord didn’t relent after all. Read what happened next:
“When
Moses saw that the people had broken loose, then Moses stood in the gate of the
camp and said, ‘Who is on the Lord’s
side? Come to me!’ And all the sons of Levi gathered around him.
And he said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel: “Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from gate
to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his
companion and his neighbor”’ And the sons of Levi did according to the
word of Moses. And that day about
three thousand men of the people fell.” (Exodus 32:25-28)
And even that wasn’t enough
punishment: “But now, if You will forgive
their sin –” began Moses to the Lord in verse 32, to which His
response came, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot out of My Book.” (v. 33) “Then the Lord sent a plague
on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made (v. 35)”
†
So,
in response to His children’s blatant disobedience, what did God the Father do?
1) He expressed His great displeasure with them immediately,
through Moses.
2) If you’ll pardon the expression, He “put the fear of
God” into them.
3) He gave them a short-term punishment –
excising the wound, so to speak, killing off the wild strays through the Sons
of Levi (which would be a great name for
a Christian rock band: the Sons of Levi! For that matter, so would The
Wild Strays!), and through the plague in verse 35, which one assumes
was strategically targeted as well.
4) He also implemented a longer-term
punishment, for their disobedience had been building for a long time before Exodus
32. Call it resentful, call it petty, but as a parent it’s one of the most effective tools you have at your
disposal IF used judiciously.
Read Exodus 33:3 à
“Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey, but I will not go up among you, lest I consume
you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
Withholding
your affection.
More accurately, withholding your presence.
Your children want to be with you.
Even the parents who fail most folks’ definitions of “good”, their children
yearn to be with them. There are heinous exceptions, but even the mean moms and
dads usually have the unswaying support of their children, especially the young
ones. But there is a strict limit on how much you can use this punishment
before it becomes TOO habitual for your children and they simply “turn you
off”. In small doses, however, this
can be a very useful motivator, as the Lord demonstrated in Exodus.
Nobody comes off looking wonderful
in this story. Certainly not the “stiff-necked” children of Israel, who
deserved every lick of punishment they received. (I don’t want this to pass unnoticed: I think that’s my favorite
Biblical insult – “You are a stiff-necked people!” Not sure it works as
a band name, though…)
Not
Moses, who probably comes of cleaner than any other person in the story, but
still suffers the consequences of his actions.
Certainly
not Aaron, who in my humble opinion deserved FAR worse than he
got.
And
not even God the Father, who had to choose between mercy and justice (as He often must), and was forced to
implement the above punishments – punishments that served to (try to) correct errant behaviors. Are
the “kids” upset at Papa? Almost
certainly. But Papa’s not crazy about it either, and the phrase “This will hurt Me more than it hurts you” has
never been more true.
As parents, we often have to do things we’d rather
not do. But that’s simply part of good parenting.
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