This was originally posted as a column on the Grandin Media website.
Last week, a student reminded me of a Bible passage I’ve wrestled to understand. During the leadup and the eventual escape of the Israelites from Egypt from Egypt, we read multiple times that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, with dire consequences. For example, in Exodus 14:8, the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart results in the death of much of the Egyptian army. At first glance, this passage seems to imply that God acted to ensure the death of those Egyptian soldiers – and it’s led me to wonder how it could be that the God who is love would deliberately set into motion events that would cost so many lives. I’ve typically answered others’ questions on this (why would God…?) by explaining that God allowed Pharaoh’s heart to become hard. We see this even today, as God often allows us the exercise of free will even when it brings great evil in our own lives, and in the lives of others.
It’s often felt like an incomplete answer.
Last week’s discussion last week led me to a particularly helpful discussion of this question by writer Mark Shea. Shea discusses the effect of God “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart in the context of fire:
Fire will go on being and doing what it is and does, and our God is a consuming fire. If the wet clay wifully (sic) confronts the fire, the wet clay will become hard, not because the fire is putting mind control whammy on the clay, but because the fire is what it is.
Echoing Hebrews 12:29, Mark Shea comments that “our God is a consuming fire.” Psalm 29:7 tells us that “the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.” The implication here is that as it is with fire, a close encounter with God necessarily leaves the human heart transformed. Having spent ten years involved with Scouts Canada growing up, I learned a lot about fire. One of the skills I needed to demonstrate before being fully initiated as a Scout was the ability to light a fire using only 2 matches and natural supplies I found in and around our campsite (ie: no paper, cardboard, or flammable accelerants.) Those ten years also taught me to have a healthy respect for fire, because this great tool which had the ability to keep us warm, to cook our food, and to provide ambience for our evenings also had the ability to harm and to destroy. (We saw this clearly on the night our zeal to stoke a fire nearly burned our campsite to the ground.) The difference between the two applications of fire – that it can hurt us or help us – has less to do with the fire itself and much more to do with what we expose to fire, and how that exposure takes place. In any case, there is very little in this world that can have a close encounter with fire, and leave unchanged.
It’s easy to see that just as fire warms, cooks, and provides ambience, an encounter with God often becomes the catalyst for a life of devotion. We see this in the call of Abraham, St. Paul’s blindness, St. Augustine’s encounter with scripture, and St. Therese of Lisieux’s “little way.” In all of these – and in so many others – we can recognize that it was an encounter with the fire of God’s love that has served as a starting point for their lives of faith.
But on the other hand, we have stories like that of Pharaoh during the Exodus. We can see that God provided him a number of signs and potential moments of encounter. But instead of softening his heart, Pharaoh’s heart became harder – not because of a deliberate action of God’s, but because like fire, encountering God leaves us necessarily changed. And while it’s clear that Pharaoh’s actions are the results of his own free choices (which God does allow), what is also clear is that the cumulative effect of Pharaoh’s choices both in the Exodus story and beyond it are that Pharaoh’s heart is not disposed to be positively impacted by an encounter with the Lord.
This is why the Psalms also offer us encouragement not to harden our hearts after hearing the voice of God (Psalm 95:8). It’s also why I take so much solace in the writings of Ezekiel, where God promises to renew and restore us: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). It’s a good reminder for those of us who struggle to listen to God’s voice and who, in turn, struggle with hearts that seem to be a bit hard… we are not beyond the reach of the God who is love.