The Price of Prejudice

Tags

acceptance, Barry Goldwater, Bible, black Christians, Cassius Clay, Christian salvation, Christian upbringing, Christianity, Civil Rights, Civil Rights Act of 1964, coercion, conservative, de facto segregation, Deep South, Elijah Muhammad, enemy, Federal Government, gays in the military, George Will, hypocrisy, Jane Austen, Jerry Falwell, John 14:6, Judeo-Christian principles, judgment, justice, LGBT, liberty, limited government, love of Christ, Matthew 23:13, Muhammad Ali, name change, Nation of Islam, Orlando, Pat Robertson, Phoenix, prejudice, Pride, Pride and Prejudice, Pride Month, pro-choice, racism, Ravi Zacharias, religious right, Sandra Day O'Connor, segregated bathrooms, Social Justice, stumbling block, Sunni, transgender Christians, transgender discrimination, Walt Kelly, woe

One of the most beloved novels of all time is Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”.  The two main characters in this novel are able to come together in a loving relationship only after one of them overcomes internal pride and the other overcomes internal prejudice.  Clearly both pride and prejudice, if left unchecked, would have had a cost: the loss of love.

The pride talked about by the title and the character’s initial point of view relate to the type of pride that is viewed in Judeo-Christian principles as sinful.  It is the opposite of humility and equated with arrogance, haughtiness, disdain and thinking more highly of oneself than is justified (conceit).  The Bible warns us that this type of pride precedes a fall.

It is not the same as the pride that one feels for the genuine accomplishments of their children, their team, their group or their country.  It also includes self-respect and a sense that one is a deserving of respect as anyone else.  While pride in the first definition comes from a sense of selfish superiority, in the latter definition it is an assertion of equality.

June has become known as Pride Month for members of the LGBT+ coalition.  Ideally, it should celebrate the second sense of pride: equality, not superiority.  And recently in Orlando, we saw the price of Pride in the massive loss of life and injury to members of the LGBT+ coalition as a result of hatred and violence.  As oppressed and marginalized members of society, it is a price we have paid many times.  Orlando happened to be one of the steeper prices.

That said, I will now turn to the main thrust of the article: the price of prejudice.  In doing so, I will turn from the death of many by violence to the death of one by age and infirmity.

Muhammad Ali was one of the most recognizable people in the world during most of his life.  His fame far transcended the world of sports.  To many he was a champion, not just in the boxing ring but in the arena of civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movement.  To others, he was the epitome of the arrogant pride described previously.

A major source of Ali’s controversial image was religion.  The most symbolic example of this was his change from his birth name of Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali.  (I had not yet reached my teen years when Ali changed his name.  I certainly am far more appreciative of the reasons and significance for it now.)

In childhood, Ali was brought up in a home that was neither Muslim or irreligious.  He was brought up in a Christian home.  His father was Methodist and his mother was Baptist.

Ali didn’t convert to any old religion.  He joined Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam.  Without getting into the details of their beliefs, one of the greatest attractions of the movement to black people was its promise of a decisive answer to the systemic racism experienced by Blacks in the United States.

Similarly, the existence of racism in the life of Malcolm X and his reaction to it was a significant influence in leading Malcolm to convert from being known for his anti-religious stance to becoming a member of the Nation of Islam.  This is clearly seen in “The Autobiography of Malcom X” (which is, followed by Alan Paton’s “Cry the Beloved Country”, the most significant book I have read in terms of shaping my attitude towards civil rights and social justice and in opposition to racism).

The incidents of racism in the life of Muhammad Ali, including during his formative years, are also well-documented.  It is hard to imagine that racism was not the primary incubator that led Ali to begin to regularly attend Nation of Islam meetings and eventually become a member.  Furthermore eleven years later, Ali, like his mentor Malcom X, eventually broke with the Nation of Islam and converted to mainstream Sunni Islam.  He also developed an interest in the Islamic practice of Sufism in later life.  Therefore, we have multiple indications of Ali’s religious development, none of which ever brought him back to Christianity.

Only God knows the fate of Muhammad Ali’s eternal soul.  But two things related to this blog post are abundantly clear in Christian theology:

• Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (from John 14:6)
• Not everyone will be saved, but woe be it to those who put a stumbling block in the way of another person’s salvation.

