Tell It to the Judge, Part I: Judged by the Company You Keep

The Book of Judges. In the book what we see is a cycle of sin and disobedience to God over and over. The people repent and cry to God for help. Their deliverance comes when God raises up a temporary leader, or judge, to save them. Over the course of the book and over time, both the people and the judges become increasingly corrupt, mirroring the ways of surrounding nations. In the beginning of Judges we see the tail end of the conquest of the Book of Joshua.

Judges 1:1-6 After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, “Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?” The Lord said, “Judah shall go up; behold, I have given the land into his hand.” And Judah said to Simeon his brother, “Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites. And I likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you.”

There are three main things that can be seen in this passage. I will elaborate on them over the next three posts. The first one is that before taking in hand any important matter I need to seek god's direction in prayer (v. 1). In verse 1 its says, “Israel inquired of the Lord.”  This is always the best place to start. Praying or looking to God in the midst of change, stress or struggle. I’ve seen this in my own life. I am going through it now in the process of changing jobs.

The key point is to seek God before acting, even through the stress of facing a major transition. I didn’t just seek God asking Him to bless a decision we’ve already made—I literally asked Him to direct the decision in the first place to the point that I believe he gave me signs to do so. Transitional times are times when a person especially needs God’s direction. In Judges, Joshua was gone, and Israel was entering a new season. Likewise, changing jobs can bring uncertainty about finances, relationships, responsibilities, and the future.

Prayer should come before action. Israel didn’t immediately decide which tribe should attack. They first “asked the Lord.” God may give direction one step at a time. Thereby encouraging or even forcing us to go to Him in prayer continually to determine each subsequent step. God answered Israel’s question specifically: “Judah shall go up.” He did not give Israel the entire plan at once though. Likewise, I may not receive the whole plan for my future, but I can ask God to show us the next faithful step. Seeking God doesn’t mean there will be no difficulty. Judah still had to fight. Prayer doesn’t necessarily remove the challenge; it puts us in the right posture to face it mentally. Our confidence ultimately rests in God’s leading. God said, “I have given the land into his hand.” Israel’s success was ultimately dependent upon God rather than their own strength. Yet…there were actions the Israelites had to perform themselves. Just as I had to put the next step of my plan in motion by resigning and entering into a risky period of no pay and no healthcare.

This means I had to start distrusting my own wisdom. I was already having misgivings as to my motives to take the job I just resigned from. What I realized is seeking God’s direction means more than asking God to bless my plans. It means being willing to surrender my plans to His answer if it does not align with mine. The job I have inevitably taken is one I normally wouldn’t have. My previous job was one I thought was an easy decision. In these two instances, logic was flipped. God’s will should’ve been abided by. I believe only in the most recent scenario this path was followed. The decision to take the last job as based in my understanding and aligned with my comfort zone. A mistake to be sure. All events are in the hands of God's unerring providence even the decision to take the last job. It was to fulfill something God desired of me even if it is not plainly evident. Success and failure should always prompt us to look to God for guidance. Nothing is a failure in God's plan.

Is what is happening now God’s genuine will for me? I guess I need to ask myself: (1) Am I genuinely asking God what He wants, or am I asking Him to confirm what I already want? (2) Am I willing to accept “no” or “wait” as an answer? (3) Are my motives being shaped by Scripture, prayer, wise counsel—or by comfort, money, frustration, or fear? (4) Am I trusting God’s providence even when I cannot see how everything will work out? As my father used to say, "To make a deal, you have to be willing to walk away from it."

There is also a good balance here. Seeking God doesn't mean becoming paralyzed and waiting for some extraordinary sign. I use Scripture, prayer, wisdom, counsel, circumstances, and godly judgment, while recognizing that God remains sovereign over the outcome.

There is a counterbalance to the idea to whether I am in my will, or God’s outlined in Jeremiah 41. A passage that helps me assure whether or not I am in God’s will. The Israelites are already engaged in change or trial and are looking for direction…

Jeremiah 41: 1-3 Then all the army officers, including Johanan son of Kareah and Jezaniah[a] son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest approached 2 Jeremiah the prophet and said to him, “Please hear our petition and pray to the Lord your God for this entire remnant. For as you now see, though we were once many, now only a few are left. 3 Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.”

