Pastor Ryan Gaffney

Let’s do another one to break up my shameless self promotion. Actual content that isn;t meta Whohoo.

Judges.

Less Whohoo.

Who likes the book of Judges

Nobody likes the book of Judges

I LOVE the book of Judges

It is so much fun, it is so interesting, it is so irreverently insightful, and absolutely never ever boring like “some” books I know of

But I get it, It gets a bad rap and I see why. It does not play nicely with others. It does not conform well to the filter we like to put most of the other books through in which everything becomes a morality story or an example of how to live. It’s violent and sexually explicit and we don’t expect that from the bible.

But we should

After all, we live violent and sexually explicit lives don’t we? Most of us"? Unless we are very very insulated from that stuff. How much of your life would you have to hide from God if God could not bear the sight of blood or urine, or stand hearing about the means of reproduction God himself invented?

The key to making judges delicious, I’ll submit to you, is in allowing it to be what it is and not asking it to be something else. It’s not Mr. Rogers Puppet Time. I like that trolley as much as anyone else, but it’s not the gold standard for everything that’s good. Instead Judges is something very much the opposite. Consider this.

If Joshua is a WWII era film. Judges is a Vietnam movie.

What is Joshua like? The national hero, with the cause that is wholly just and right, marches onto the scene. He is faces with danger, with difficult choices but we, the audience know that whatever he does is going to be right, because he is our man and we trust him implicitly. In the end the heroes reign victorious over the forces of evil. That’s WWII.

Judges comes in after that and says “Sooo, that war we won?” We actually made some compromises we shouldn’t have in order to win it, and now skirmishes are continuing and the next generation is ready to be a lot more honest about the reality of the situation. Particularly: war is ugly, bloody, and often morally grey. A lot of us wonder if we should be involved with it in the first place, but it never seems to go away. Here is the reality. Here are the heroes and the villains, they are mostly the same people. But while you are here let me tell you some incredible stories.

Ehud and the locked door murder mystery.
Deborah and Yael, in the world turned upside down.
Gideon who was like Joshua except in the ways he wasn’t
Jephthah the pirate king
Samson the superhero

Fun adventure stories. Written for adults. With meaning and insight, but not with a neat little moral at the end.

Judges.

Read it.