No one is perfect and we shall have things for which to answer to God.  Those Christians who contributed to the system of racism in this country and elsewhere in the world, if they have not repented of those sins, will have to answer for that.

Racial segregation and other forms of racial prejudice are illegal in the United States in just about every situation of public accommodation, although de facto segregation still occurs.  But now we see the issue of unfounded prejudice rising up against transgender people.  Sadly, once again some Christians are not only part of this prejudice, they are at the forefront of it.  Sadder still are some black Christians who are championing the efforts to discriminate against transgender people.  Have they so soon forgotten the lies told about them and the reasons why the races needed to be separated?  And have they so soon forgotten that in many locations, while the white bathrooms were gendered, the black (aka Negro or Colored bathrooms as they were called in those days) were not?

Tell us, black Christian leaders of anti-transgender forces, what horrible things were black men doing to black women in those bathrooms?  (Yes, that was a rhetorical question meant to show absurdity and accuse people only of hypocrisy.)

Woe to you Christians who tell yourselves that your sins aren’t so bad, and justify yourselves that at least you aren’t wicked perverts like these transgender people.  What will you do when the judgment by which you judged transgender people is meted out to you?  What will you do when you are called to account for putting a stumbling block in the way of transgender people, turning them away from Christ?

I am amazed with joy when I meet another transgender person who is a Christian.  My respect for them is profound.  I know that their faith has stood tests that Christians in some foreign countries face, but most Christians in the U.S. could never conceive of.  It takes great spiritual strength to continue to trust in the Lord when you are told repeatedly that you are forsaken by God, given over to Satan, sinful, perverted, wicked and condemned to Hell.

I have been blessed to find a local, evangelical church with overwhelming acceptance of me by those who know about my transgender circumstance.  The transgender Christians who have reached out to me have not been nearly as fortunate.  What I do, I do for the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  But I also do it so that other transgender Christians may soon receive the same acceptance I have received.  And I do it so that other transgender people may learn that Christ loves them, too.

An ending to this blog post was elusive.  Then I happened across something about another controversial figure from the mid-1960’s: Barry Goldwater.  As I watched a couple of videos and read some background information, I knew his POV would tie things altogether.

Senator Goldwater was known as the leader of the Conservative movement in the United States.  George Will once remarked after Ronald Reagan’s defeat of Jimmy Carter that it took 16 years to count the votes from 1964 and Goldwater won.

But did you know the following about Goldwater?

• He was pro-choice.
• He favored gays serving in the U.S. military, noting that gays had served honorably as soldiers dating back at least to the time of Julius Caesar. His remarks indicated that he only cared if you shot straight, not whether or not you were straight.
• In his later years, he supported full civil rights for gays.
• He decried the rise to power of the religious right in the 1980’s. He identified as a person with Christian values and was known as an honest person of firm principles.  But he opposed the political attitude of this group of conservatives who required total agreement and acted as if they were speaking for God.  He was against Pat Robertson’s political campaigns and when Jerry Falwell said that “Every good Christian should be concerned” about the nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, Goldwater replied that “Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”  (It was noted by those present that reporters had used “ass” in place of a more sensitive part of the anatomy.)
• He found himself increasingly at odds with the conservative wing of the Republican Party, labeling them as “extremists”. A few years before he died, he claimed they hurt the GOP more than the Democrats had and forbade them from associating his name with anything they did.  In 1996, he noted with irony to Republican Presidential candidate, Bob Dole, that the two of them were now the liberals of the party.
• His reputation on civil rights for Blacks has been dominated by his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the timing of which coincided with his campaign for President, giving it high visibility. What many don’t know is that he desegregated the Arizona Air National Guard two years before the President Truman did the same with the U.S. Military (a move which Goldwater had urged).  He also voted for every piece of federal civil rights legislation during his time in the U.S. Senate until the 1964 Act and he had voted for the original Senate version of the 1964 Act.  He opposed the final version of the 1964 Act on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, giving power to the Federal Government (and taking away power given to the states by the Constitution) that was not provided for in the Constitution.  It was that firmness of principle that I mentioned previously, but based on American law, not on a self-proclaimed pipeline from God.