In verse 7 or as the narrative states, ten days later God answered Jeremiah’s petition.

Jeremiah 41:10-16 If you stay in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not uproot you, for I have relented concerning the disaster I have inflicted on you. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you now fear. Do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord, for I am with you and will save you and deliver you from his hands. I will show you compassion so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to your land.’ “However, if you say, ‘We will not stay in this land,’ and so disobey the Lord your God, and if you say, ‘No, we will go and live in Egypt, where we will not see war or hear the trumpet or be hungry for bread,’ then hear the word of the Lord, you remnant of Judah. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘If you are determined to go to Egypt and you do go to settle there, then the sword you fear will overtake you there, and the famine you dread will follow you into Egypt, and there you will die.

The Jeremiah passage gives me a particularly powerful sentence to incorporate into my lesson here: I must be careful that my interpretation of God’s will is not simply my own desires dressed in a facade and religious clothing. Unfortunately, as is often the case, I have asked God's direction, hoping that the answer will be in alignment  with my own desires, and then do my best to twist it into that alignment. Sadly, what I do when I do this is I am confabulating God’s holy answer with my own sin/error. Even then, God can bend my disobedience and sin to His will. He can bend out mistakes to His desired outcome. Regardless, when seeking God's guidance, special care should be taken so to humble my will. I need to be able to do that so that I can be ready to act upon the answer God gives me. No matter how contrary it may be to my own heart. This exact idea fits with Judges because the larger problem in the book is that Israel repeatedly did what was right in their own eyes. The book begins with Israel asking God, “Who shall go up first?”—but as the story progresses, they increasingly stop looking to God and follow their own wisdom.

As a human this can be very hard to accept especially when cases of financial loss, sacrifice of worldly advantages or pleasures, self-humiliation and self-denial, resentment, jealousy, pride, vanity, praise are at stake. We’re all human. We’re all flawed. All have desires contrary to the will of God. I need to crush them and align myself to God.

What ways do I "Ask the Lord" concerning the course I need to pursue? I have a few tried and true courses of action.

(1) First and foremost I pray and engage conversation with God directly. Its a relationship first.

(2) Secondly, if God doesn’t plainly reveal it in the Scripture, He can impress it upon my mind directly in thought or dream.

(3) Third, I seek the counsel of Scripture. That I will see light and truth from the words that are the expression of the mind and will of God. There is no state of darkness, or confusion as to the path of my duty to God in the Word. In the Bible it is in black and white. Most often my answers to prayer are outlined in the Scripture. It may take a little cleverness and inductive thinking to see the answer, but it’s in there. God’s word is always a light on my path  (Psalm 119:105). There is no question of morality or conduct that the Bible cannot shed truth on. The Bible has an answer for every question if approached with the right heart and mind. The answer must be sought in intelligent, prayerful study, not as a matter of blind chance or in the presumptuous expectation of a miraculous answer.

(4) He can work through others through wise counsel. In this way my own family, friends and acquaintances have acted as judges and prophets in my very own life. The interesting thing about working through others is that some of those others may not even be believers. He can even work through my enemies and has. I am not so arrogant that I cannot learn a lesson vicariously though those I do not like (that is one of the reasons we are called to love our enemies). If God can use Satan to His ends, he can use any method or agency.

The instruments of His will are endless. Suffering, stress, affliction, success and so on. If the answer is sought faithfully and earnestly, it will come eventually. It may not come on my schedule which it often doesn’t but then again…patience isn’t one of my strengths.

An answer will unquestionably come, either by the Spirit suggesting to my mind or strengthening of what is at the time a doubt or lack of confidence, building it into a strong conviction. He will make my decision into firm reasoning by clearing away any last clouds of doubt. This last example being the most powerful form of God answering my prayer and bolstering it to perform the duty he called me to by building me from within. Conviction.

