What happens when a group of people who have been slaves suddenly becomes free? It is tempting to think that the answer is obvious: freedom means that nobody tells you what to do anymore. Exodus 19–20 suggests something more demanding.
Freedom is not the end of the story. Freedom begins the work of becoming a people. Israel has been brought out of Egypt. Pharaoh no longer owns them. They are no longer defined by bricks, quotas, commands, and the demands of someone else's economy. At Sinai, God asks them to consider something deeper: What kind of people will you become now that you are free?
That question lies underneath the Ten Commandments. They aren't simply ten isolated rules. Together they begin to describe the foundations of a moral community. Have something sacred at the center. Do not turn everything into an idol. Do not use God's name to manipulate or deceive. Make room for Sabbath, for rest, limits, and the recognition that human beings are more than what they produce.
Also honor those who came before you. Protect human life. Be faithful in your relationships. Respect what belongs to your neighbor. Tell the truth about other people and learn to govern your own desires. Seen this way, the commandments aren't primarily about making isolated individuals behave themselves. They are about making it possible for people to live together.
I have been reading Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind recently and his ideas work well with this Exodus reading. Haidt argues that human beings aren't simply rational individuals making independent moral decisions. We are profoundly social creatures. We need shared stories, rituals, loyalties, norms, and sacred commitments to overcome the constant pull of self-interest.
A community needs something that says: There are things we will not do to one another, and that is precisely what Sinai begins to create. Israel is being bound together around the sacredness of YHWH. That binding can produce extraordinary things: trust, solidarity, mutual obligation, generosity, restraint, identity, meaning.
A people can become more than a collection of individuals pursuing their own interests. They can become a community in which each person begins to understand. Our lives are connected. What we do affects one another. Your flourishing is part of mine.
That is one of the beautiful possibilities of morality. There is a danger here, too. The same moral commitments that bind a community together can divide it from everyone outside the community.
Morality both binds and blinds. A sacred community can become a community of compassion and mutual responsibility. It can also become an us that needs a them. The power of religion should therefore not be dismissed. It should be taken seriously. Religion is powerful precisely because it can reach deeper than rules. It can touch identity, belonging, imagination, hope, fear, love, loyalty, and the sense that some things are sacred.
That power can be used for cooperation and healing. It can also be used for exclusion and conflict. So the question isn't simply whether we need moral communities. We do. The deeper question is about what kind of moral community we are creating
Freedom without moral formation doesn't necessarily produce a community. Human beings need shared norms, rituals, stories, loyalties, and sacred commitments if they are going to resist the constant pull of individual self-interest. Reading Exodus adds something extraordinary to that observation. God doesn't simply say: here are the rules necessary to make your society function.
God says: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” That sentence comes first. Relationship comes before regulation. Grace comes before commandment.
God doesn't say, If you keep these rules, I will become your God. God says, in effect: I have already brought you out. I have already claimed you. I have already carried you. Now let us consider what kind of people you will become.
The commandments are the practice of freedom, not a price. They teach formerly enslaved people how to live without becoming another Pharaoh to one another. Consider covenant. Covenant is more than a contract. A contract says: I will do this if you do that. A covenant says: We belong to one another.
If I belong to you, I cannot simply do whatever I want to you. If you belong to me, your suffering cannot be irrelevant to me. If we belong to one another, then truth matters. The dignity of the other person matters.
A great experiment beginning at Sinai, How to turn a collection of liberated individuals into a people capable of living together? The answer is not simply law. They need to share sacredness, ritual, identity, restraint, belonging, and relationship. Exodus adds one word that changes all the others: covenant.
So, what kind of community are we becoming, and can our sense of belonging grow rather than shrink? Can freedom become more than freedom from but freedom for?
For community and for God. We have been liberated. Now, what kind of people will we become in this covenant relationship with God and each other?
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