Back to the Golden Calf
So Samuel spoke all the words of the Lord to the people who had asked of him a king. 1 Samuel 8:10 NASB
Spoke all the words – Does history really repeat itself? Well, if you read Hebrew history from a biblical perspective, you might come to that conclusion. The text certainly draws your attention to phrases that occur over and over, reminding you that the stories are connected. Samuel speaks all the words of the Lord to the people. But someone else did the same thing centuries before. Moses, the first prophet, also warns the people with all the words of God. This should help us realize that what is occurring in Samuel’s time is a pattern that already occurred in the time of Moses. Once the people were rescued from Egypt. Now they want to return (once again). In fact, in verse 8 there is a specific reference to a violation of the first commandment. They have chosen other gods.
This setting helps us understand the disturbing situation at the beginning of Israel’s monarchy. It demonstrates the level of apostasy among the people. But we need even more background to explain why they are so willing to fall back under the authority of a new Pharaoh, even if the new Pharaoh is appointed by YHVH. The rest of the background is found in the book of Judges. It is a tale of civil unrest, moral decline and social disregard for life itself. “Every man did what was right in his own eyes” is a summary of chaotic behavior; behavior that left the general populace in a state of constant risk. Under the judges (really, chieftains), each tribe had its own agenda and its own rules. The tribes fought each other, and the members of each tribe knew no safety. Judges ends with near social collapse. It is the story of Ruth that begins to heal the entire population by establishing characteristics necessary for a return to order and respect for God. But not yet.
Now, at the moment when the population can no longer deal with the chaos, they ask for one chief, one ruler, one authority. Perhaps that will bring the change they desperately desire. Perhaps that will heal the broken land and the shattered people. What is entirely missing from this perfectly understandable request is God. There is no call for revival, no general repentance, no teshuvah. There is only the request for a political solution to a spiritual problem. God grants it, as He does with most human inadequate attempts, but the consequences are inevitable. Pharaoh returns with a vengeance. It just takes a few decades.
Does history repeat itself? We should hope not, but unfortunately, it certainly seems that it does. We should hope that Israel would learn its lesson. We should hope that we would learn the lesson. But apparently we don’t. We propose the same political solutions to the same spiritual problems again and again, never recognizing that the history of human solutions is a nightmare. And here we are again—back to the Golden Calf—claiming that all we really need is an authority we can see, and things will be better. When will we recognize that the problem is also invisible, buried deep within human consciousness. And you don’t fix an invisible problem with a visible god.
Topical Index: monarchy, Judges, Ruth, Pharaoh, 1 Samuel 8:10
Here we are now, calling for a one world government (why, what a spanking new idea!). Apparently we have not had enough of empires yet. When we get that (again) we will have lost all checks and balances of power on this planet and will have gained (again) someone showing up who, because they are FUNCTIONING as god, will take (again) the auspices of god (direct challenge of heaven). Rinse and repeat. Except that this time heaven will directly answer that challenge. May we not be found in front of the new golden calf (counterfeit commandments of men) when it does.
Problems of the heart can never be fixed with solutions by the state, you are so right, but it has never stopped states and empires from trying. Morality cannot be legislated, but when we believe that doctrine can determine behavior instead of it being a reflection of it, we have set ourselves up for agreement with an outward mandate (form) of morality (function) ; which is man setting himself up in the place of (power of) God. Love has never and will never work that way, but we are apparently going to have to see that once again. If we are going to be repeating history, we can also start looking around for those “words of the Lord”. They will be there, too, and this is what they will be saying. Again.
Though morality (a condition of the heart) cannot be legislated, the purpose of law is to define morality for a community. There is nothing inherently immoral about driving through a red light until a government defines it as such. For those who do not have the capacity to respond to God’s character, laws are necessary to define a community standard and constrain behavior. The wrestling between community factions to decide those standards is normal and natural. Abortion laws define us as a people willing to murder on demand. PC laws defining a crime by how an action makes someone else feel after the fact, define us as a people who wish to govern by mob rule.
Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior certainly can. Tax incentives and enforcement (or lax enforcement) of law changes behavior. If the freeway speed limit is 65 but the majority drive 85mph without getting tickets, the de facto speed limit is 85–until the law is enforced. If a murderer is found guilty and immediately executed, the number of potential killers goes down as the cost of the deed goes up. True, it won’t stop every murder–because that IS an issue of morality–but the law does change behavior. It is that fact that creates the social contract.
Yep hear we go again Its the circle game…worksofwords dot live/2017/04/22/the-circle-game/
Please stop putting links to your website.
Thank you,
Mark
Here we go agin…where is that edit app when you need it. Yet as my great aunt Bernice would say “you only get the truble you need “.
Will do they where simply clear edited sharing that seemed appropriate to the conversation as this site does not have editing capabilities. I will however cease from sharing my works of words and wish those about this table well….
I don’t quite understand this one. Please don’t stop sharing your insights over some technical issues with WordPress.
Mark, I emailed you and explained in detail why links aren’t allowed. It’s nothing against you or your website. It has to do with the fact that Skip’s website has over 50,000 comments and I’ve had to correct over 10,000 dead links. I’m constantly getting notifications for broken links. Videos get taken down, images get deleted and websites go away, etc. If there are links to those things on this website, the bots that crawl it will detect the broken link and downgrade it. Not to mention that it substantially slows down a page from loading while it’s trying to look for a broken link. It’s not a problem for you to share things you’ve written. You just need to be able to describe it’s location rather than embedding a link.
Thanks for the explanation, Mark. You’re the best.
Which is why i quit using the emoticons. They were fun, but going back to them they were just useless boxes in the post.
It would be nice if we could “share” Today’s Word via a “Facebook” icon. Is that something that is in the works?
As to the editing capabilities. In order for a person to be able to utilise that feature, they would need to be “signed up” as a member of the website. Skip and I have talked about how to work that out and haven’t come to a conclusion on how to do it yet. It’s not as simple as it may seem. But, it is something that we will continue to think on.
Mark, would you send me a note at any of the emails i have on file? i have a question for you. thanks.
When anarchy reigns (every man doing what is right in his own eyes) it is ALWAYS followed by a dictatorship. In political theory, anarchy is designed to lead to tyranny. People will beg for social order from those who lead the anarchists but refuse the teshuva that will bring true peace.
I checked back tonight to see the comments. Skip has stated his belief in cycles, so if history is a series of cycles of a set number of years do we really have a choice as to how we respond? If war cycles every 80 years as it has in the past, can we change the cycle and refuse to go to war? It seems that history just changes players, but the events happen in a regular pattern. Skip, have you applied your belief in cycles to patterns in religious ups and downs? Please share if you have.