Exodus

Sometimes in life we are called to leave a place or a state of being for the freedom that waits on the other side. The journey is the Exodus and the other side is the Promised Land.

The route by which I escaped Africa was a forced exodus, by men and women seeking their own interests in maintaining the reputation and integrity of an institution. They said that coming home would be easier because life in Africa was difficult. The goal was to move on and find some sort of freedom of living in a more comfortable land. I have not found that freedom, and Africa is a part of my center. It didn’t die with the Exodus. In fact, the Exodus made me realize that Africa had become home.

Some have tried to get me to make another Exodus, to abandon a part of my identity because it is controversial. What they don’t understand is that I can never escape my identity and the man I’ve developed into. I’ve learned that this kind of Exodus is deemed unethical by the profession in which I am entering, and I respect that perspective. I can understand the difficulties that some have with combining their religious ethics with those ethics set up by professional disciplines, but it’s an open-mindedness that allows us to be more realistic about the world we live in. What is religion anyway? How much longer will religion survive?

“I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.” –Orleanna Price, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible

“Religions commit suicide when they find their inspiration in dogma.” –Alfred North Whitehead

The story of life is the story of many exoduses and the freedom that is found beyond the journey. But which is more important, the journey or the destination? Remember, the Promised Land is unfamiliar territory to most.

I do suppose I need a religion. The people I respect the most have one, and they still suffer. Maybe religion is suffering. Maybe Love is suffering. Maybe Freedom doesn’t come without suffering. In searching for a religion, I’ll start with this: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27.