Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
Sigh. Judges is, to my reading, one of the most dismal books in the Bible. It tracks the history of the country from the death of Joshua, when the folks had taken the land and loved God, through the repeated and increasingly desperate downward spiral that ends with the near annihilation of the tribe of Benjamin by the other 11 tribes and the summarizing statement for the state of the nation:
In those days, Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit. - Judges 21:25
In other words, there was no absolute standard of what was right/wrong; there was no one who had authority to determine those standards. Somehow, and if you read Judges you'll see this is the case, generations that had learned to obey God failed to transfer their knowledge to subsequent generations, and those subsequent generations fell into the beliefs and practices of the pagan societies around them, which led to bondage to other nations until God raised up a deliverer who would conquer the oppressing foe and turn the hearts of the people back to God. But a generation or two later, the folks would forget God and the pattern would start all over again.
We shake our heads over this folly, this failure to learn from past mistakes, but, my friends, I submit to you that we in America have fallen into the same pattern; spirituality in this country has turned into exactly what is described in Judges: everyone does as s/he sees fit.
And we have a standard right in our hand...Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.
But so few folks...even regular church attenders...actually know what the Bible teaches us regarding so many issues that well-meaning people actually consider things that are clearly presented as wrong in Scripture as being issues of tolerance. They are not issues of tolerance. They are issues of obedience.
But, in a culture where everyone does as s/he sees fit, obedience is an oppressive obscenity.
Will we learn from the pattern of Judges before it is too late for [the] US?
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