Goldwater’s opposition to the final version of the 1964 Act is rooted in the same quarrel that he had with both liberal Democrats and the Religious Right.  Goldwater as a staunch defender of liberty and justice was opposed to any form of coercion, whether it was from the government or from Christian clergy and organized groups of the religious right.  This leads us to another high price for prejudice.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”  That quote (or one of its variants) didn’t originate with Barry Goldwater.  But he used it during his 1964 campaign and lived by it.

As a young man, Goldwater took over running the family business, the eponymous department store which was the largest in Phoenix.  He didn’t practice racial discrimination in business and his experience in Phoenix was that much of the desegregation of that city occurred because where moral force was insufficient, enlightened self-interest worked.  Other business owners saw that desegregation and civil rights was good for business.  Allowing black people equal access to jobs increased the consumer base and disposable income.

Based on Goldwater’s philosophy, I believe that he would not have supported laws and lawsuits against small businesses that refused to provide cakes, flowers or photographs for same-sex weddings.  He would have encouraged competing businesses to embrace such customers and be rewarded with increased sales.

He believed that enlightened self-interest would eventually bring about civil rights for black people even in the Deep South.  But there were two things he either failed to consider or didn’t weigh highly enough to change his thinking. The first is the vagueness of “eventually”.  In the places where discrimination against Blacks ran deepest, “eventually” appeared to be a long way off and black people had run out of patience.  Between Supreme Court decisions, strikes, sit-ins, freedom riders and the occasional use of Federal troops, civil rights momentum was building.  While Black leaders of the day appreciated Goldwater’s honesty and sincere belief in his philosophy, they saw the adoption of his policies as a roadblock to that momentum.  Black people had waited long enough, even 100 years since the end of the Civil War, for eventually to become today.

Furthermore, moral force and enlightened self-interest might work in a climate where there would be at least a modicum of fairness in the system to begin with.  Black leaders knew that the climate in the Deep South did not include even a smidgen of fairness to their people, let alone a modicum.  What chance does moral force and enlightened self-interest have when black people are systematically disenfranchised, the courts are prejudiced against them, the police are prejudiced against them, and white business people that buck the system are intimidated with fires, bombs and burning crosses?

Another price of prejudice is that when discrimination becomes so pervasive in a section of the country, it motivates groups to urge the Federal government to step in and take over.  An example of the law of unintended consequences, the very thing that is brought in to protect the freedom and rights of people can eventually expand through initially benign actions to become a source of tyranny that oppresses people.  Think about this year’s presidential election.  Whether you oppose either or both major party presumptive candidates becoming President, is not one of your fears that this person will be in charge of such a powerful apparatus?

When it comes to the price of prejudice, cartoonist Walt Kelly described it well (even though he used it in different contexts) when he wrote, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. – Matthew 23:13

Ravi Zacharias: Made in God’s image >>> Love thy neighbor

God bless,

Lois

Advertisements

O Holy Night

Tags

abolitionist, Adolphe Adam, anticlerical, atheist, birth of Jesus, break chains, Catholic Church, Christian, Christian church, Christmas carols, Church service, coming out, condemnation, deliverance, exclusive, France, freedom, fulfillment of Scripture, Gospel, gracious, heal, humble, inclusive, Jewish, John Sullivan Dwight, Josh Groban, justice, legalistic, loss, Love, Luke, narrow-minded, O Holy Night, open-minded, oppression, peace, Placide Cappeau, racial prejudice, rejection, Roman Catholic, Roquemaure, salvation, Savior, self-righteous, slave, socialist, Son of God, Transgender

Any discussion of Christmas carols is bound to bring out varying opinions as to their relative merits and each person’s very favorite.  Perhaps the most beautiful carol and the one that shows off superior vocal talent the best is O Holy Night.  A link to a recording of the song is included at the end of this post.  You can judge for yourself and hopefully will enjoy it as part of your celebration of the Christmas season.

But for now, I am focusing on the lyrics and a bit of the history of the carol.  After all, my blog is about ideas in the areas of Christianity and transgender.  I am not a music critic or a professional musician of any kind.

There are a few ironies in the origin of the carol.  In 1843, the lyrics were written first as a poem.  The poem was written at the request of the parish priest of Roquemaure, a little town in the wine region of south France.  But the poem, without music, was to be part of a celebration of the recent renovation of the church organ.  The name of the parish priest and his reason to commission a poem instead of a hymn or carol to be played on the organ are lost to history.

