Vol. 2, No. 22 – 5-28-2017
In those days there was no king in Israel, so the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. Judges 21:25
Do you ever kind of cheat when you read a novel by looking at the end? You always expect the hero to step in and save the beauty, marry her, and carry her off on a glorious white horse.
Judges ends in a real disappointment. There is backsliding, and the nation is in the pits after 350 years. There is constant failure of leaders; yet, God’s frequent mercy prevails. A major problem, however, develops; there is division in the land.
It is not as if it is uncommon. We have seen this throughout the world. Think of North and South Korea, the U.S. North and South, the Mid-East and the West. Among the divisions comes charismatic leaders; not necessarily those of integrity. Today there is great political and ethical division in our nation.
Johanus Naisbitt conjectured the directions for the 1100 B.C. era in a book, Megatrends 1000. In his imagination, he wrote, “We possess the tools and capacity to build utopia here and now.” Whistling in the dark is nothing new.
An article in The Humanist (easy to decipher the zine’s intent) proposes to rewrite The Beatitudes:
Blessed are those who have absolute faith in nothing save the “self’ of consciousness within them. The Humanist, Gerard Staub, 1989.
Speculation, humanism, and Gnosticism do not play well into the formation of true leadership. Even Israel did not do well some 3000 years ago, attempting to live out life in imaginations. D.R. Davis remarked:
They were the days when a nation was out of control, the days when the dictates of every man’s own [thoughts] formed the standard for life, in the days when they desperately needed Godly leadership.
Everyone did what they wanted to do from their own eyes. That was the standard that governed leadership (and therefore following leaders and those below them). These leaders wanted to call the shots; be the ultimate authority. In effect, they chose to act in God’s place, their Creator. They declared their own independence. They took the nation into a state of disorder, then to utter chaos. The nation became like a blob of Silly Putty—squeezed, shaped, molded, and rearranged in any way the leader wanted. If the rules/laws needed to change to get the leader’s desire, the leader changed the rules/laws or simply ignored them.
Sounds like the most recent eight years of U.S. Government Administration. But then, it also sounds a lot like institutional and business leadership as well. Note the massive numbers of bankruptcies of former solid businesses that used to operate with integrity.
Judges is a miserable book, and it continues to reflect the state of our world today.
Thoughts:
- The only thing that can bring nations back is to submit to the Creator, Who created the people
- The only way nations can progress is through obedience to the One who is full of integrity, knowledge, justice, and knows the thoughts, words, and actions of every leader, following leader, and all others
- Nations that refuse to submit to the absolute authority and truth of God ultimately fail, dragging their downtrodden with them
Godliness exalts a nation; sin is a reproach to any people. Proverbs 14:34
