Let The Marginalized Go

Listen up fellow white people, I’m gonna get preachy.

Exodus is about God’s fierce determination to free his people from bondage no matter the cost. As the parable goes, Moses asked of Pharaoh: “Let my people go.” Pharaoh was unmoved. So God sent plagues upon Egypt, each more severe than the last, to convey the message more forcefully. Pharaoh was still unmoved. Eventually God killed the firstborn son in every Egyptian family, including Pharaoh’s own child. Finally, Pharaoh relented. *He would not be moved until violence befell his OWN child.* The Israelites fled. But soon thereafter Pharaoh’s heart hardens again & he sends his army to recapture God’s people. As we all learned, God then parted the Red Sea to save the Israelites & doom the Egyptians.

None of this actually happened—there is no archaeological evidence of the exodus. Yet many evangelicals who promote the historicity of the exodus, & even defend God’s use of mass child killings to liberate Israel, are also complaining about the nationwide protests against fascism & ICE snatching human beings off the streets.

“Looting is unacceptable.”

“That’s not the proper way.”

“They are so angry.”

“Violence never solved anything.”

“They lit a car on fire!”

These same folks usually ignore Juneteenth. Today we remember that on 6/19/1865 Union troops rode into Galveston, TX & informed the enslaved that they were now free. A war had been fought over whether or not the Bible (& therefore God) sanctioned slavery. Many thousands died brutal deaths, not unlike a mass drowning in the Red Sea, & when it was over, finally, the slaves, like the Israelites, walked free. Logic would dictate that the exodus story would make evangelicals enthusiastic about Juneteenth! It’s a very similar story! But no. White evangelicals ignore it, or worse, celebrate the confederacy.

Let me get this all straight: Israel’s liberation was so vital that God was justified in using frogs, locusts, blood rivers, child murder, and drownings to make it happen, but Black liberation is negligible or even undesirable? And it’s okay for GOD to do WHATEVER IT TAKES (including killing!) to get his liberation message across, but it’s not okay for Americans—citizens or not—to be righteously enraged & speak “the language of the unheard” because FAMILIES ARE BEING RIPPED APART on the regular & PEOPLE ARE BEING SENT TO CONCENTRATION CAMPS at the direction of a fascist government?!

How can white evangelical Christians declare the importance of the exodus but downplay or reject Juneteenth? How can they assert that the exodus absolutely happened the way the Bible says it did, & that God was totally justified in taking batshit extreme measures to save his people from their oppressor, & then in their next breath criticize Americans for taking FAR LESS extreme measures to save themselves from *their* oppressor?

White evangelicals are confused about *who they are* in the exodus story. White evangelicals have wrongly identified with Israel, but they/WE are not Israel. We are Egypt. We’re not Moses in this metaphor; we’re Pharaoh! We are not Israel—we are Babylon. We👏🏻are👏🏻not👏🏻Israel—we are Rome. The persecution complex must go because we are not the persecuted, but the persecutor.

By reading our Bibles with our white selves at the center, we co-opt the liberation message that was NEVER ABOUT US & convince ourselves that WE need saving from the marginalized, when in reality the marginalized need saving from us.

It’s never been about liberation. It’s about a racial hierarchy. That is why Juneteenth is “meh” for white people. That is why they’re cool with Trump’s minions destroying people’s lives—because they’re brown people. They only care about the biblical exodus because they wrongly think it’s about saving THEM.

Fellow white people—we will always be the Pharaoh in this story. Maybe we “get it” much more than we used to. Maybe we are quite aware that we are the oppressor & not the oppressed. But tossing out whitemalegod (credit: Christena Cleveland) or a whitewashed Bible (that’s what inerrancy is — white supremacy exploiting sacred text) is far easier than plucking off all the bad fruit those things plant in our souls.

Let’s never stop asking: how is my heart hardened? How am I failing to listen? How am I unmoved by dehumanization until it gets too close to home? How am I falling prey to the supremacist belief that my freedom is the only freedom that matters? How am I centering myself as a Moses instead of meditating on the truth that I am Pharaoh?

You know who gets to identify with the exodus message of liberation? The immigrant community. The Black community. THEY are Israel. THEY need freedom from bondage. THEY get to say LET MY PEOPLE GO.