Sandbox: Israel vs. The World
Written on July 9, 2025
I’ve been rereading the Old testament again recently and realized that it’s easy to fall into the perspective of, the people of Israel are the “good guys” of the story and everyone else (Philistines, Egypt, Babylonians, etc) are the “bad guys.” (I mean those people also did some horrendous things so it is justified to call them the bad guys) After all, it is written “Israel, are my people,” says the Lord. Which makes it clear. However, if God is a god of love and all people are His creation, why would he ‘side’ with one body of people over another?
Let’s take Moses and the Pharaoh incident. Moses tries to free his people but God hardens Pharaoh’s heart to the point it leads to death. Death of the first born sons and ultimately death to Pharaoh during the collapse of the Red Sea. As a Christian, when we read this we are obviously rooting for the freedom of Israel, but if we were to take a moment to zoom out, the people of Egypt especially the children, are still people - God’s children, God’s creation.
If God is love and His mission is to reconcile himself to the world of man, how do we reconcile this action? And again, this is just one example of many in the Bible where he allows and even calls for the destruction of many people groups. My question isn’t so much of why God does this, but to understand what does this reveal about God?
Aside from the moral or theological approach and that God has claimed Israel as his people, so naturally he is on their ‘side’… As I try to wrap my head around it I can’t help but see so much GRACE in all of this.
Bear with me.
Imagine kids in a sandbox playing with a variety of toys. Inevitably, two or more kids will cross paths and fight over one toy. Naturally, a parent will eventually intervene and attempt to explain the concept of sharing.
“But it’s mine! I got it first!”
”It’s my turn! You had your turn!”
The parent, “You had it for 2 minutes, now let the other kid play with it for 2 minutes.”
“But he played with it already, longer and now it’s mine!” Etc. Etc.
You can see where this goes, round and round. At this point, the parent has two choices:
One - take the toy away all together, grab their kid and leave the sandbox ending the play day altogether.
Tw0 - submit to the absurd rules that these kids have created in their tiny concept of what sharing is, but with grace and patience, add principles to their concepts that bring peace, agreement, and hopefully some sort of a lesson through all this. Ending the altercation with children learning a valuable new lesson and the joy of continuing their play day in the sandbox.
Within our broken world, fallen in sin, we live in a world of domination, finite resources, pride of nations, conflict, and consequences. Now, God could just take everything away, ending the “play day”. We all know that would be easiest and just. However, the way I see it, the fact that we are still here existing and that the world is still turning, shows me God’s magnificent love, grace, and patience.
When reading Bible stories like these, it’s our human reaction to misinterpret and only see a God of favoritism, wrath, war, and domination. I think that’s short-sided. If we knew all that God knew, about time, fate, hearts of men, etc. I can’t help but see a God who is willing to adjust his magnificence to our simplistic rules of this fallen world. That within these stupid rules of the world, God slips in (literally, if we think of how we came down as Jesus Christ into our world) adding his principles, pushing us to make better choices, helping us to see things within the realm of this world that we must live under.
He’s allowing us to participate and partner with him to care for this world. Giving us the opportunity to continue the play day in our sandbox.