In the end it is not hard to assume my character, morals and decisions match the person, people or things I choose to spend the most time with. The people or things I surround myself with influence the direction of my life for good and bad. Who has the greatest influence on my thinking? The God/god I chose to listen to changes what I worship. Is it the One True God or the god of the world and my own making?

Keeping Your End of the Deal

I am continually pressed to strengthen my faith. Trials and unpleasant events have been a constant in my life since God entered back into it full blast around 2005. I have taken jobs and I have lost jobs. I completed a college degree. I lost a parent and family members. I watched my fiancé suffer through cancer. I have gone through the highs and lows of parenting and watch my sons surmount their own trials. Discomfort has become the norm and comfort is often fleeting.

Each trial and overcoming of trial has built on the last. The trials are common for me and those around me now. They say just one really stressful event in any given year can be traumatizing. I have gone through two or three of them in some years. You learn longsuffering. You learn pain and how God allows you to cope with it. Endurance. Perseverence.

Some of my problems are self-wrought. At times I am unable to remain silent and not tell people truth if I know it is damaging mentally or physically…from the entry level employee to the CEO of companies. What I have found nearly without question is there is a deficit of accountability in society. Many outside observers often point to the unemployed, uneducated clerical position or the youth to blame for this type unaccountability. The real truth is the blight extends all the way to upper managers, leader pastors, political ‘leaders’ and their ilk. It extends to people who in middle-age should know better but chose to sit idle. Passivity is a plague of inaction and has infected a large portion of society. The Bible even condemns it in Luke 12.

Luke 12:48 But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

It is apathy, unaccountability or inaction. It is the reason I’ve just resigned from a high paying job. It was never about the money. It was about making lives better and getting a better return on investment. The problem in the company was the same as the society at large. Most are content to sit on what they have and make little effort to either maintain or gain by investing energy and time. In layman’s terms sloth or laziness in abundance.

There’s an important distinction above between suffering and personal formation though. The events themselves—divorce, losing employment, completing a degree, losing parents, watching my children struggle and grow—aren’t necessarily good or bad things in themselves. What I’m saying is that, over time, surviving them has produced capacities that I did not possess before: Patience, endurance, longsuffering, and an increased ability to tolerate discomfort without immediately needing it removed. I get time to learn from the pain as I walk through it. The grind in life is the same as the pain of bearing the tonnage of weightlifting. The pain produces strength. I was born to be a spiritual pack mule.

James speaks of the testing of faith producing steadfastness; Paul likewise connects suffering, endurance, character, and hope. The point isn't that Christians are supposed to enjoy suffering but we’re not to avoid it either. In my life I have run directly towards it. That is the difference between my pro-activity and hyper focus to achieve a goal and the passivity of others whether it be as a lifter or a leader of people in work or the Body of Christ. Faith becomes something tested and emboldened when circumstances give you reasons to abandon it.

The accountability end of my comment comes in at this point because it connects directly to the second half of what I wrote. I have a conviction that being entrusted with something creates an obligation to act, not merely an entitlement to possess it. These statements are not restricted to money or formal authority. I can be entrusted with knowledge, intelligence, responsibility, influence, employees, a congregation, children, or simply the ability to recognize that something is wrong. In each case, the question becomes: What did I do with what I was given?

That's also why my frustration with passivity and lack of accountability runs much deeper than ordinary dissatisfaction. It is a spiritual discontent. I’m not merely saying, “These people aren't working hard enough.” I’m saying, “These people have been entrusted with something, they know what needs to be done, and nevertheless they choose to do little or nothing.”

Lastly, I need to address the counter argument. There needs to be a tension even in the unbridled energy I bring to bear on a situation even at almost 60 years old. People are human and some cannot necessarily perform at an exceedingly high level. There is a balance between passive idle and full throttle that is the sweet spot for an engine. Idling gets nothing done. Full throttle burns up an engine and abuses it.

The willingness to tell an uncomfortable truth can be a virtue or a sin. But the conviction that one must always tell that truth can itself become a temptation. Sometimes silence is golden. Ecclesiastes says there is “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” Paul tells believers to speak the truth in love. Blurting out a truth that will clearly maim someone in spirit is not helpful or productive. Nathan confronted David; John the Baptist confronted Herod; Christ confronted religious authorities. But Christ also remained silent before His accusers when silence served its purpose. Perhaps the better principle isn't: “If I know something is wrong, I must tell someone.” Instead, it should be, “If God has given me knowledge and responsibility, I must discern whether, when, and how or even if I am obligated to act.”

