Slavery

In the ancient world there was this group named the Hebrews. They were a collection of immigrants who moved to Egypt, the most powerful nation in the world at that time. The move to Egypt made sense for poor immigrants. Egypt was rich, fertile and very well organized. It seemed as good a place to thrive as any. However, the Egyptians weren’t as happy with the immigrants as the immigrants were with their land. In fact, they were scared of these new inhabitants of their traditional land. So, in order to keep them under control, they enslaved these new immigrants, making them work for the good of the community. The immigrants weren’t happy about this, but they figured it was better than where they came from.

As the Hebrews settled into slavery, they decided to create opportunities to better themselves. And the best way to get out of slavery, they figured, was to adopt the Egyptian way of life. They worshipped the gods as the Egyptians did. They ate what the Egyptians ate, and learned to love it. They made their living like the Egyptians did. Many of them, hoping to get out of their slavery, even managed to be hired as overseers, whipping their co-slaves in order to make them work harder. They did anything they could that might get them out of the life of death and oppression they lived.

It was only when the Egyptians tried to kill their children off to reduce their population that they realized that the Egyptians would never accept them. So, as most of these Hebrews were descendents of Abraham, a worshiper of the Most High God, they decided to pray to the Most High, begging Him for deliverance. And God heard and decided to do something about it.

When God created humanity, he created them as a bundle of needs. If humans didn’t feel they needed anything, they wouldn’t do anything. So every human has needs that they seek to have met. These needs include the obvious ones: food, shelter, water, health, warmth. But they also include other needs we may not always think about, but they stir us just as powerfully: security, relationship, peace, honor and pleasure. We pursue all of these things, sometimes to the detriment of our other basic needs. We’re crazy like that.

Because we are basically lazy and we want our needs met without having to think about it, we create systems to help our needs be met. Sometimes these systems work, sometimes they don’t. But when a system is even marginally successful, then it becomes Egypt to us—it enslaves us, captures us and makes us serve the system even to the detriment of ourselves, or to the downfall of humanity as a whole.