First, thank you for your service. Two of my sons served and did tours in Iraq. Second, I apologize for my brief incoherent reply, but the reason for it was for the lengthy array of ideas you presented which my brain was too tired to ponder. (At the time it was like the old USSR conglomerate of states.) All the same, I reread the essay, and now have, hopefully, a more coherent response: Sometimes we can exclude one concept to make room for another. This is exactly the problem the religious leaders had with John the Baptist and Jesus preaching about repentance, that is turning away from their sinful actions, turning back to God and His ways (the Good News of the kingdom of heaven drawing near.) In fact, they crucified Jesus, because He didn't "fit the bill" which was their concept of the Messiah coming as the conquering King, Son of David. The suffering servant that Jesus was couldn't have been the Messiah. You see, two concepts, the one you expressed and the one of atonement, are both true. They are equal parts of the multifaceted jewel which the Bible presents in complex and complete "meat and potatoes" detail. So, where the Hebrews were redeemed from the oppression of the Pharaoh, we need to be rescued from the oppression, the hurt, the harm, and the enslavement of our sinful nature, receiving salvation and freedom with the gifting of a new nature - not as one of your responders put it as a selfish nature but as a generous nature, doing the works of God and teaching us how to love our neighbors. These two ideas are not disparate and dissimilar but united in the Kingdom of God.