Cutting the Old Testament Israelites a Break

I grew up South­ern Bap­tist. Please don’t judge me too harshly.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the story. About the Israelites wan­der­ing through the wilder­ness from Egypt to the Promised Land. It was a trip that should have taken a cou­ple of months. But because of their whin­ing, dis­obe­di­ence and poor atti­tude, God let them wan­der for a whole gen­er­a­tion until they reached their final destination.

Heck, even Moses messed up one time (actu­ally a few times) and wasn’t able to enter the promised land. Right before he died he could only view it from the heights of Mt. Pis­gah and grieve over the sin that kept him out.

Now, let me tell you how the Israelites’ sin is usu­ally dis­cussed in South­ern Bap­tist Sun­day schools:

“These peo­ple were being led by God. Yet every day they found some­thing new to com­plain about. They had God sent manna from heaven, God lead­ing the way, solid lead­er­ship and had been set free from the slav­ery of Egypt. Yet, they some­how found a way to com­plain about something.”

Of course, after years of this indoc­tri­na­tion, you begin to think two things. First, you think, “Silly Israelites. How could they ever com­plain? They have God. What a bunch of whiners!”

That charge is burned into you for a long time as a South­ern Bap­tist. It sure is easy to think that when you’re 12, sit­ting in Sun­day School while eat­ing a donut and wear­ing a clip on tie. It’s always eas­ier to judge peo­ple when you have ²⁰⁄₂₀ hind­sight and are read­ing the story of peo­ple who have already expe­ri­enced the pain.

The sec­ond thing you think is this: “If that had been me, I would have been a faith­ful fol­lower of God. I would’ve fol­lowed that pil­lar of fire to the ends of the earth and never complained.”

Yeah, right. Think about it for a moment. Thou­sands of peo­ple pil­grimag­ing out of the land they grew up in, some of the elderly, some preg­nant, all of them just wit­ness­ing the plagues of Egypt first hand, not sure where they’re going, some dying along the way, no shower stalls avail­able, hot sun dur­ing the day, cold nights, etc.

I had a stern rev­e­la­tion the other day that slapped my Sun­day School right­eous­ness out of me. I’ve men­tioned my hobby before — geo­caching. It’s like a world wide trea­sure hunt. You use a GPS enabled device to find lit­tle con­tain­ers peo­ple have hid­den. Some are really easy to find and some are more chal­leng­ing. Chances are there are some near your house. The iPhone has a geo­caching app for begin­ners if you’re inter­ested. Some have lit­tle toys for the kids to find in them and they have a log to sign in them to show you’ve been there. It’s free and it’s a lot of fun.

One of the joys of geo­caching is to be the first to find a cache some­one has hid­den. I hadn’t been the first to find yet and I saw a new cache had been pub­lished at the Land Between the Lakes National Park near our home. Did I say near? I thought it was near. On the drive there, I remem­bered it was about an hour and a half. But that’s okay. It was about find­ing the cache first.

When I finally arrived at LBL, I found a place to park on a side road and real­ized the geo­cache was a mile hike into the woods. Now, a dis­claimer. I am a rabid indoors­man. I really don’t like going out­doors a lot. Mow­ing the lawn isn’t my thing. But I fig­ured I’d find a trail and walk right up to it. In real­ity, there was a game trail. For those who don’t know, a game trail is a trail that five peo­ple walk down a year and deer use reg­u­larly. I was able to fol­low it pretty well.

In about an hour, I found the cache and signed the log. That was after slid­ing down a ravine, tak­ing six breaks and being thank­ful I had brought a bot­tled water with me. That was on the way in.

On the way out, I spilled my water. I found the trail, I thought, and started walk­ing. In cir­cles. For a while. Down a ravine (not the same one I had gone down on the way in). I went up a steep hill (very steep). Stopped 20 times to rest. Three hours later, I had to admit I was lost. On my last rest, I looked down and saw a deer tick on my shoe. I’ve never had a deer tick on me. I com­plained. Loudly.

I then real­ized I had been com­plain­ing out loud for the past three hours. I’m sure nature was get­ting tired of my loud com­plain­ing. I was prob­a­bly killing trees with my whining.

Then it hit me. I had only been in the stink­ing woods for four hours and I was already a ram­pant whiner/​complainer. My mind set­tled on the Israelites and how I had become so judg­men­tal toward them while I was in Sun­day School. They had a right to com­plain, I thought. Dar­nit, if I had been there, wan­der­ing through the desert, I would have been the worst of them:

“Moses, are we there yet? When are we stop­ping for water? Did you see the size of that snake? Does any­one have a camel I can ride?”

I did even­tu­ally find my way out as my com­plain­ing turned to severe prayers for help. I was cov­ered in sweat, exhausted and weak. When I got home, we pulled thirty deer ticks off me. They were crawl­ing inside my shirt and shoes. It was lovely.

But at that point, I decided not to com­plain. I knew a whole bunch of peo­ple who had been through worse. And I had a new found admi­ra­tion for them.