Also intriguing was the priest’s choice to write the poem.  He asked Placide Cappeau, known more for his interest in wine as a merchant and minor official than for his interest in church.  In fact, during his life he held anticlerical and atheist views.  But he was also known as a poet and in this small town of only a few thousand people, perhaps was considered the best.

Cappeau found inspiration for the lyrics in the account of the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, the most detailed description found in the Bible.  Despite his personal views, not only did he write these beloved lyrics based on his imagination of what it must have been like to be present on that night on that most holy occasion, he soon came to believe that his poem deserved to be set to music.

Cappeau had no musical background, perhaps in part due to the fact that his right hand was amputated due to a childhood accident.  So he enlisted the help of a composer.  Considering Cappeau’s beliefs, his choice of his friend, Adolphe Adam, was not surprising.  Adam was known for his popular music written for the vaudeville houses of Paris, as well as being a prolific composer of operas and ballets during his career.  In addition to O Holy Night, he is probably best known for his ballet, Giselle.

There is one other ironic fact about the choice of Adam as the composer of this beautiful hymn.  While every indication is that he was quite secular, his ancestry was Jewish.  Even though he neither celebrated Christmas nor believed that Jesus is the Son of God, he quickly accepted the musical challenge of setting the poem to music.

The carol made its debut in Roquemaure at the Christmas Eve mass in 1847, just three weeks after the work was completed to the satisfaction of Adam and Cappeau.  It is no surprise that the beautiful carol soon became popular with the French public and was quickly accepted within the Roman Catholic Church in France.

That acceptance evaporated when Cappeau publicly walked away from the church to become part of the socialist movement and Adam’s Jewish heritage became known.  Suddenly, narrow minded Catholic clerics were denouncing the carol as bad music with irreligious lyrics.  Their attempts to besmirch the song were unsuccessful.  The French people couldn’t be fooled and they continued to enjoy singing and listening to O Holy Night.

The popularity of the carol spread to the northern part of the United States when it was translated into English in 1855.  The translator was John Sullivan Dwight.  Trained as a minister, the Boston native quickly turned his career interest toward music as a critic and journalist in the field, helping to shape American tastes toward European classical music.  He was also an ardent abolitionist.  It was the third and final verse that caught his attention as bearing a message consistent with the abolitionist cause.  (Sometimes, the second verse is omitted and this powerful verse becomes the second and final verse.)  His translation reads as follows:

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;

And in His name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

Let all within us praise His holy name.

In my lifetime, and particularly in the last two years as I have come out to people within the Christian community and debated with some, I have learned that there is a wife rift in the Christian church regarding transgender.  As we looked at some of the history of O Holy Night, we have seen that rifts like these are nothing new.  Will the church be narrow-minded or open minded?  Exclusive or inclusive?  Self-righteous or humble?  Oppressive or working for justice?  Enslaving and legalistic or freedom-loving and gracious?

Some Christians got it that slavery is wrong, but some didn’t.  Some Christians got it that racial prejudice is wrong, but some didn’t.  Some Christians understand that we should oppose the oppression of other people, but some seem to think that the Christian church should oppress other people.  And some Christians understand that it is wrong to oppress and be prejudiced against transgender people.  Still some do not.

Quite frankly, it puzzles me how many Christians over the years have not understood why the Son of God came to earth.  He was quite clear about it when He announced His ministry in His home synagogue in Nazareth.  He announced it by reading from the prophet Isaiah.  As it is recorded in Luke’s Gospel:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. – Luke 4:18-21

Most Christians can quote John 3:16 by heart.  But do they know the next verse?  It also speaks to the purpose of Christ’s ministry.

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

And yet too many Christians are quick to condemn, or to turn their backs on the needy, or to be indifferent to the plight of marginalized people, or to wound rather than heal, or to bring oppression rather than seek deliverance.  Quite frankly, one is too many, but there are far more than one.

