Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Welcome back as we resume with our regular program. In this class we rejoin the class at Exodus 7:25 and continue to about 8:11. Below are the verses.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share your thoughts below in the comment area. Thank you and God Bless.
Chapter 7
The Plague of Frogs
25Seven days passed after the Lord struck the Nile.
Chapter 8
1Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. 2If you refuse to let them go, I will send a plague of frogs on your whole country. 3The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. 4The frogs will come up on you and your people and all your officials.’ ”
5Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the streams and canals and ponds, and make frogs come up on the land of Egypt.’ ”
6So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. 7But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.
8Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”
9Moses said to Pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.”
10“Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said.
Moses replied, “It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God. 11The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile.”
Hi, Mr. Footnick!
In this episode, you talk about how if you get rid of the immaterial monotheistic God, then anything and everything can be worshiped. At this, I thought to myself, well if I were a non-monotheist (e.g. a modern pagan), I would probably say to this, “Well, yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
So I guess my question is what IS wrong with that? What can we say is wrong with that other than that it’s not true and other than that God doesn’t want us to do that? Is there anything inherently unethical about polytheism (or non-{immaterial monotheism})?
Great questions!
Short answer, NO – there is nothing inherently unethical about polytheism or non-Ethical Monotheism (material or not).
There are and can be good and ethical individuals who are “atheists”, polytheists, paganists, or universalists. And by the way, there certainly are and have been terribly unethical individuals who claim to be Ethical Monotheists.
What individuals believe (in terms of faith) does not inherently make them good or evil. How the behave does. So if a person believes the great and mighty doorknob demands they not murder, steal, lie, nor do unjust harm to anyone ~ Great! And on the other hand, if someone believes in the God of Israel alone, yet acts disgusting towards his fellow man (God forbid) ~ then that is a tragedy of cosmic proportions.
To answer the other part of your question, “What IS wrong with that?”
While you can have good and morally behaved individuals who are not Ethical Monotheists, you can have a good people (society) who is not rooted in Ethical Monotheism. The Torah is an instruction manual for the individual life and for societal life. It is a HOW TO GUIDE on how to create a good person, as well as a good society. Without the objective, universal morality taught to us by God, and demanded upon us by Him… then individuals are left up to themselves to decide what is good and evil. They can follow their heart, follow false gods, or try to use logic. Hopefully the individual will come up with the right answers ethically, BUT there is NO WAY they can produce a society of morally minded people. Extract society from the roots of God based morality and in one to three generations the society will descend into moral chaos. For more on this you can read Will Herberg’s great analogy of the Cut Flower Culture in his book “Judaism and the Modern Man”.