Don KirklandMoses, who was picked for the major role of liberator and lawgiver in God’s great drama of deliverance for his Hebrew people out of bondage in Egypt, still has box-office appeal – and actors generally answer the call to play the hero of the Exodus.
It hardly seems possible that Cecil B. DeMille’s production of “The Ten Commandments” appeared in movie theaters 50 years ago – in 1956. In 1975, Burt Lancaster portrayed Moses in the CBS miniseries “Moses – The Lawgiver,” followed by Ben Kingsley’s interpretation of that pivotal Old Testament character in TNT’s “Moses” in 1996.
In 1998, I joined a group of editors and other religion writers at the newly formed DreamWorks studio in Pasadena, Calif., for a preview showing of that company’s first movie, an animated and musical adaptation of the life of Moses entitled, “The Prince of Egypt,” which was released in December of that year.
Now, ABC television has aired its two-part, four-hour remake of “The Ten Commandments” with Dougray Scott, a Scottish actor who is not widely known in the United States, in the starring role. Not all reviews of the television movie have been complimentary, but Scott, according to Knight Ridder Tribune News Service, has told critics, “I think our film is very realistic. It’s not been prettified.”
Whatever praise, or lack thereof, is due this recent rendition of “The Ten Commandments,” the Bible – in the book of Exodus – still is best at telling the inspiring and instructive story of the life of Moses, which the scriptures present in a manner that is “very realistic” and “not prettified” either.
For the first 40 years of his life, Moses – who at birth was spared a death that was common to other Hebrew boy babies routinely killed in an attempt by the Egyptians to avoid a potential threat from a growing Jewish population – was raised in splendor in Pharaoh’s palace. There, he received the finest academic training available in that day, preparing this prince of Egypt to reach the pinnacles of success.
No doubt, his education in the palace was supplemented by a growing awareness of his own Jewishness and of God’s desire to rescue the Hebrew people from Egyptian slavery and guide them to a land promised to Abraham and his descendants. One day, he killed an Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew slave, thinking, perhaps, that this violent act resulting from righteous indignation might trigger a revolt by the Jews against the Egyptians. If so, his timing was off, and fellow Jews railed against him rather than rallied behind him.
Facing the punishment of death for his action, a frightened Moses fled to the desert and the land of Midian, probably in what now is Saudi Arabia. And so Moses, who had studied under the best teachers Egypt had to offer, had now entered “God’s university” for a 40-year course of study that would turn this impetuous young man – now tending sheep for his father-in-law while raising a family – into a seasoned man of God, prepared for leadership.
As a student in this “school of self-discovery,” Moses was taught by an effective “faculty.” Professor Obscurity taught Moses, a former somebody, to cope with being a nobody in the eyes of others. Professor Time taught him to wait on the Lord. Professor Solitude taught Moses the value of silence and reflection to deepen his understanding of God and of himself. Professor Discomfort prepared him physically and spiritually for the trials that he and the Hebrew people would face in the Exodus itself and during their 40 years in the desert – an area that Moses knew well from his days in exile.
Like Moses, believers at times are required to enter “schools of self-discovery” in a variety of “deserts” – none of them of our own choosing. Far more important than the circumstances of our “down times” and their causes is our response to them. Fear and pride can well up in us, and we defiantly declare, “I don’t need this.” Eventually, fatigue and anxiety may set in, prompting us to complain, “I’m just tired of all this.” However, for the greatest degree of learning to take place, it is necessary, though difficult, for us to say simply, “I accept it.”
Viktor Frankl was a leading Austrian (and Jewish) psychotherapist who was imprisoned by the Nazis during the second World War. Out of his experiences, his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” was born and still is read today. Frankl said this: “Everything can be taken from a man but the last of the human freedoms – the freedom to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
Sometimes, as the popular commercial makes it clear, “life comes at you fast.” And in more instances than most of us want to recall, we did not select some of the situations in which we find ourselves. How well we do in life, with its mix of pinnacles and pitfalls, can be measured by how we react to what God has allowed to happen to us. We can, and should, remain teachable, for we have much to learn about ourselves and our God, whose school is always in session.