Three years ago when I began my transition journey, and for many years before that once Internet searches became meaningful, I was able to find only one other transgender Christian to communicate with.  And she is still deep in the closet.  But now, I am beginning to hear from others who reside in the precarious penumbra of the planet Mercury, that narrow band of the Venn diagram where these two communities overlap.  And I am hearing from devout people of other faiths whose religious communities rebuke them for being transgender.  The letters are heart wrenching in terms of the oppression and rejection and loss these people face.  I hope and pray that I am helping each one in a meaningful way.  I will discuss this further in another post soon.

Eventually, most Christians understood Christ’s message about slavery.  Eventually most Christians understood Christ’s opposition to racial prejudice.  More and more Christians are understanding that Christ does not want His church to oppress people, but instead promote justice for all.  I also hope and pray that most Christians will understand that those of us who are truly transgender are born this way, that there is no sin involved and absolutely no reason to rebuke and reject us on this basis.

For now, please enjoy this beautiful carol.  I cry tears of joy to hear it.  I pray it will become as much of an anthem to the cause of transgender justice as it was for the abolitionist cause some 160 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zh-yR0pbmU

God bless,

Lois

Eyewitness News

Tags

Abraham, Adam and Eve, appearance of God, Bible, Exodus, eyewitness, false witness, Genesis, God, God's glory, Isaac, Israel, Jacob, justice, Mosaic Law, Moses, Old Testament

The concept known as “Eyewitness News” began in the mid-sixties.  The idea spread and resulted in a major transformation of the way viewers received the news.  Fifty years later, nearly every local news program uses a variation of this concept.

One of the features of eyewitness news was to have field reporters on the scene of a local story being covered.  Except in rare situations, they were not the eyewitnesses, but they were able to interview people who saw or heard the action take place.

While eyewitnesses have an important place in the American justice system, eyewitness testimony was of even greater importance when the Mosaic Law was written.  How much forensic science could be done that long ago?  There was no way to collect DNA evidence, no video records from security cameras available.  While there are some records of the Babylonians using fingerprints for signatures and other means of identification as far back as 2000 BC, no methods existed to be able to lift fingerprints from a murder weapon, a stolen object or most other items.

Safeguards were included in the Law to protect the innocent false witnesses.  There are three separate verses that capital punishment cannot be meted out on the basis of only one eyewitness.  Then, in Deuteronomy 19, that protection is extended to cases involving any crime, iniquity or sin.  Furthermore, the law included strong consequences for those who were found to be testifying against someone with false witness, to serve as a meaningful deterrent against falsely accusing someone.

One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.  If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong; Then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days; And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you. – Deuteronomy 19:15-19

Two other things were important for just verdicts to be made under such a system: the appointment of judges who were wise, discerning and honest; for the character of those giving the testimony to be well-known.  In a clan-based society such as ancient Israel, with small populations and relatively low geographic mobility, both of those tasks would be easier than in modern societies that are large and relatively anonymous.

In the previous two posts, I did not dispute the assertion of God being invisible.  Instead, I looked at various examples of where the effects of the actions of God are documented, reported, and give evidence of his existence and even visibility indirectly.  Today, I am taking it a step further.  We are going to look at reports and eyewitness accounts of direct sightings of God.  Dreams and visions are not being included.  Contacts with God that involve the sense of hearing only are not being included.  The reports of the first three people involved were included in the Bible by oral history.  The rest were directly reported by the eyewitness.

Adam and Eve: This first reference is by logical inference.  In Genesis 3:8, Adam and Eve are experiencing guilt and shame for the first time as a result of eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  They hear the LORD God speaking as He walks in the garden in the cool of the day.  They hide from His presence.  The fact that He can see them is not significant.  The fact that He is physically walking among them is.  In Eden, He can be seen as well as see.  And Adam and Eve attempting to hide from Him in this context suggests that they saw each other regularly until they lose their state of innocence.

Abraham: Here we begin to have more directly expressed references to people who see God.  In three different chapters of Genesis, there are mentions of God appearing to Abraham, the first patriarch.  In Genesis 12:7, his name is still Abram.  This is where God tells him that he has reached the land which the LORD had promised to show to him when Abram left his own country in response to the LORD’s command.

At the beginning of chapter 17, the LORD appears to Abram and renames him Abraham in connection with the covenant that He makes with Abraham.  In verse 22, it also states that when He finished talking with Abraham, God “went up from Abraham”, further signifying that He was physically with Abraham.

