How the Truth gets Quarantined

God's people Israel heard a bundle of stories over and over and over again in Egypt: Pharaoh is God; work hard and you might deserve some table scraps.  When God drew his people up out of that living death, he took them deep into the wilderness so they would leave behind not only those table scraps but those lies they had heard for four hundred years.  What's fascinating is how over those centuries in Egypt, they didn't simply forget the truth about God and his covenant -- they had quarantined the truth by paying a little lip-service here and there, treating God and their relationship with him as a quant cultural artifact.  How do we do the same thing?  How do we individual and together a church believe a different set of stories (strength in weapons, nationalism, grip our resources of money and time tightly) instead of the faith we have, a faith that teaches that we've been made in the image of God, that he provides for us, and that we are called to steward those resources (our time, our treasure, and even this good Earth)?