Judges 21:25 & Judges 17:6 “ In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” This episode discusses how we use excuses to justify our behavior. Also, it talks about relativism and explains what it is and how it applies to our world today. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Our Own Justifications
Judges 21:25 & Judges 17:6 “ In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.”
These are some pretty powerful words. In both cases, this sentence followed a description of how the people were going against the Lord and doing things that were evil. In Judges 17 Micah steals money from his mom and when he decides to give it back to her she uses some of it to make a molten image and a graven image. These are both used to worship false gods and they were strictly forbidden for Israelites. In Judges 25 the men of Israel are trying to find wives for the Benjamites as they made a vow not to share their daughters with them. Their solution was to go kill an entire village and kill men, woman & children. The only ones they were to keep alive were the 400 virgins in that village. After this they realized that these 400 girls were not going to be enough wives for all the men. So, they told the Benjamites to hide and lie in wait and they can steal the wives and daughters of Shiloh. Yet the men of Israel would not be to blame because they did not give these women freely, they were stolen.
It is so crazy that anyone would think this is ok. It really makes you wonder what kind of a world they were living in where they might think this was a good idea. It also goes to show that they really have no idea who God is or what He truly wants. How could they think that God would think this was acceptable behavior? It’s as if they believe that God doesn’t really care about people he just cares about the law. If they can uphold the law, according to the letter of the law not the spirit of the law, then all is ok. No harm done. It seems so crazy to me. It seems crazy and yet I can see how we struggle with this same thing. I was just about to say that we are not stealing peoples wives and daughters, but that is not true. Some people are still doing this today. It is estimated that between 15,000 to 50,000 women and children are forced into sexual slavery in the United States every year, and this number is pretty conservative as other research shows numbers being much higher. Even if we are not talking about actually kidnapping, what about those men or woman that steal a spouse away from their partner or their children. One estimate from the journal of Marriage and Divorce concludes that a mindblowing 70% of married Americans cheat at least once in their marriage. This is insane. What is going on in our culture, what was going on in their culture?
I think the answer can be found in the verse. “ In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” What this verse is telling us is that the Israelites had no one to over see them. There was no one to direct them as to what was right and wrong. Now, they did have the tablets from God. They had all those years of instruction from Moses and then from Joshua. It is not as if they can claim that they didn’t know what the Lord expected from them. He gave them very detailed instructions through Moses and Joshua. However, there was no king. They no longer had that one person who was the clear leader. Because of this they each did what was right in their own eyes. They each decided for themselves what was right and what was wrong. Does this sound familiar? Have you ever heard the term relativism? Relativism is the belief that there's no absolute truth, only the truths that a particular individual or culture happen to believe.
I had not heard of this term before I went on a retreat and I wasn’t aware that it was a thing. However, when I look at the world I can see that relativism is everywhere. When I first heard of it, I didn’t see the danger of it. That all seemed perfectly reasonable to me. You believe what you believe and I believe what I believe. What could be wrong with that? However, I can now see that the problem is that it’s not accurate. There are universal truths in the world and if we pretend that their aren’t we are doing everyone a disservice. There are things that are right and wrong. Things that are wrong, not just because of one’s religion, but because they are harmful to people. For instance, bullying others is wrong. Mistreating others is wrong. Having an affair with someone in a relationship is wrong. These are all things that cause pain to others. Somehow we convince ourselves that we aren’t doing anything wrong. For instance, when we are picking on someone else we might think, he deserves it because he is not nice to others, or we were picked on so we think it is ok to pick on others. I have heard people justify affairs because they no longer loved their spouse, or their spouse wasn’t nice to them. We tend to be really good at justifying our behaviors. I don’t think this is very different from the people of the old testament. They found all sorts of excuses why their behaviors weren’t that bad. They justified the things that they were doing too.
Have you ever found yourself doing something that you knew was wrong and yet you convinced yourself that it was ok because of some reason or another? It might have been something big or maybe it was something small. Maybe that was your justification, well, this is just a small thing, God won’t mind. Have you ever found yourself doing something in such a way that you might be upholding the letter of the law, but you know you have broken the spirit of the law. What I think of when I think of this is trying to find loopholes in the various commandments. For instance, when I was younger I was babysitting and two of my older sisters stopped by to visit. We were joking around and they asked what we could do for fun. They said, what were the exact instructions of your parents and then we talked about all the things we could do that they didn’t explicitly tell us we couldn’t do. For instance, they didn’t say, don’t go play in traffic, or don’t play with matches. It was understood when they said stay safe, but we were trying to see how we could technically follow their instructions and still be mischievous. Have you ever done this with God? Have you ever tried to skirt around His rules or do something that is more in the grey area?
I think if we all think about it we can think of times when we have done this. We might miss mass, but tell ourselves that it is ok because our children had a sports event, or we were really busy. Maybe we eat meat on Friday during lent but convince ourselves that God doesn’t mind because someone invited us out to dinner and the place was known for their steak. We justify many things we do and actually I feel as though more and more, we don’t even feel like we need to justify it. It seems like we are all just doing what we want to do because we want to do it, and that is justification enough. We either don’t even consider what God would think, or we think, he would want me to be happy. Guess what? God does want us to be happy, that is why he gave us directions on how to live. He knows that the things we would desire to make us happy, don’t in fact make us happy, we just think they will. For instance, we think eating a whole cake will make us happy, so we do. Then we feel sick to our stomaches and we start to feel bad about ourselves for not showing self control. We think we will be happy if start seeing this married person because he/she is nice and they really like us. Then we find ourselves feeling guilty and having to tell lies all the time and we actually feel terrible.
If we want to be happy we have the blueprint. God has laid it out in front of us. We just need to follow it. We need to start putting God and what He wants in front of ourselves and what we want. Why is it we think that if we follow God’s ways we will miss out on something? Why do we think that the way of the world will be better than God’s way? Have we not see the destruction that is going on in the world? Have we not seen how miserably unhappy so many people are today? It is your choice, you can choose to follow the Lord or not. In Joshua 24:15 it says, “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” No matter which you choose, be honest with yourself. Don’t justify the bad things you are doing and try to make them ok. There are universal truths and God is going to hold you to them.
Dear Heavenly Father, please bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are sorry for all the ways we offend you. We are sorry for justifying our unjust and awful behavior. We are sorry for choosing hte things of this world over the ways you want us to live. We want to follow you Lord. We want to be your faithful followers, please help us. Help us to see the ways in which we are doing things that are wrong and just using excuses to justify them. Change our hearts Lord, soften them and help lead us to the right decisions. Convict us of the things we need to change. We love you Lord, you are so amazing! We are grateful for all you do for us and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!