Jeans galore and beers to match at the Self Edge/Style Forum party last night on Valencia St.
After a late dinner of salad and Spanish tortilla–I do make a mean tortilla–Drew and I took a walk down Valencia St. and stopped into Self Edge as the Self Edge/Style Forum party was winding down. I missed the old time motorcycles that Paul d’Orleans had brought over for the event, but was happy to arrive when I did. The chilled-out vibe and not-too-crowded lower level made for easy browsing and an unexpectedly interesting theological debate with Mark Miller, a professor of Catholic Studies at USF.
I approached Mark to compliment him on his rather natty double-breasted chambray blazer, but before long things turned to precisely why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against the Jews as they sought to gain their freedom in Exodus. It’s been on my mind lately as Drew and I prepare for our annual seder this Wednesday, and it seems that God deliberately set up Pharaoh as an adversary to the Jews with no possible chance of his freeing them on his own. Drew made the point that the Exodus story is more about the founding of a nation than anything else, and though it works as a narrative device, it certainly appears that God’s love isn’t available to all when he sets certain people against him. Mark argued that God’s love is available to all–certainly a more embracing Catholic notion than the chosen people mentality of the Old Testament–but in my view he didn’t fully satisfy the question. He talked about Pharaoh turning away from God and essentially hardening his own heart, but I still read it as the first step in a display of God’s power to and for the Israelites (the plagues, parting the Red Sea) not to all of his creations.
Another element of the Exodus story with which I have always struggled is how Pharaoh’s magicians managed to perform some of the same feats as Moses and Aaron, such as turning their staffs into snakes. On what power do the magicians draw? Demons, their own gods? If there are no other gods than the God of Israel, and Exodus is certainly His book, whence the ability to turn staffs into snakes unless it is in fact God who is doing it. Considering that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to display his might to his people, certainly doing the covert bidding of the magicians only adds to the theater. Puzzling, and at some level, rather disquieting.
Nonetheless, it was a really fun time so thanks to Kiya at Self Edge and to Style Forum for a fun night.