We have spent some time during our study of Genesis elaborating the idea that God's essential character as faithful and loving towards the needs of his creation does not change. He is consistent. On this basis, we came to see that the choice presented by the tree of knowledge is, in fact, yet another grace from God that is meant to grace man with agency, purpose, freedom (and not a test from a fickle, cruel God). So here we are in Exodos. And we read about a God who, I gather from the text, is purposefully making a tyrant out of a king by hardening his heart and sends terrible things from the sky that seem purposefully designed to create pain and suffering within his creation (I am hoping we will discover another way to read this? Was there no way to produce the same effect with less "collateral damage"?) …show more content…
This action of heart-hardening and Pharaoh-drowning seems more-in-line with the concept of the "perverse" God we ultimately moved away from (the one we reasoned must be perverse to 'test' Adam and Eve in the Garden if he already knew they would fail.
But here we see a God in action who does know the outcome, who seems to be invasively driving Pharaoh's inner life, making him a puppet of a kind in order to effect a glorious end. I am trying to grapple with this dissonance (as I expect many, many people have done and maybe the lecture will cover it... I will find out now). How can we understand this God, the one I can picture gliding like a spooky ghost past bloody doors to slaughter whimpering Egyptian babies asleep in their