Winging My Religion

The latter chapters of the book of Judges are described with a recurring theme: “In those days there was no king in Israel…” (17:6, 18:1, 19:1, 21:25). Twice, the thought is followed with this indictment of the times: “… everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” In the other two instances, the phrase introduces some of the darkest and strangest narratives about life in Israel that occur in scripture. The idea seems to be that if a king had reigned in the land, much bizarre behavior as well as much national descent into decadence might have been avoided.

The accounts of Israel’s mighty judges, raised up to thwart foreign oppressors, have all been told. Sadly, it seems that no matter how great a deliverance of the nation God had secured through one of these heroes, the people would soon forget His salvation as they slid even deeper into spiritual darkness. Chapters 17-21 record egregious sins that sprout from the spiritual darkness within Israel herself. One of these narratives is recounted in chapters 17-18.

A man named Micah steals a large sum of money from his own mother. He overhears her pronounce a curse on the dirty so-and-so responsible, and in his superstitious fear, he panics and comes clean. She responds with a forgiveness that is sentimental, but in no way redemptive. Mom dedicates her money to the LORD, which may appear noble at first glance, but she then instructs her thieving son to carve an image and cast an idol to the LORD, a gross abandonment of the Law of God. He sets up a shrine in his home.

What follows is one-step after another away from God’s revealed will. A homeless Levite (evidence of the breakdown of worship and obedience to God’s Law on a national scale) wanders by the house of Micah, looking for a place to stay. Micah hires the man to be his priest for his little shrine. There is no evidence that this Levite was from the priestly line of Aaron, but Micah must have figured, “Close enough.” The shrine, with its bogus priest become a bit of a community worship center for Micah’s neighbors even though the Tabernacle of the LORD was in Shiloh.

In the meantime, the tribe of Dan had never trusted God quite enough to dislodge the Canaanites from the land allotted to them. In their quest for an alternate piece of real estate, they passed Micah’s house and inquired of his “priest,” who promised them success. They scoped out a nice piece of land with a town called Laish and decided to set up their own city in its place. They returned to Micah’s house, stole his idols and rather effortlessly convinced his “priest” to sell his services to them. The Danites then returned to the land they had seen earlier, slaughtered the citizens of Laish, identified as “quiet and unsuspecting”(chapter 18:7) and leveled the town. They rebuilt the city and named it Dan, installing their bogus priest and his children as a priestly line and continuing to worship with the idols they had ripped off from the shrine of Micah.

As far as the players were concerned, all of this transpired in the name of YAHWEH as well as for His honor and with His blessing.

Sin, sentimentality and ultimate saturation in error is what happens when everyone does “what is right in his own eyes.” Israel was winging its worship of the LORD as though that were possible. The verdict of the author of Judges was that this all transpired because Israel had no king. Could a king, in fact, have really prevented such a sorry state of affairs? Israel would demand a king before God was ready to give them one, but Saul was as much of a free-wheeler regarding God’s Law as was Micah, his mother, his bogus priest, and the murderous Danites.

Clearly, we need to examine the kind of king God desired for His people and, no doubt, the kind of king for whom the author of Judges yearned. The Law of Moses foresaw kings in Israel. Such a king was to be a national Israelite, a man who would not obscenely enrich himself, and a man who would not take many wives. Most importantly, he was to be a man who would govern not according to his own caprice, but according to the Law of God:

¹⁸“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests.¹⁹And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, ²⁰that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left …  – Deuteronomy 17:18-20

The key to a successful monarchy in Israel was not a king per se, but that the king would honor the Law of God in his own life and hold the people accountable for doing the same. Every time we see that lament in the book of Judges about the absence of a king, we can construe it as a lament about the barrenness of lives not governed and guided by the Word of God. “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint …” (Proverbs 29:18).

I would like to say that these odd and ancient tales are hard to apply to our modern setting, but on the contrary, it is disturbingly easy to do so. So much of what presents itself in the name of Christ today is as distant from the truth as were the events in these stories. Superstitious whim and imagination are passed off as the leading of God. Empty promises of prosperity are doled out by grinning clergymen in the name of the Lord. God is worshipped as we imagine Him rather than as He has revealed Himself to be. Sin is redefined according to human motives of sentimentality, distorted love and self-justification.

The disturbing tendencies played out in these odd stories are in no way limited to those who came before us. Too much of what presents itself today as Christian practice is precipitated not by what God has spoken in the past, but by what seems right in the eyes of the adherents of modern Christianity.