Our Appetite for Slavery

Freedom requires us to embrace risk and responsibility, which is why the welfare state is so appealing

Every day I read the Bible until something leaps off the page at me.

Then I stop and turn it over and over in my mind like a cow chewing the cud - breaking it down until it’s digestible.

I write down my thoughts on whatever it says to me that day, because speaking makes plain, but writing makes precise.

Recently I started sharing my daily Bible reading thoughts with paid subscribers who wanted in on them. It’s just a quick thought every day to get your mind focused on things that really matter.

If you’d like to receive these every day it’s all part of your paid subscription to the James Macpherson Report.

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Here’s a taster from today’s …

Exodus 14v11-12

They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?

“Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

The Israelites had only been free for five minutes and were already regretting it.

One taste of freedom and they had an insatiable appetite for slavery!

It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so common.

In Egypt the Israelites were slaves, but at least they didn’t have to make any major decisions.

Their slave masters established their work hours, set their rations and kept them more or less safe.

But now, as free men, they were alone in a vast wilderness. And they had decisions to make. So many decisions.

Which way would they turn?

Would they need to fight?

What if things didn’t work out?

How would they protect the women and children?

The numerous unknowns made them hanker for the certainty of servitude. If only the Egyptians could be responsible for them again.

This would not be the last time the Israelites wished for slavery. Time and time again, as they pursued freedom, they remembered slavery with a certain fondness.

Don’t think them strange.

How many people today love the servitude of welfare and vote every three years for a those offering big government.

People who have known nothing but slavery grow to love slavery without even realising it.

This is one of the reasons that welfare becomes generational.

Freedom is exhilarating, but it is hard.

It means taking risks. And most of all it means taking responsibility.

Moses liberated the Israelites only to then have the Israelites turn against him.

They preferred the cold, smothering embrace of Pharaoh to the freedom and trust offered by Moses.

Leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians!

A Promised Land awaited the Israelites, but it would require them to make hard decisions and to take personal responsibility.

The temptation to return to Pharaoh’s welfare state was almost overwhelming.

As we will see in the next few days, Moses had to convince the Israelites that they were created for freedom rather than for welfare.

And that only by daily embracing responsibility and risk - rather than servitude and the allure of safety - would they ever truly be human.

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