Rev. Don Campbell
Judges 1-2
THOUGHT FOR TODAY, March 30, 2019
“OF ALL SAD WORDS OF TONGUE AND PEN”h2>
In the poem “Maud Miller” (John Greenleaf Whittier, 1856), the most famous line is “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!'” I recalled this line as I read Judges 2:10: “And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.”
The apostasy came in spite of the thrice-repeated promise of their fathers to Joshua’s very familiar words “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). Joshua said, in effect, you must choose for yourselves, to which they replied, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods” (Joshua 24:16). Three times they vowed, “We will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:18, 21, 24). And, they did: “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel” (Joshua 24:31).
The page is turned from faithfully serving God to the sad, sad statement: “And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress” (Judges 2:10-15).
The next generation benefited from hardships they did not endure, sacrifices they did not make, and battles they did not fight. They were much like the generations that followed the generation which Tom Brokaw dubbed the Greatest Generation and for good reason: Born between about 1914 and 1930, they endured as children the Great Depression which resulted from the economic collapse of 1929, leaving a quarter of the American workforce jobless and making hundreds of thousands homeless. Drought devastated farmland through the 1930s, turning independent farmers into starving nomads. The struggling country was thrown into a brutal, four-year struggle against an alliance of fascist dictatorships across two continents and three oceans. Some of the same veterans who had survived WWII marched off to war again to battle a new enemy, communism in North Korea.
Israel’s problem was idolatry. When we hear the word “idolatry,” we think of images of wood and stone, but these are only an outward manifestation of the real center of idolatry, the human heart. God made Adam and Eve in his image and placed them in a paradise, but they were not content to share his image, they wanted to be all that he was (Genius 3:5).
Today we are experiencing a narcissistic epidemic. Psychiatrists Hotchkiss and James F. Masterson identified what they called the seven deadly sins of narcissism:
“Shamelessness: Narcissists are often proudly and openly shameless; they are not bound by the needs and wishes of others. Narcissists hate shame and consider it ‘toxic,’, as shame implies they are not perfect and need to change. Narcissists prefer guilt over shame, as guilt allows them to dissociate their actions from themselves – it’s only their actions that are wrong, while they themselves remain perfect. Magical thinking: Narcissists see themselves as perfect, using distortion and illusion known as magical thinking. They also use projection to “dump” shame onto others. Arrogance: A narcissist who is feeling deflated may ‘reinflate’ their sense of self-importance by diminishing, debasing, or degrading somebody else. Envy: A narcissist may secure a sense of superiority in the face of another person’s ability by using contempt to minimize the other person or their achievements. Entitlement: Narcissists hold unreasonable expectations of particularly favorable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves special. Failure to comply is considered an attack on their superiority, and the perpetrator is considered an ‘awkward’ or ‘difficult’ person. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger narcissistic rage. Exploitation: Can take many forms but always involves the exploitation of others without regard for their feelings or interests. Often the other person is in a subservient position where resistance would be difficult or even impossible. Sometimes the subservience is not so much real as assumed. This exploitation may result in many brief, short-lived relationships. Bad boundaries: Narcissists do not recognize that they have boundaries and that others are separate and are not extensions of themselves. Others either exist to meet their needs or may as well not exist at all. Those who provide narcissistic supply to the narcissist are treated as if they are part of the narcissist and are expected to live up to those expectations. In the mind of a narcissist, there is no boundary between self and other.”
We are, I believe, experiencing more than a narcissistic epidemic, we are living in an age of rampant idolatry, as we become the center and circumference of our own existence. It’s all about us.
CONNECTIONS – Romans 1:24, 26, 28
1. Please don’t name them on Facebook, but how many people, whether in the public arena or your private life, are idolatrously worshiping themselves?
2. Three times Paul says that those who refused to have God in their knowledge were given up by God (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). Are we in danger of being given up?
