Reading Judges

Recall the discussion of the two-fold promise of God in Deuteronomy? The one where He promised amazing things if the Israelites obeyed Him, and extreme punishment if they disobeyed Him? The book of Judges provides a crystal clear historical example of the results of that promise.

The cycle in Judges is stupendous. You'd think that the Israelites would have learned from their mistakes after a few times of doing the same things over and over again, and having the same results every time. However, they didn't, and the cycle continued on and on.

Here's what happened in that cycle. It all started with the Israelites choosing, much like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, to disobey God. They chose to attempt to follow false gods, or idols, or things of the world. By doing so, they basically turned their backs on God, and decided to place themselves before His will. This sparked God's punishment, which was essentially returning the favour, and turning His back on them. Much of the punishment came in the form of foreigners attacking, terrorizing, and ruling over the Israelites for many years.

Here's the difference between man and God though. While we may turn our backs on God, and God turns His back on us, He is extremely willing to turn right back and around and reconnect in that relationship. In fact, He continually looks over His shoulder while we continue our disobedience, hoping we will see our foolishness, and putting people and situations in place to shake us awake.

Thus begins the next step in the cycle. God hand picks certain people to lead the Israelites back to Him. Most times this happens through a certain warrior who conquers the terrorists of that time period. By freeing the people of that outside influence, this warrior or judge leads the Israelites back to worship of God. When this happens, the people experience a time of safety and fruitfulness.

However, for some unstated reason, the Israelites would always abandon that safety, and would choose to turn away from God. Thus the cycle starts all over, back to the time of choosing false Gods, and being punished. Now we can speculate that the reason for disobedience might be dissatisfaction, longing for more, sinful nature, outside influence, and on and on.

Even though we may state that this should have been the easiest decision in anyone's life, and that the Israelites must have been blind not to see the cycle in front of them, we do the same thing as the Israelites and constantly disobey God. And we have more then the Israelites did in that time, in the form of history from the Bible. Yet for some reason, we continue to disobey God.

Now, there has been an argument made regarding if obeying God actually produces times of perfect happiness and such. Ultimately, my opinion on the subject is that trivial things that used to bother you won't anymore, and that when bad things do happen, you are able to go through those situations with a better frame of mind, or perspective, and therefore with a better attitude.

Ultimately, the book of Judges should provide a lesson for us, one that may be difficult to apply, but is extremely important to at least attempt to take to heart.