The distinction matters because otherwise accountability can turn into personal responsibility for everybody else's behavior. In business they call it scope creep. In weight lifting it's called an injury. And that's a burden God hasn't necessarily given me. That is His responsibility to make others see that they need to act. I can tell the CEO what I believe he needs to hear. I can warn the pastor. I can confront the employee. I can resign when remaining would make me complicit in the sin or failure. But after I've faithfully done what I believe God obligated me to do, their response belongs to them and my responsibility ends.

In the end it comes back to faith and realizing I need to turn it over to God after my responsibility in the situation is complete. This is where all of it becomes a faith-building exercise for me. Earlier trials taught me how to endure what happened. The most recent trial seems to have taught me how to release what I can never control. Know when to walk away.

It requires a large amount of faith to say and believe, “God, I have done what I believe You required of me. Now I will trust You with what happens next.” This kind of faith can be extraordinarily difficult for someone like me whose conscience is strongly oriented toward action and accountability, because inaction by other people feels almost like something I am morally compelled to correct. I can’t. My resignation wasn’t about escaping discomfort or trial so much as it was about refusing to spend my strength and energy sustaining a system whose stewards were unwilling to steward it. I can't make others carry their end of the weight. Not all burdens are mine to carry.

I believe this is the lesson I was to learn from this. It was a modern day Parable of the Talents. How did I steward my responsibility (Matthew 25:14–30). My faithfulness is inextricably attached to stewardship. This is not the case for so many others. I was accountable to God. In the end many are not. 

Romans 14:12: “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.”

Stewardship asks the question: What have I done with what God gave me?

Accountability asks the question: What will I say when I must answer to God for it?

Faithfulness asks the question: Was I faithful with what I was entrusted with?

A Bird on Barbwire

The greatest lie ever told about totalitarianism by the left is that totalitarian movements are in fact a few strong men or Übermensch imposing their will on the unwilling participants. That people like Trump or Gavin Newsom are the embodiment of this at the federal or state levels.  The opposite of this is actually true. This subtle correction to the simplistic "dictator imposes tyranny on everyone" model flips the script on the mindless liberal assertion of one powerful person taking over the masses.

Totalitarian movements generally require mass participation, or at least substantial popular mobilization. They don't merely suppress an unwilling society from above; they seek to transform society from within-through propaganda, ideological conformity, political organizations, rallies, protests, surveillance and pressure to demonstrate enthusiasm organically that is actually artificial.

The paradox is that coercion and consent can coexist and are not mutually exclusive. A population may initially embrace a movement (BLM, Trans rights, etc, participate actively in and genuinely believe its ideology, while the resulting regime simultaneously destroys alternatives and makes dissent increasingly dangerous and then destroys these ‘useful idiots’.

Hannah Arendt emphasized something like this in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Totalitarian movements drew power from mass society and sought to organize otherwise politically atomized people into an ideological movement. In other words, the rogues, those left out or perceived as left out or the lone gunmen and lunatics. The "strong man" is therefore not the whole explanation; the movement and its mass base matter enormously if it is to succeed. A distinction needs to be made though.

Authoritarianism primarily asks people to obey. Totalitarianism seeks to mobilize them -to make them participate in, identify with, and reproduce the ideology of the regime. That is the reason totalitarianism can be more socially invasive and violent than ordinary dictatorship. That is why we are seeing a mobilization of the weak and marginalized in society to protest law-abiding agents of change such as ICE and other paramilitary organizations incorporated by the sitting government.

Recruiting the weak and the isolated creates a mass of weak individuals that imposes its will on a majority of sane and responsible citizens. We see it in the transgender movement, in the lunacy of the post partum killer Lindsay Clancy, and similar support of otherwise insane ideologies. At its core it is cultural Marxism. For this Marxism to take over it needs to isolate and kill of its main threat. The masculine male in a traditional male role…father, soldier, leader. Modern progressives believe that if they suppress the male drive toward strength, tyranny stays caged. They have it completely backwards and support the destructive outcome of putting weak morally rudderless males or even morally debased women in charge.

