When I was a kid I always looked up to the heros of the Bible and thought how great it would be to be just like them. I heard stories of David killing Goliath with a slingshot and so I went out and made my own slingshots and tried to hit trees with them.
Because I was just that cool.
I heard about Shamgar and his ox-goad. I didn’t really know what an ox-goad is, but I had this really cool-looking-grim-reaper-grass-cutter-thingy that I took out and swung as hard as I could at the grass and pretended to be saving God’s people from their oppressors.
Yes, I really did.
And then there was Samson. So strong, so muscular, so good with the ladies... What pre-pubescent boy wouldn’t want to be like Samson? I imagined flexing my bicep and 30 men fell down in front of me. Ropes and chains couldn’t hold me. I actually had the boy next door tie me to a tree so I could break free. And so noble, too. Even when he was blind He was able to take out all the leaders of the Philistines. His only desire was to do God’s will. What a guy.
You can imagine my surprise when I went back as an adult and read the story how it really is. It was a bit rattling, actually. I could not believe that Samson’s only desire was a woman, not God’s will. It was disconcerting that Samson went out of his way to break every vow of a Levite except cutting his hair. It shook my faith to discover that the story of Samson is an example of how low the people of Israel had fallen, that even their deliverer didn’t really care all that much about what God wanted him to do.
The story of Samson comes at the end of the book of Judges, a downward spiral of disobedience and judgment that ends with the sentiment, “Every man did what was right in their own eyes.” As an adult, I read that story and I see myself. I know that I have every thing I need in Christ to accomplish His will. I know that I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. But I still reach out for that honey, even though it’s wrapped in the carcass of a lion. I still pursue my own pleasure at the expense of pretty much everything else, especially my relationship with Christ. I still depend on my own strength to overcome temptation, and I fail repeatedly.
So now I play out the story in a completely different way. We all do. We all pursue things that distract us from God’s will. We all have things in our lives that keep us from fulfilling our purpose. We all selfishly use our time and our resources to build up our own kingdoms for our own glory. That’s what humans do. And the more we do this, the blinder we become to what God wants us to do.
Consider in contrast these words from David:
How blessed is the man who does not walk in the way of the wicked
Nor stand in the way of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers
But his delight is in the law of the Lord
And on this law he meditates both day and night
He shall be like a tree planted by streams of water
That brings forth its fruit in its season
His leaf never withers, and everything he does prospers.
