Year 1, Day 294: 1 Samuel 8

Give Us a King!

1 Samuel 8 gives a great story of how the Lord is willing to bend His will to the stubbornness of our hearts.  God does not desire Israel to have a king; God desires to be their King.  God has certainly proven his ability to protect them.  God has long proven His ability to govern humanity and keep it functioning well.  There is no reason to not have God as a king.

However, it is difficult as flesh-and-blood people to be in relationship with a God.  We typically like to see the people with whom we are in relationship.  We like to hear them.  We like to converse with them.  We like to be encouraged by them.  We actually really like it best when they are in control – although don’t tell any of us that!  That’s really what this bid for a king is all about.  They want someone to be over them, to command them, to lead them, to make all the hard decisions.  For all that we as human beings say that we love independence, what we really mean is we love to have the independence to do our pleasure while we know someone else is making the hard decisions regarding our necessities.

Think about it.  If we truly lived in a world where we were truly independent, how many of us would be happy?  How many of us would like to live in a world with no police to help keep my house safe?  What about a world with no military to keep invaders away from our border?  What about a world with no supermarkets and food plants to gather and process food into easily prepared items?  What about a world with no power plants to manage the distribution of electricity?  We say that we like our independence and our freedom, but we really don’t mean it.  We want to live nestled in a world where our needs are secured by someone else leaving our desires to be freely pursued.  That’s really what we mean.

That is what these Hebrew people want.  A king will have an army to fight the Philistines.  The king will manage the borders and keep them safe.  A king will help prevent internal disputes.  A king will set economic and taxation policies that will help stabilize the country’s economy.  A king will do everything that the individuals should be able to do but aren’t doing for themselves.

We haven’t even talked about the worst part of this passage!  Do you hear God’s words in 1 Samuel 8:7?  “It is not you they have rejected, it is me that they have rejected as king.”  Wow.  If that isn’t a powerful declaration against the Hebrew people, I don’t know what is!  {For the record, that’s a powerful declaration against humanity in general, too!}  When we establish a king to govern over us because we aren’t interested in handling the details individually ourselves – that says something powerful about whether or not we really want to live according to God’s ways. 

That’s part of God’s point, here.  God is telling Samuel that the people don’t want to worry about the nitty-gritty details of how to live civilized with their neighbors.  They want someone to come and tell them how they have to act rather than make those decisions for themselves.  That’s what government does, essentially.

I’m Not Proposing Anarchy

Now, before anyone reading thinks I’m an anarchist, please know that I am not.  I think God is clear that we do need leaders over us.  Before the time of the kings there were the judges.  Before the judges there was Joshua and Moses.  I’m not saying it is against God’s ways to be under a leader.  I’m no anarchist.  What I am trying to say, however, is that official governments fundamentally take the decisions we should be making ourselves and instead make them universally for everyone.  That process has its consequences.  If nothing else, we get used to not having to make those decisions and are no better off for it!

Like Other Nations

There’s one other dynamic that I’d like to talk about, and it is found in 1 Samuel 8:19-22.  In the Hebrew people’s comments, they declare that they want to be like the other nations.  This is fundamentally breaking the promise that God established with Abraham.  God says that Abraham’s descendants would be a blessing to the nations.  Here the people are saying they would rather be like the other nations rather than being a blessing through their difference.

For the record, I think this applies to the church, too.  I believe God has established the church to be a blessing to the nations.  But when we in the church chooses to govern ourselves like the world, when we treat each other like the world treats each other, and when we think just like the world – then we are doing the same thing that these Hebrew people are doing.  When the church acts like the world, we are no different than the Hebrew people wanting a king so that they can be like the other nations.

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