This ‘collectivism’ runs on social causes regardless of how depraved or mental they are. They enforcement by what should be considered ‘consensus enforcement’ or the ‘will of the mob’. What Americans should really be doing is shifting our focus from the so-called dictator or predator complex (Trump as Hitler) and realize that we need focus on the isolated individual as a recruit for collective power and the recruiters. The people like those supporting Lindsey Clancy, the would-be assassins of Trump and the morally bankrupt media recruitment agents. They are the cooperative agents in the hidden tyrannical takeover.

In other worlds, true totalitarians regimes exploit isolated and politically aggravated people. This applies to both sides of the aisle in America too. Both view themselves as the underdog and oppressed. Both willing to resort to violence to make a point. The left being quicker to pull the trigger than the right. The truth and time has shown that suppressing individual strength doesn't necessarily prevent tyranny; if anything, a population of fragmented, dependent, and socially insecure individuals are easier for an organized movement to mobilize.

The protesting of the oddball left therefore needs to be seen as ‘consensus enforcement’ and is born of a weak population too beta-ized and demasculinized to stand on its own. Through this weakness the true dictator steps in to take advantage of the weak and feebleminded. People who outsource their lives to the state and look to it for rescue from an existence they cannot bear. Ostracism, reputational ruin, and cancellation work best on those too frail to face rejection. A mind that judges independently, backed by a spine willing to absorb the anger that follows, is the only thing that stands against a mass movement. That is exactly why ‘acceptance’ is not only desired by the progressive left, it is demanded.

The one trait that defends against this tyranny, masculinity, is then labeled as toxic an undesirable, harmful of even extreme. There is even a biological and scientific support of this argument. Testosterone in men has fallen roughly 1% a year since the 1980s, a decline the endocrinology literature documents independent of age. A man today carries meaningfully less than his father did at the same stage of life. A growing body of research points one direction. As alcoholism and drug use increase, testosterone falls even more. As testosterone falls, so does the capacity to withstand social pressure. We are building a society where the internal capacity for dissent is falling while institutions raise the penalty for dissenting. Compliance is expected. Compounding this fact, increasingly women, more physically vulnerable by nature, move into positions of power and men grow weaker, the herd instinct that drives every collective movement takes hold due to sheer numbers or rule of the mob, not actual strength.

At this point, the herd is the precondition for every totalitarian project. The volume of sheer numbers an the mindlessness of the mob wins over the individual masculine resistance. Like a white blood cell being overwhelmed by a horde of diseased cells or a malignant cancer. The immune response to stop the spread of contagion is overwhelmed by design. The diseased cell attacks the healthy one by surrounding it, suffocating and killing it.

What is the easiest way to stop this? It is also happens to be the hardest. It requires a critical mass of strong, independent, responsible individuals, enough to outweigh the compliant mass. It begins with the refusal to pretend that sexual perversion and gender identities are okay. That illegal immigrant invaders can just do as they please. That no-fault divorce is okay and raping men blind of everything they invested in a family is a legal recourse for unemployed women with a vendetta. That women can wantonly murder children in the womb and the medical establishment gets away with calling it healthcare.

As Carl Jung wrote, resistance to the organized mass can only be affected by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the parasitic mass is itself. The best defense against a dangerous but organized mass isn't simply physical aggression or "strength," but an individual sufficiently integrated to withstand the psychological cost of disagreeing with the group.

To summarize: Societies become weak and vulnerable when individuals become psychologically, economically, and socially dependent on institutions for identity and security. Conformity is the logical out come in oppressive societies like this because dissent then carries severely higher reputational costs. We all saw this during COVID if someone actively resisted or refused vaccination.  A free society doesn't merely need citizens who are willing to resist a tyrant…it needs citizens willing and capable of resisting their own neighbors and family if morally required. Sometimes...you just have to do the hard thing.