A Study of the Killing of the FirstBorn.
By: Mr. George D. Patnoe., Jr!
May 1st, 2018.
Like most people who have read the Moses story in the Bible’s book titled, Exodus, it is very common knowledge that there was a warning by Moses before chapter 12 about his warning of the killing of the firstborn in the land of Pharaoh’s Egypt. The warning begins at Exodus 12:4 and it continues until 13:30.
I was sitting in a small room with some twenty grown men who were studying and talking about the Bible. It was my first time in this room with these men and I was basically a silent mind just listening to what everyone had to say because I did not know, well yes I did know in a way, what was going to happen during this Bible study because I know how the common human being studies the Bible.
But as everyone knows, the stories of the Bible seem to be out there somewhere in the past somewhere around 4000 or 2000 years ago and they seem to have nothing to do with the current human condition at all, or so it seems anyway. Some men talked about their children in various ways. But none of their personal children stories had nothing to do with the killing of the firstborn in the Bible’s story in the chapter of Exodus.
That is until one man started to tell his story. The tune of his voice caught my ear enough for my mind to focus on his words, very carefully. His eyes were focused straight ahead, and his face was tight too, like he had been waiting for decades to tell his story of his firstborn to someone who would listen with enough compassion and understanding or just to let his emotions let the tears run down his face with no fear of ridicule.
The short story goes like this. Like all parents who are expecting their first child, everything was going ok until the baby was born premature and only weighing only three pounds, it died within three days after it was born. The man was so mad and angry and who could blame him. But the problem was that he was a man of the Christian faith. But really, when dealing with the birth of a parent’s firstborn, it would seem like any religious faith would be tested if a religious man’s or woman’s firstborn was killed or died any moment that was to early for a baby’s death.
The man stopped three times I think, to let someone else talk, but then he continued his story like after he was trying to catch his breath from running many miles to take a rest or a break. He was taking a rest or break so he could continue with his story, his story about his faith. In short, after his firstborn baby had died only three days after its premature birth, he walked outside the hospital and as he was walking in the parking lot, he basically cursed God for not saving the baby, to allow the baby to live a normal life, even though it weighed only three pounds.
Decades went by until the man’s soul started to have a change of heart. Maybe he had lived so long that the memory was a distant past, even if the pain was still alive. Maybe he realized that God did not kill his baby. Maybe he realized that his Christian faith needed to be restored before he died so hopefully he would see his baby again in a place in the afterlife. It was probably all of these issues and many more.
The important thing was that his face had not moved not one turn as he talked. His face was frozen like his mind had been frozen for decades, but now, in that Bible study room, he was letting himself free from the death of his firstborn, from blaming God for the death of his firstborn, and also freeing himself from the pain that he had been living with for decades because he never saw his firstborn live to be a grownup and live life to life’s fullest possibilities.
I saw the first tears as when he started to choke up at the end of his confession, if it could be called that because he blamed and then cursed God for not saving his baby from death. But now he confessed that he had regained his faith and he asked God for forgiveness for his mental attitude towards the death of his firstborn and to God too.
The other men in the room were silent as the man spoke and told his story about the death of his firstborn. But the silence was nothing compared to their eyes that were glued to the man who had lost his firstborn, and who had to deal with God in his own way, Bible or no Bible. This man’s pain was spreading throughout the room like smoke from a fire and it was touching every man one way or another.
As I sipped my coffee, sweet tea, and water, and I slowly ate my cake, my mind was wandering throughout history and currently around the globe today, at the exact moment that this man’s pain was expressing itself as the pain that millions if not billions of parents of any faith or of no faith experiences whenever their firstborn is killed by a knife, sword, bullet, or bomb because of a religious reason, and even by those people who believe that killing babies in the name of any God is a good thing to do.
How many countless parent’s throughout history on planet earth have experienced the sadness and the pain and suffering from having their firstborn killed and murdered by religious people who truly believe that killing and murdering babies is a good thing to do, even in the current age?
As the tears poured off this man’s face, I looked around for some tissues for him to wipe his eyes dry. When I saw the tissues I stood up and now the attention was on me. I walked over to the tissues and after I grabbed some, I handed the man the tissues and he said thanks to me.
It is to bad that I could not use those tissues to wipe away the religious hate that causes men to kill each other and their newborns in the name of God. Maybe when the human species realizes that if there is a God for the human species, it is love instead of hate. Life instead of death!
When the human species wakes up out its mentally delusional dream belief that killing is a good thing to do, either in the name of God, or just for the fun of it, or for any reason whatsoever, then maybe the human species might have a chance at its survival for its current and future survival!
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