Redeemed from Slavery

 We all have an idea of what slavery is. Many people don't have any idea of what true spiritual oppression and slavery is, the horror of it. To be surrounded by an environment that doesn't just hate you and is toxic to you, but is toxic to your soul. That oppresses your soul. This is not because we don't have such an environment readily at hand: we absolutely do. It is because people have put their souls on mute.

Spiritual oppression and the physical manifestations of spiritual oppression are different but not separable, they go together like hand and glove. We often feel spiritual oppression most keenly through its physical manifestations. The physical expression of that oppression is how oppression communicates itself, and spiritual oppression HAS to communicate or else remain impotent. Not only that you are a nothing, not only that you are a slave in fact, we own you, but that we are going to tell you and show you over and over and over that you are a slave and we own you. Despair and die, the devil says. There is nothing else but me.

So imagine G-d: he is looking down on the Israelites in Egypt, and they are not just physically abused but surrounded by and actually forced to work on images of false gods. Contrary to their own devout beliefs. Meanwhile to the Egyptians, they are less than dirt. They are deplorable and alien. They are oppressed in body, but possibly even worse, they are oppressed in soul. A man can withstand many hardships if through them his heart is singing. If he is free of spiritual oppression. All the people in America who commit suicide, who get addicted and die of overdoses and many other such sad fates: it is not their physical conditions that killed them. In these kind of cases they could have survived. It is succumbing to spiritual darkness that killed them, just as surely as if the Devil had come up to them and put a bullet in their heads. Bam, splat.

The truly horrible thing is, some people collaborate with the darkness. Some people give in to it and work with it and even celebrate it. We can imagine that some of the ancient Israelites really wanted to be Egyptians and were doing everything they could to suck up to them. In fact we know they did.

So anyway G-d in His mercy frees the Israelites from slavery. Not simply free from Egyptian polytheism and any other terrible behavior they might have had. Not simply free from the dictates of that particular government and king (a man who claimed to be a god.) No: free from all of it. Free from all the physical manifestations of spiritual oppression. You will have no king but G-d.

And then when G-d is talking to Moses on Mt. Sinai, a very large number of these same people who were redeemed from slavery go: lets go back to Egypt. Lets abandon G-d's ways. Can you imagine? You do this beautiful thing for a people, and they are like, "no we would rather be slaves. We like Egypt." What can you do with such people?

I think in some ways this is the hardest part of human nature to take. We all at times think, "well these people who are sinning in all these awful ways, denying G-d, they're just ignorant. If they really knew, if they knew what I know, they wouldn't be like that. They'd try to be good, not evil." And no, that's not necessarily the case. Yes there are some people who go astray through ignorance and repent of it when they know better. But there are others who love Egypt. Who love slavery. Who feel triumph with the Devil when he triumphs. Who wish to dominate other souls like the Devil dominates their own selves. And that's hard to take.

And don't imagine this is just a story about Egypt and Israelites. This is here, now.

I left the city for many good reasons, many of them very practical. I also left because the city, the kingdom of Man which sadly functionally means the kingdom of Satan, oppresses my soul. I feel a very palpable almost visceral oppression fall on my spirit whenever I am in an urban area. The concrete parking lots, the fluorescent lighting of the big box stores, the complete absence of any beauty or humanity (in the good sense,) sets a weight on my spirit that does not lift until I leave. I can't even drive in Dallas anymore, it's literally traumatic to me. All these little boxes driving around so frenetically with zero care for the risk to human life involved, frenetically driving themselves to what? To more slavery.

If you will excuse the crude expression, they are like someone furiously jacking off who can never orgasm. That's slavery. Furiously desiring something you can never have, because you don't even know what's good or what is holy anymore. Lemmings. A living, moving expression of the Devil's hatred of Mankind. And they are apparently willing participants in it.

We are taught by our "betters" in the World that hate is a bad thing. Not always. I hate, hate with every possible fiber of my being, this oppression. This spiritual slavery. I hate it utterly and completely. Hate for it fills every corner of me.

The thought that makes me sad is the thought of people who might one day be redeemed who at the moment are still stuck in that slavery, confused and oppressed. My potential brothers and sisters. I feel the oppression in their souls because I was there myself. I pray for them to be free. But I know that the Lord will not abandon anyone who truly turns to Him completely. He didn't abandon me. I know that however much I yearn for the liberation of these souls who can be free but who are now trapped in the oppression of the evil empire, G-d is jealous for them more.

Despite everything, despite all the things Mankind has done, despite all the turnings back to Egypt, He hasn't given up. He had a plan for Man, He always did, and He always wins in the end.