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2 June 2008
Word on the Web
Judges 19-21
At that time Israel did not have a king.....
In those days Israel did not have a king. All the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.
The book of Judges finishes with what is probably the most ghastly and depressing story in the whole of the Bible, involving gang rape and murder, mutilation of a corpse, whipped-up vengeance leading to civil war, and hypocrisy leading to massacre and state-sponsored kidnapping - a story that is so relentlessly awful that a scriptwriter for a horror film would refuse to use it without adding some redeeming features.
We seriously thought about missing it out to spare you, but that felt like ducking an important issue - how do you handle the bits of the Bible that make you feel sick? Instead, we are taking the story at a canter, missing out the duplication and some of the details, and interspersing it with some wisdom from elsewhere.
The passage today is like opening and closing brackets for the story to help us to understand the perspective. The story is not something for us to imitate but a warning of what happens without moral leadership - the most extreme of the series of warnings on this theme that make up much of the book of Judges.
And after all these stories that seem very far away from modern life in time and culture, the final sentence brings us to a screeching, shocking halt. If you were trying to summarise 21st century sophisticated Western society in one sentence, you could hardly do better than "All the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes."
In your life, in what areas do you do what seems right to you rather than what is clearly set out in the Bible as what God thinks?
Lord God, help me to understand and respect your wisdom, even and especially when it doesn't suit me. Show me things in my life which fight against your guidance. Amen
Written by James Archer
Word on the Web
Judges 19-21
At that time Israel did not have a king.....
In those days Israel did not have a king. All the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.
The book of Judges finishes with what is probably the most ghastly and depressing story in the whole of the Bible, involving gang rape and murder, mutilation of a corpse, whipped-up vengeance leading to civil war, and hypocrisy leading to massacre and state-sponsored kidnapping - a story that is so relentlessly awful that a scriptwriter for a horror film would refuse to use it without adding some redeeming features.
We seriously thought about missing it out to spare you, but that felt like ducking an important issue - how do you handle the bits of the Bible that make you feel sick? Instead, we are taking the story at a canter, missing out the duplication and some of the details, and interspersing it with some wisdom from elsewhere.
The passage today is like opening and closing brackets for the story to help us to understand the perspective. The story is not something for us to imitate but a warning of what happens without moral leadership - the most extreme of the series of warnings on this theme that make up much of the book of Judges.
And after all these stories that seem very far away from modern life in time and culture, the final sentence brings us to a screeching, shocking halt. If you were trying to summarise 21st century sophisticated Western society in one sentence, you could hardly do better than "All the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes."
In your life, in what areas do you do what seems right to you rather than what is clearly set out in the Bible as what God thinks?
Lord God, help me to understand and respect your wisdom, even and especially when it doesn't suit me. Show me things in my life which fight against your guidance. Amen
Written by James Archer
