the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

One of the main things I have been learning about life and people this past year is that behavior is really just the tip of the iceberg. This weekend’s sermon at church talked about this, and I reread a part in scripture in the Old Testament that discusses this, too. At this point in my spiritual journey, I am going through the Orthodox Study Bible, whose Old Testament translation is based on the English translation of the St. Athanasius Academy Septuagint edition. I am currently going through the book of Exodus, and this one verse stood out to me this morning:

So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel; but they paid no heed to
Moses because of their faintheartedness and cruel bondage.

Exodus 6:9, Orthodox Study Bible

Other translations interpret these last two conditions of ‘faintheartedness’ and ‘cruel bondage’ as ‘discouragement’ and ‘harsh labor’, or ‘anguish of spirit’ and ‘hard service’. But I feel like ‘faintheartedness’ and ‘cruel bondage’ are excellent translations. People might say to just pull up your boot straps or suck up ‘hard service’ or ‘harsh labor’ – but ‘cruel bondage’? The reality is, these people were labor trafficked to a massive extent. After years of being oppressed – not just ‘given hard labor’ – it affects your psyche. You can be come discouraged, you can develop a performance mentality, and also you may start to think that something is wrong with you – that you somehow deserve this fate as punishment because of some inherent worthlessness.

So when Moses tells these people that they will be freed, and that they can ultimately feel joy again – it is too vulnerable of a moment to feel any kind of hope. It is emotionally safer to remain discouraged, ashamed, and oppressed for the Israelites. This explains why even when the Israelites are eventually freed, their behavior still stems from a place of wanting some kind of control because all their days their lives were under the harsh control of an oppressor. Oppressed mentalities, especially that of empire mentality, does not heal overnight – it takes time along with emotional consistency and safety which God was willing to give.

This all to say, behavior is important. However, behavior is nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. These people were disobedient because they were fainthearted and lived in cruel bondage. They were not disobedient because they only wanted things their way or they wanted a sense of toxic familiarity. But even then, why would people want things their way? Because it is safe, predictable, and it gives a sense of control and security. The same goes with familiarity – even if conditions are unhealthy, it is predictable and it also gives a sense of control and security. And people who are control-hungry have usually lived too long in a state of fear, and that inflicted-upon state of fear is not their fault.

Churches may criticize the Israelites of that time for ‘not having enough faith’ or ‘still living in bondage though free’, but the reality is, you would too. Nothing was wrong with the Israelites – they are acting exactly as an oppressed people group would act. Wanting safety and predictability is not “bad”, it is human. It is also what God offered and offers, but yes, it does require a leap of faith, as a few people in the Exodus story do have here and there. If the Israelites did not want to ‘obey’ God, the natural consequences would have been continued oppression and bondage under Egypt. But we miss out on our own humanity, too, when we refuse to examine why their disobedience makes sense. We also miss out on our own humanity when we refuse to examine how similar we are to the Israelites in the story when we fear being emotionally vulnerable and use projected characteristics of God as an excuse not to risk joy and vulnerability as well.