Reason #705
I finished reading Judges last night. It appears that I may very well have to turn my year goal of reading the bible into a year and a half... or two. Anyway, I think I will gain momentum as I am starting to get into the good stuff. More stories and less laws and measurements.
Last night's reading was a little rough. Basically, a whole tribe of Israel got annihilated because they raped and beat to death an innocent girl in their attempts to rape some town visitors, one of which was her husband. He takes her body and cuts it up into 12 pieces. He sends one to each of the 12 tribes of Israel, thus prompting them to punish the tribe of Benjamin for their horrible actions. After a few intense battles, accompanied by a whole lot of deaths, a majority of the tribe is wiped out. The Israelites are concerned, however, about the survivors having wives, but none of the other tribes want to offer up their daughters in marriage. They decide it would just be best for the survivors to get wives by kidnapping women for themselves, which is exactly what they did. Yep, all that is in the bible. I am not making a bit of that up. In fact, that's just a short synopsis of the insanity. I'm pretty sure when I read this kind of stuff, I have a hard time finding anything good to dwell on. I am glad I wasn't in search of comfort when I whipped out my bible last night.
The thing about scripture is that it always sheds some sort of light. Of course, the end of Judges is more depressing and horrifying than anything, but I made note of one verse was in there twice. "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit." (Judges 21:25) No wonder. No wonder all sorts of immorality, idolatry, and corruption was going on. Israel had no standards. They had no leader, obviously, either. But the thing is, Israel knew who God was. They knew the law. They knew wrong from right, but it seems that they didn't care. No one was there holding them responsible, living out the example for them and making sure they were following suit, so they did what they wanted. And we might look at Israel and excuse their behavior since they were "king-less," but the truth is, they knew. Deep down, they knew what was right, they just chose to do different.
I think we fall guilty of that don't we? We fall into the "group mentality" way of acting and thinking, and if everyone else is doing it, then it must not be that bad. And, if no one is there to correct us, and if we can get away with it, then we usually do it. Plus, we can play ignorant if something comes up. We'll pretend we didn't know because no one was there telling us. No one was showing us, at that moment, what we needed to do. No one was stopping us or redirecting us, so how were we supposed to know?
Even though Israel was without a king, they weren't without a God. And although they may have used that as an excuse, they knew better. Notice it didn't say, "Israel was without a king, therefore they did not know what to do." It says that they did what they wanted to do. And even though they didn't have a physical leader among them to set their moral compass, they had the knowledge of right and wrong. They knew God's laws, they knew God's desires for their lives, and if they were to forget, well, it was written down. And as I read through this, I thought about how often we use those around us as our excuse to do what we want. Sure, we know what God is asking of us, but we play dumb. We let our peers determine our behavior, and then we also blame them when things go wrong. But what if we just did what we knew God was asking of us regardless of what everyone else was doing? What if we looked to God's word for direction rather than depending on someone else to be our moral compass? Because when we do what we want, things usually go awry. We can expect destruction when we stop following God's word and start following our own selfish desires. It may just affect us, or it may affect an entire nation. And so we can learn from Israel, especially the tribe of Benjamin, and we can save ourselves a lot of pain and heartache if we'll just cling to what we know, live it out, and hold tight to God's commands.
#705 - Because we're never without our God.
"But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to keep his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.” - Joshua 22:5
Last night's reading was a little rough. Basically, a whole tribe of Israel got annihilated because they raped and beat to death an innocent girl in their attempts to rape some town visitors, one of which was her husband. He takes her body and cuts it up into 12 pieces. He sends one to each of the 12 tribes of Israel, thus prompting them to punish the tribe of Benjamin for their horrible actions. After a few intense battles, accompanied by a whole lot of deaths, a majority of the tribe is wiped out. The Israelites are concerned, however, about the survivors having wives, but none of the other tribes want to offer up their daughters in marriage. They decide it would just be best for the survivors to get wives by kidnapping women for themselves, which is exactly what they did. Yep, all that is in the bible. I am not making a bit of that up. In fact, that's just a short synopsis of the insanity. I'm pretty sure when I read this kind of stuff, I have a hard time finding anything good to dwell on. I am glad I wasn't in search of comfort when I whipped out my bible last night.
The thing about scripture is that it always sheds some sort of light. Of course, the end of Judges is more depressing and horrifying than anything, but I made note of one verse was in there twice. "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit." (Judges 21:25) No wonder. No wonder all sorts of immorality, idolatry, and corruption was going on. Israel had no standards. They had no leader, obviously, either. But the thing is, Israel knew who God was. They knew the law. They knew wrong from right, but it seems that they didn't care. No one was there holding them responsible, living out the example for them and making sure they were following suit, so they did what they wanted. And we might look at Israel and excuse their behavior since they were "king-less," but the truth is, they knew. Deep down, they knew what was right, they just chose to do different.
I think we fall guilty of that don't we? We fall into the "group mentality" way of acting and thinking, and if everyone else is doing it, then it must not be that bad. And, if no one is there to correct us, and if we can get away with it, then we usually do it. Plus, we can play ignorant if something comes up. We'll pretend we didn't know because no one was there telling us. No one was showing us, at that moment, what we needed to do. No one was stopping us or redirecting us, so how were we supposed to know?
Even though Israel was without a king, they weren't without a God. And although they may have used that as an excuse, they knew better. Notice it didn't say, "Israel was without a king, therefore they did not know what to do." It says that they did what they wanted to do. And even though they didn't have a physical leader among them to set their moral compass, they had the knowledge of right and wrong. They knew God's laws, they knew God's desires for their lives, and if they were to forget, well, it was written down. And as I read through this, I thought about how often we use those around us as our excuse to do what we want. Sure, we know what God is asking of us, but we play dumb. We let our peers determine our behavior, and then we also blame them when things go wrong. But what if we just did what we knew God was asking of us regardless of what everyone else was doing? What if we looked to God's word for direction rather than depending on someone else to be our moral compass? Because when we do what we want, things usually go awry. We can expect destruction when we stop following God's word and start following our own selfish desires. It may just affect us, or it may affect an entire nation. And so we can learn from Israel, especially the tribe of Benjamin, and we can save ourselves a lot of pain and heartache if we'll just cling to what we know, live it out, and hold tight to God's commands.
#705 - Because we're never without our God.
"But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to keep his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.” - Joshua 22:5
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