Brian McLaren describes some of the modern addictions that keep us from choosing the difficult path to freedom:
Most of us spend a lot of our lives trying to get out of something old and confining and into something new and free. That’s why we so easily identify with Moses and the freed Hebrew slaves on their journey through the wild wasteland known as the wilderness.
The truth is that we’re all on a wilderness journey out of some form of slavery. On a personal level, we know what it is to be enslaved to fear, alcohol, food, rage, worry, lust, shame, inferiority, or control. On a social level, in today’s version of Pharoah’s economy, millions at the bottom of the pyramid work like slaves from before dawn to after dark and still never get ahead. And even those at the top of the pyramid don’t feel free. They wake up each day driven by … the lash of their own inner slave drivers: greed, debt, competition, expectation, and a desperate, addictive craving for more.…
We have much to learn from the stories of Moses and his companions. We, too, must remember that the road to freedom doesn’t follow a straight line from point A to point B. Instead, it zigzags and backtracks through a discomfort zone of lack, delay, distress, and strain. In those wild places, character is formed—the personal and social character needed for people to enjoy freedom and aliveness.
Author Cole Arthur Riley reminds us of the slow work of liberation:
Could you wander for forty years if it meant freedom? If you listen, you can still hear them groaning—they who were rescued, only to find that freedom is never so easily won. That liberation is a path marked by uncertainty and thirst and grief over all that was lost in the revolution. In Exodus, we are faced with a God of slow rescue…. Perhaps God knew that part of liberation is confronting anything you might hunger for more than it. [1]
McLaren continues:
The wilderness journey is always difficult and seems to last forever…. But the truth is, if we arrive before we’ve learned the lessons of the wilderness, we won’t be able to enjoy the freedom that awaits us in the promised land beyond it. There is wisdom we will need there that we can gain only right here. There is strength and skill we will need in the future that we can develop only here and now, on the wilderness road. There is moral muscle we will need then that we can exercise and strengthen only through our struggles on this road, here and now….
We will often be tempted to return to our old lives, but in that tension between a backward pull and a forward call, we will discover unexplainable sustenance (like manna) and unexpected refreshment (like springs in the desert). Against all odds, walking by faith, we will survive, and more: we will learn what it means to be alive.
References:
[1] Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human (Convergent Books, 2024), 249.
Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (Jericho Books, 2014), 41, 42, 44.
Image credit and inspiration: Clay Banks, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, USA, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Walking into the wild becomes a mirror of the Exodus itself—risking the unknown so that, in the wandering, we discover the quiet, faithful presence that leads us toward freedom and deeper communion with God.
Story from Our Community:
My exodus journey began when I began studying geology at university. As I looked at the wonderful array of minerals and rocks, I could not accept the fundamentalist line of the church I attended. I felt a bit of a rebel, trying to square the circle of faith and science. Then I read The Universal Christ and scales fell from my eyes! It didn’t have to be one or the other but an embracing of both in the Mystery of Christ.
—Margaret J.
