A child of two worlds (Exod 2:1-10)

As a little girl I lived in India for three and a half years and was exposed to a very different world than Hungary (then a Communist country), where I spent the rest of my childhood. My family upbringing reinforced that difference further, so that stepping out of the door of my house in Budapest was like entering a foreign country every day as I went to school. Adults can experience displacement after living abroad as well, though it is more acute for children whose worldview and identity are still evolving and who absorb perspectives both from their home context and their host culture. Such children are known as TCKs (third-culture kids): out of two (or more) different cultures they create a unique third.[1]  

The story of Moses’s childhood has fascinated me ever since I realised that he, too, was a TCK! He may not have remembered much of his early life when he was nursed by his mother (though in the ancient world this was anything between 3-5 years), but it forever made him a man of two worlds. He would have experienced being an outsider in both worlds, while having a foot in each, and would have known the pull of loyalties and the feeling of not fully belonging to either. This quality that set him apart, however, was also his asset. Israel’s history in the wilderness suggests that Moses’s own people had a slave mentality forever harking back to the security of living in Egypt (e.g., Exod 16:3; Num 11:4-6) and it took a generation dying in the wilderness to shed that outlook. As a prince, Moses had a different stance. Being taught the justice system of the ancient Near East, he had a free, educated man’s perspective and understanding of right and wrong and could more readily absorb God’s revealed Law later, which was an improvement on the common foundation of justice he was already trained in.[2] Reading the Exodus story as a Christian, it is striking how this early saviour of God’s people from physical slavery also shares characteristics of another Saviour who was both King (John 18:37) and yet made Himself a slave (Phil 2:6). Having a foot in both worlds, Jesus could identify with our weaknesses and, at the same time, save us out of our bondage.

Moses’s story teaches us that we are not inherently ready at birth for God’s purposes. If that were so, God could have just hidden Moses until it was time for him to emerge as leader. Rather, God preserves Moses’s life in such a way that his experiences will contribute to the potential he was born with in making him the leader God wants him to be. Most of us carry experiences and burdens from our upbringing and even adult life that are painful, and we wish we could have done without them. How we respond and work through these will affect the kind of people we become. We may take encouragement, however, that God can weave even the darker threads into the tapestry of our lives, so that we may serve Him according to His purposes.

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[1] Missionary or army children who move from base-to-base, most obviously fit the TCK category, but there are others, and with globalisation, their number is growing. Many in a minority sub-culture can likewise relate to this without ever leaving their country. A helpful book on the TCK experience is T.C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, Third-Culture Kids: Growing up among Worlds, rev. ed.(Boston: Nicholas Brealey, 2009).

[2] The Mosaic Law has some striking similarities with Hammurabi’s Law Code, which seems to have been known in Egypt at this time. Thus, there was a common foundation in the ancient Near East about the basics of justice. This is not to suggest that Moses simply improved on these and presented that to Israel, rather that the Law God revealed to Israel had some important points of contact with how justice was understood in their world.