Have we really made progress?

I’m taking nominations for the saddest book in the Old Testament... Go!

Job certainly comes to mind. At least it has a happy ending.
If you want to talk hard to read, Leviticus ranks high. 
Ecclesiastes has a few highlights, but you have to look for them in the middle of all the cynicism.

But I’d like to suggest the book of Judges, and here’s why. They just don’t get it. Over and over again, it’s the same story. Sometimes the story plays out over a couple chapters, but other times it only takes a few verses. My Old Testament professor in seminary pointed out an easy way to remember the cycle:

Abandoned God. Or if you like a fancier word, Apostasy.
Beat up. It’s gonna happen when you abandon God. Highly predictable.
Cry for help. At some point… and it often takes awhile… they cry out to God.
Deliverer. God in His mercy sends a deliverer (called a Judge in that part of salvation history).

But then the cycle starts all over again. And perhaps the saddest part is that every single time, they seem to look at the cycle and conclude, “I see the problem! It’s B… beat up. We keep getting beaten up and battered by our enemies.” And then there’s this verse that shows up twice, first in Judges 17:6 and then later in 21:25…

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.

If only we had a human king, they reasoned, our problems would be solved. When in fact, the problem starts one step up the cycle. When we abandon God and “do as we see fit, whatever seems right in our own eyes,” trouble is inevitable. If not physical enemies beating us up, the mother of all enemies, the spiritual one, has a field day.

So… have we made any progress?

Just this morning in a phone call with a friend I realized that “everyone doing whatever they want” doesn’t have to be as obviously wrong as idolatry and child sacrifice, some of the most frequently mentioned Old Testament examples of apostasy. It can be doing whatever good thing we’re inclined to do, whether or not it’s something God asked us to do. That good deed? It might be for me to do later, or it might be for someone else to do. It’s entirely possible to do all the good deeds that seem right in our own eyes, week after week and year after year, with the result being burnout and epic defeat. I know. I read my own journal.

Not only that, if we’re all doing our own good deeds that seem right in our own eyes, but don't give the King of Kings any opportunity to coordinate our efforts or help us prioritize what would be the most timely and produce the best and longest lasting fruit (as He alone is best equipped to evaluate), we can do all kinds of great deeds and make very little progress in transforming a city or seeing the lost get found. Sound at all like your home city, anyone? Fun side note for those of us in Tucson, where we have the highest number of nonprofits per capita of any large city in the nation… might that have anything to do with everyone doing as they see fit, even in the name of God?

I’m pretty sure there’s a better way, and it probably doesn’t have much to do with who’s on the throne or in the White House. When any human other than the God-man Jesus is running things, including running our own lives, the enemies are just lining up and licking their chops. 

In a nation founded on a declaration of independence, this problem is the air we breathe. Again, for those of us in Tucson, we arguably live in the most independently-minded city of the most independently-minded state of the most independently-minded nation in the world. So, yeah.

Let’s long for a better way to stop the cycle. Let’s weep over our self-reliance. Let’s commit to whatever it takes to stop the endless coups and allow Jesus back on the throne, not just in the big picture but in every detail of our days.