We are what we remember. One reason religions have survived in the modern world despite

four centuries of secularization is that it answers the three questions. Every

reflective human being will ask at some time in his or her life, who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? These cannot be answered by the four

great institutions of the modern West, science, technology, the market economy, and the liberal

democratic state. Science tells us how, but not why.

Technology gives us power, but cannot tell us how to use that power.

The market gives us choices, but doesn't tell us which choices to make.

The liberal democratic state as a matter of principle holds back from endorsing any particular way of life. The result is that contemporary

culture sets before us an almost infinite range of possibilities. But it doesn't tell us who we are,

why we are here, or how we should live. Yet these are fundamental questions. Moses' first question

to God in their first encounter at the burning bush was,

Who am I? Of course, the plain sense of the verse is that it was a rhetorical question,

who am I to undertake the extraordinary task of leading an entire people to freedom?

But beneath the plain sense was a genuine question of identity. Don't forget that Moses had been brought up

by an Egyptian princess, the daughter of Pharaoh. When he rescued Jethro's daughters from the local

Midianite shepherds, they went back and told their father, an Egyptian man delivered us. Moses

looked and spoke like an Egyptian. He then married Cipora, one of Jeff

Throes's daughters, and spent decades in Midian as a shepherd. Now, the chronology isn't entirely

clear, but since he was a relatively young man when he went to Midian and was 80 years old,

when he started leading the Israelites, he must have spent most of his adult life with his

Midianite father-in-law tending the sheep. So when he asked God, who am I? Beneath the surface,

there was a real question, am I an Egyptian, or a Midianite, or a Jew? By upbringing, he was an

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