Each religion on the face of this earth is heir to this usurping arrogance regardless of their relative value. Some of you by now are shouting unfounded anti Semitic accusations at this author. The fact is that the religion of Israel has preserved a peoples identity and inherent character for over four thousand years. There is no more significant an accomplishment in the history of mankind and God will always consider you, the Jewish people, his first born. However, like all other religions, including Christianity and Islam, the voice of God is always drowned out by human effort. In the context of the middle East four thousand years ago, Moses was the founder of the religion of the Old Testament and this is how it happened.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the patriarchs of the faith, were only listeners who were blessed by the Voice. Moses became a listener in the isolation of the desert, heard the Voice from the burning bush and with much trepidation, did as he was directed. With God in charge freedom came to the children of the patriarchs. After crossing the Red Sea, the traveling city of Hebrew peoples made camp at the foot of Mount Sinai and the Voice told Moses to climb the mount alone. As the days passed waiting for Moses to return the people got bored so they did the human thing, they partied. The going’s on were reaching a fever pitch when Moses reappears.
The partying infuriates Moses, the consuming anger that drove him to kill in his youth again ignites. He raises the tablets of stone with a message for the people of God above his head and throws then into the rocks where they forever shatter. Then he gathers the good guys around him and slaughters three thousand of the family with the sword. The heart of Moses had turned dark for he had taken control of God’s people and this event gave birth to the religion of Israel and a top down human agenda. There were tears and wailing in the camp that night, there was questioning, is this the way of God? Are we to be driven to a positive spiritual place by threats and the sword? Religion says yes and so it has always been.
One might ask, what message from God to his people was on the tablets of stone that Moses shattered? After a fifty year familiarity with the Bible and the Church, that question was never asked by me or anyone else. The assumption made by all was that the first tablets were the same as the second version that Moses would soon bring down from the Mount, a religious document, a list of rules that would become the founding legal document of western civilization. However, what if we do not go to court with God? What if we really don’t have to earn the love and acceptance of God? What if the first tablets was a bottom up document, a promise that whatever negative experience we may have in this world, it is not God. Could the shattered tablets have been a bottom up document similar to the “Beatitude” of Mathew 5:3-12? Jesus told us the way.
G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca.
