12 Years a Slave, 12 Tribes of Israel.

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(ThyBlackMan.com) The time is upon us. The gods, as they were, are about to walk amongst us again as Gods of Egypt’s theatrical release is this week. First there was Exodus: Gods and Kings. I guess we were supposed to turn a blind eye because Moses’ titular role was played by a bloke named Christian. I’m not buying it; and to be quite frank, I’m tired of all the white-washing…

The cycle of antiquity’s whitewashing has cycled around to us yet again as Hollywood’s #OscarsSoWhite machine ramps up to for another retelling of his-tory to be spoon fed to yet another generation of Americans… only this time it’s different.

This time, enough Generation X’ers have tired of the bitter, rubbery taste in our mouths that’s come from so many other spoon-feedings we were subject in our childhood. This time, enough movies such as The Prince of Egypt (yes, a cartoon – a cartoon that flooded the pages with beige Egyptians), 12 Years a Slave and the recently purchased The Birth of a Nation (a film about the slave revolution of Virginia as led by Nat Turner) have been financed and gaining commercial success and critical acclaim as to cause a bit of thoughtful acid reflux as opposed to the normal reaction of blindly accepting and regurgitating “historical” facts. This tim godsofegypt e, we have added the geographical location plus the chronological placement minus the excuse of a once insufficient pool of minority actors. This time, we’ve come to the conclusion that something is just not adding up. This time, the next generation (the Millennials) has a chance to digest this new math (and I’m not talking about common core, either!) and reject the old regime of thinking.

They have been prepared for this, though. From shows such as A.D.: The Bible Continues depicting Jesus’ twelve disciples to be as culturally diverse as the neighborhoods within New York’s 5 boroughs to the movie Risen which CLEARLY and correctly portrays Jesus as a beige middle-eastern brother (even going as far as abandoning the anglicized pronunciation of his name in lieu of the Hebrew “Yeshua” and casting an actor to portray Him who is “dark” enough to have played Arabians and Pablo Escobar in past movies); history is being retold with a slant towards actual truth.

Yet… the old regime hangs on to bait racism and stir the pot. Yet and still, there are people posting things like this:

2016-slavery

So let’s address the white elephant in the room, shall we? Yes. Slavery existed in the Bible. Yes. So called Christians used its existence to justify treating other humans as less-than-human property. But… NO – this is not grounds to reject Christianity all together. Jesus Himself said that a day shall come to pass when people will say “Did we not perform miracles in Your name and cast out devils in Your name?” and His response will be “Depart from me you who work iniquity (that is, generational, in-born sin) for I never knew you.” (Matthew 7:22-23)

There are many Christians who have not become educated disciples of Christ whom Jesus has and will continue to denounce though they profess to be doing acts in His name.

We are called to subject ourselves to the SEAT of authority established by God which circumvents the perverse nature of those who just so happen to occupy the seat itself. Much like Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers but was ultimately set up to deliver his family from famine and allow God’s chosen people to prosper in a foreign land (Egypt) that would later become their place of bondage – what man meant for evil, God can, will and does use for good (Genesis 50:20). The good that God did within slavery was to perpetuate the need to overcome evil with the Good News of the Gospel. In fact, it was Egypt’s FEAR that the nation of Israel would overpower them that caused a lesser-godless nation to enslave the nation of the LIVING God: putting undo burdens upon them (like building up THEIR kingdom) to crush their spirit and thwart their growth… to no avail:

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel. So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor. – Exodus 1:8-14 NKJV

Sound familiar? It should. That is the story of American slavery in a nutshell. That is however, NOT the story of indentured servitude as outlined in the Bible. Egypt intended to crush and demean the morale of the Israelites out of 1) fear of Israel’s strength and 2) insecurity regarding Egypt’s own frailty in comparison. There was no clear end to such oppression in such an evil mindset.

God had an entirely different system in mind when He gave His chosen people the concept of a slave and master. If a man found himself in debt to another man but had no means to pay him in livestock, agricultural or monetary trade, he would give himself or a member of his family over to the person he owed the debt to so that said debt could be paid off. At the point of payoff, the family member that served to work off the debt was given back to their family. They were REDEEMED.

Now before I continue, I must note that right now is the Year of Jubilee according to Hebrew customs. The Year of Jubilee is especially celebratory for one reason: it was written that old debts were to be erased every seven years (culminating in a SUPER Jubilee, of sorts, every 7th cycle constituting 49 years… which is what we’re in RIGHT NOW):

And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. – Leviticus 25:10

So let’s say you owed a debt to your neighbor that you began working off. If the debt had not been paid by the seventh year, you were allowed to return to your family, debt-free. There was a clear-cut end to your servitude in the righteous mind of God and His people:

If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. – Exodus 21:2 NKJV

Though this exists under the old covenant/law, the principle became a shadow of things to come. The new testament established by Christ works the exact same way. Thanks to Adam and Eve, we were born into sin (specifically, we were born with iniquity – that is, generational sin) which means we were born into debt:

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. – Romans 3:23

This debt pays out the ultimate cost/price of death:

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
– Romans 6:23

As such, God came down as His Word made flesh – JESUS a.k.a. YESHUA – meaning “salvation” meaning to “salvage” – served (ministered to) His fallen creation of mankind and took on the penalty of servitude even to the point of death in order to REDEEM us. He served a finite term/sentence to overcome an infinite one: that is, a death sentence. He did so because we had not the resources to pay for our sins on our own. HALLELUJAH. SELAH!

Now, doesn’t that sound like a God that any former slave or offspring of a corrupted slavery system might both identify with and adopt as their own?

But the bigger question remains… did Hollywood actually get it right all these years with Egyptian depictions as portrayed by an old regime of white Americans who capitalized off slavery as the Gods (Pharaohs) of Egypt did? Something to think about or at the very least, a thing that makes you go… hmmm…..