The clearest account that the LORD is physically present with Abraham and that Abraham can see Him occurs at the beginning of chapter 18.  Using the same verb (Heb. ra’ah), the same voice (in Hebrew it is the Niphal voice, which indicates passive or reflexive action: with this verb, the active voice means to see or perceive, the passive/reflexive voice means to appear, present oneself, be seen or be visible) as in Genesis 12 & 17, once again it says that the LORD appears to Abraham.  Abraham sees Him and three men (angels) standing with Him.  In response, Abraham commands a servant to fetch water so their feet can be washed.  He invites them to rest and he tells Sarah to make a meal for them.  In verse 13, after they ate, the LORD continues talking with Abraham, asking why Sarah laughed when she heard that she would give birth to a child.

Isaac: In Genesis 26, Isaac’s herdsmen are clashing with the herdsmen of Gerar (part of the land of the Philistines) over water wells.  Finally, they find water, dig a well and are not challenged for it.  That night, the LORD appears (same verb, ra’ah; same Niphal voice) to Isaac and reconfirms the covenant that He made with Abraham.

Jacob: Like his father, Isaac, there is only one recorded instance of Jacob being face to face with God.  But it is one of the better known stories from the Old Testament.  In Genesis 32, Jacob is returning to the land of his birth, but also to a twin brother who threatened to kill him twenty years earlier.  The night before he meets Esau again, Jacob goes off by himself.  In verses 24-30, Jacob suddenly was encountered by another and they engage in wrestling.  Jacob initially believes this entity is a man and they wrestled to a standoff.  But then we see that Jacob’s opponent has held back somewhat, for a touch of a finger threw Jacob’s thigh out of joint and withered the muscle there.  (To this day, Orthodox Jews will not eat this part of the meat.)  The opponent blesses Jacob but will not reveal His name.  Jacob realizes that in this encounter, he has seen God face to face.

In Exodus 6:3, when God is preparing Moses to go before Pharaoh, He confirms two things about this story and the other meetings in general.  He tells Moses that He appeared (again the ra’ah – Niphal combination) to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Then He tells Moses that He did not reveal His name to them, the name He revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14). (Gen. 32:24-30; also see Exodus 6:2-3 where the LORD confirms to Moses that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob)

Moses: With Moses, we begin the first face to face encounters that are recorded as part of the history that was written down by either the first person or a contemporary scribe.  And the first eyewitness sighting involving Moses included in the Bible was a major one.  In Exodus 24, God summons Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and seventy of the elders to come to Him.  While only Moses will be permitted to come close to God, the rest see Him from a distance.  In verse 10, a description is given of His appearance.  “And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.”  In the next verse, we are reassured that God did not harm any of those who saw Him and they went on to live their everyday lives.

In Exodus 33, Moses has recently set up the tabernacle outside the camp. God comes down to the tabernacle shrouded in a cloudy pillar.  In verse 11, we are told that the LORD spoke to Moses “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”

In Numbers 12, we are told that God speaking to Moses “face to face” is not unusual.  In this chapter, God contrasts how He speaks to Moses with how He speaks to the rest of the prophets.  The occasion is that Moses’ siblings, Miriam and Aaron, begin to speak out against Moses because he did not marry a daughter of Israel.  God calls them and Moses into the tabernacle.  Once again inside the cloudy pillar, He sets Miriam and Aaron straight.  “And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house.  With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” (Numbers 12:6-8)

Would you think that Moses, having been accorded this great honor and privilege of seeing God face to face, would be satisfied with what he has?  How typical is it of humans that regardless of how much we have, we soon want more?  Going back to Exodus 33, after God has promised Moses that His presence will remain with him as Moses leads the people in the wilderness.  In verse 18, Moses ups the ante.  What follows is an intriguing exchange:

And he [Moses] said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.  And he [the LORD] said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.  And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.  And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.  – Exodus 33:18-23

Wait a minute!  Isn’t there a contradiction here?  In Exodus 33:11, we are told that God spoke to Moses “face to face”.  Nine verses later, we are told that no man can see God’s face and live.  Does this mean the Bible is inaccurate and cannot be trusted?  I will do my best to resolve this apparent contradiction in my next post.

Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD’S side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. – Exodus 32:26

God bless,

Lois