Our chapel service here is twice a week. I failed to publish my reflection of last Tuesday's chapel. I think I am still affected by the flagging of the self-imposed policemen here on Hive. I felt demotivated to write for almost a week. I was tempted to respond immediately to such a careless disciplinary action. However, after careful consideration, I decided to delay it until now.

The speaker this morning in our chapel service is a Singaporean. He is my colleague in the Ph.D. ICS program. His name is Lawrence Ko.

His text this morning is based on Hebrews 11:23-29. He talked about Moses, the three periods in his life (40 years in the palace, 40 years in the wilderness, and 40 years in pilgrimage to the Promised Land). His sharing is rich in exegetical insights, and he sprinkled bits of application once in a while.

As usual, while listening, I tried to do my own exegesis of the passage. It was actually this style of analysis that the hivewatchers flagged my content last week as AI-generated. I don't know if I will be flattered or annoyed by such an assessment from this Hive policeman. If my content is really that good to be mistaken as AI-generated, how come only 70 Hivians upvoted my content? And those votes don't count in the eyes of the downvoters, perhaps because they are actions from a curation trail.

Moreover, I am also suspicious that these watchmen don't know anything about biblical exegesis and that's why they consider this style of writing as strange and cannot be performed by humans. Nevertheless, let me go to the exegesis of our text this morning.

Civil Disobedience Inspired by Faith

The theme is about faith. From a closer scrutiny, the concept of faith of the author of Hebrews is unpopular in our days. We are told that the parents of Moses defied the order of the most powerful king of that time by faith. This is the equivalent of civil disobedience in our time. This tells us that heads of the state do not have absolute power. Only God has such power, and the powers exercised by rulers of the nations are delegated from on high. This idea is popular in Calvinism.

Abraham Kuyper, in his lectures on Calvinism, devoted the 3rd chapter to expounding the relationship between Calvinism and politics. In that chapter, he argued that Calvinism is a political faith and its recovery is badly needed in our time to arrest the destructive consequences of political extremes on both sides. On the one side, we have popular sovereignty exemplified in anarchism that doesn't want to do anything with any concept of civil government. The other side is the threat of tyranny or totalitarianism inspired by the idea of state sovereignty. Both sides, though epistemologically conscious or not, direct or indirect, seem to claim divinity for themselves.

Hiding in the sense of our text is not prompted by cowardice; it is actually the opposite - an act of defiance! Generally speaking, hiding is typically associated with fear. However, the act of Moses' parents to hide their son is a courageous one. It is a political challenge against the throne of Egypt.

Rejecting Power and Wealth by Faith

The second action prompted by faith is done by Moses himself. This time, it is an act of refusal not only of power but also of prestige, pleasure, and treasures offered by Egypt.

In our time, with the popularity of the prosperity gospel movement, the phrase "name it and claim it" is considered an act of great faith. By declaring positive affirmations, one can claim wealth and power. Moses' rejection of power and wealth by faith would be considered anomalous in this movement. I think it will be even misjudged as an act of unbelief.

Everybody loves to become rich and famous. How come Moses refused those in his day? Instead, he "preferred to suffer with God's people." He even believed that suffering with God's people is equivalent to suffering "for the Messiah and was worth far more than all the treasures" that Egypt could offer.

Such an act of faith would be considered insanity in our time. Choosing suffering as an act of faith? That is unthinkable for many.

Deliverance from Tyranny by Faith

Finally, those who exercised this type of faith that brought them deliverance were the Israelites as a nation - the generation of Moses. We see here that miracles occupy a special place in biblical narrative, something that modernists and naturalists could not accept. It is actually a story like this, the crossing of "the Red Sea as if on dry land," that made many dismiss the Bible as a myth. In their worldview, such a supernatural event has no place. This is the logical outcome of a philosophy based on an empirico-scientific worldview.

A few remarks concerning hivewatchers as I conclude this article:

• I have nothing against what you're doing, flagging content as plagiarized. However, in doing such a task, you need to be extra cautious if your actions really aim for the good of the network. If you cannot do your task cautiously, what is the real reason why your account was created in the first place?

• This is not the first time you did this. This is what they call a false positive. The first time, you accused me of plagiarizing my own content. That was resolved when I connected my WordPress blog to that article that you mistakenly assumed was plagiarized. The second time you frightened our registrar. You did not consider that her account was less than a week old. The third time, you expected me not to pay attention to @davideownzall's comments claiming that he too was a plagiarizer. You informed me that the reason why I didn't receive my HIVE rewards was because I was upvoting his comments. I don't understand the logic behind that action. I thought the aim of discipline is for restoration. Even though he was making sensible comments, your logic tells me to ignore him, though I was clueless as to the details of his offense. And the last time, you told me that there was "reasonable evidence" that my article was AI-generated. I responded to you that the burden of the proof lies on your hands, but instead of responding with a proof, you just edited your comment and removed that phrase "reasonable evidence."