Thursday, March 19

Scripture: The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, forgetting the Lord their God, and worshiping the Baals and the Asherahs. (Judges 3:7).

Observation: The phrase “the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” shows up several times in the Book of Judges, and each occasion is the signal that another cycle of rebellion and oppression is beginning. The cycle always follows the same pattern: rebellion to oppression to deliverance to repentance. The rebellion is Israel forgetting about God and turning to the gods of the Canaanites. The oppression is the invasion of parts of Israel by neighboring kingdoms, the ensuing defeats in battle, those parts of Israel becoming vassals to the conquering kingdom, and Israel’s taxes and tributes paid to the kingdom. The deliverance is God raising up a judge to lead Israel in battle and victory against the conquering kingdom. As we learned yesterday, the judges were not lawyers but Braveheart-like freedom fighters. Every time God raises up a judge, Israel’s deliverance from foreign occupation becomes a matter of time. The repentance is Israel turning away from the worship of foreign gods and returning to worship of the one true God.

Application: The cycle in Judges - rebellion to oppression to deliverance to repentance – begins with the sin of idolatry. Idolatry is serious. The worship of foreign gods, both in Judges and throughout the Old Testament, always precedes a decline in wellbeing for the people of Israel. Idolatry leads to a general bankruptcy of moral character in the nation; cruelty, corruption, and injustice in government and society at large; and foolish decision-making in dealings with other nations. The problem of idolatry is two-fold: that it happens at all is a sin in that idolatry raises up objects, ideas, social constructs, and people to god-status in a person’s life; and the impact of idolatry is real-world changes in how human beings show up in the world, treat one another, and design societies. Allegiance to God is a virtue-issue. Worshipping God and God alone naturally yields desirable virtues, such as compassion, fairness, equity, and integrity. The reverse is also true: the worship of other gods, which are all false gods, yields undesirable virtues like greed, arrogance, selfishness, corruption, lies, all that is wrong with human civilization. The Book of Judges is a reminder (and a colorful one at that) that faith in God is the bedrock of a healthy society.

Prayer:

Who am I to judge the decision-making of people who have braved and endured and survived and regretted and waded neck-deep through circumstances riddled with complexities and traumas and nuance and errors in judgement and nightmarish coincidences I have never seen or felt? Only You, One above all, may wear the robe of the judge of a creature’s soul; and when You weigh mine in the balance, please show me mercy. Still I know there are ways of being and showing up in the world and treating humans and investing in the exhausting labor of making a civilized world work that are healthier than others, and these ways, these virtues, these postures of the heart, arise from a soul pointed toward You; and I know that when we point our hearts toward ideas and constructs and humans and money and achievements that we, in our weakness, set on the highest rung of the ladder, the place fit only for You, the relationships and character and societies we labored to build crumble and fall, our work now in vain; and I know that I’m more part of the problem of idolatry than the solution, which leads me to fall on my knees and ask for forgives and a stronger backbone and the grace to turn toward You with all my being, for the sake of the world my great-great-great grandchildren will inherit. Onward we go: amen.