So, first
a confession, when I tried to teach this session, I went way overtime… which I
should have known would happen, I tried to teach the whole book of Judges, and
some of the book of Joshua, in under an hour.
The Book of Joshua—A Map of the Tribes
I love
reading Fantasy, and one of my favorite features of the genre are the cool maps
in the front of the book. That is a good way to take the book of Joshua, a type
of map of an idealized version of the conquest.
Joshua 4:1-7—Just feast on this imagery a bit, 12
tribes traveling together before the ark. This is the Utopia the author hopes
for, a decentralized theocracy; the ideal that turns into a dystopia once the
rubber hits the road, as the book of Judges demonstrates. But ideally—12 tribes,
upholding God’s roving presence, founded and forged in crossing out of slavery.
That’s some compelling stuff!
Joshua 12:7-24—Here is an idealized account of the 12
tribe’s conquest, almost a completed to-do list, Kings from Ba’al-gad to Mt.
Halak.
Judges—A Tribal Confederation breaks down ever generation
If Joshua
is akin to Thomas More’s Utopia, then Judges is George Miller’s Mad
Max. Any semblance of an ideal society is quickly scraped away, as the
faults of a decentralized theocracy are on full display.
Judges 2:6-10—Joshua is buried and stability with it
6-The tribes are dispersed to go do their own thing.
10-As is the refrain from Judges to Kings to Ecclesiastes,
from one generation to the next everything is lost. Inheritances never pass
cleanly from one generation to the next.
Judges 2:11-15—Idolatry
11-Ba’al—Canaanite deity, “Lord” in some Canaanite languages,
so Ba’al Peor would be the Lord of Peor, etc.
12-Astartes—a goddess—the local manifestation of Ishtar/Aphrodite.
14-The conquest doesn’t go so well, there are
counter-attacks. The indigenous people didn’t much like having their kings
killed and put on a list like groceries. These defeats are seen as reproof from
God for the Tribes going over to other gods, forgetting the liberation from
Egypt.
Judges 2:16-23—Judges restrain the people’s
unfaithfulness
Just as God provided clothing for Adam
and Eve when they were expelled from Eden, called Noah to build an ark to save
his family from the flood, and provided the Passover as protection for the
people’s first born down in Egypt, so too the people are given a way to continue
on even in the face of their own ruptured relationships with their God. God
provides charismatic leaders to guide them through challenges in the land.
16-Judges—Shophet, Charismatic Chief of Chiefs,
unites the tribes and deals with trouble.
17-It is worth considering that when the people are
dispersed throughout the land as they are, decentralized, it is harder for them
to hold onto the ways of the previous generation. Traditions warp and break
more easily without a center.
18-In some ways we have a replay of Egypt, the people are
oppressed, they groan for help, and God sends a Moses figure.
A Chart of Judges:
Here is where my Bible Study went
off the rails, I tried to review every judge, so I would suggest instead to
review my chart here, and simply note that it doesn’t all go well, at best
Judges are ambiguous figures. Often times, people read Samson as particularly
heroic (the ancients explicitly paralleled him with Hercules), but my reading
is that he is intentionally an example of how degraded Judgeship has
become. The book of Judges isn’t a story of ongoing faithfulness, but instead
the breaking down of decentralized theocracy, it isn’t a working way of
governing people!
|
Judge
|
Disobedience
|
Consequence
|
Outcome
|
|
Othniel
|
Serve Ba’als
& Asherahs.
|
Captured by
King Cushan of Aram for 8 years
|
War, Tribes
prevail, 40 years of peace
|
|
Ehud
|
“Evil in the
sight of God”
|
Conquered by
Moab, Amon, and Amalekites.
18 years
under King Eglon of Moab
|
Ehud
assassinates Eglon in his restroom, Moab crushed in the confusion, 80 years of peace.
|
|
Shamgar
|
|
|
Kill 600
Philistines, the Tribes are delivered
|
|
Deborah—both
Prophet and Judge (Ja’el & Barak assisting)
|
“Did evil in
the sight of God”
|
King Jabin of
Canaan and General Sisera of The Gentile Fortress (raiding club) invade with
massive chariots
|
The chariots
caught in the mud, Sisera tent pegged, 40
years of rest.
|
|
Gideon (Reluctant
Judge, his father worshipped Ba’al, he is also named Jeru-ba’al)
|
Did what is
evil in the sight of the Lord
|
Midian and
Amalekite raids on farms.
|
Destruction
of Ba’als and Asherahs, Tribal
infighting, killing generals, a campaign, he creates an idol out of plunder.
No time of peace. His son, Abimelek, tries to
create a Kingdom.
|
|
Tola
|
Abimelek’s
bad reign
|
|
Judged 23 years
|
|
Jair
|
|
|
Judged 22 years
|
|
Jephthah
(outsider, born out of wedlock, chased out of the country, makes a vow that
leads to his daughter’s death)
|
Served
Ba’als and Astartes and a plethora of other gods. Ceased worshipping God!
|
Ammonites
and Philistines control them for 18 years, subdue them out tribe by tribe…
God tells them to ask their new gods for help!
|
Ammonites
subdued.
Jephtha
rules as Judge for 6 years.
Intertribal slaughter, 40,000
dead in “civil war”.
|
|
Ibzan (makes
intertribal alliances using his 30 sons)
|
(after the
slaughter)
|
|
Judged 7 years
|
|
Elon
|
|
|
Judged 10 years
|
|
Abdon (like
Ibzan had many sons and donkeys to make alliances)
|
|
|
Judged 8 years
|
|
Samson (Special
Child, Nazarite, Pursues Philistine Wife, sleeps with prostitutes, falls in
lust with Delilah, etc.)
|
Did evil in
the Lord’s sight, given into the hands of Philistines for 40 years
|
Samson
bumbles into fighting Philistines, torches fields.
|
Blinded and
shaven, still destroys temple of Dagon, Judges for 20 years.
|
The Rest of the Book:
New Idolatry and Tribal Dispute, much can be traced back to Gideon’s
idol and his son Abimelek. Massive slaughter of Benjaminites.
Other Judges:
Eli (and almost his sons) and Samuel (and his sons).
My working definition of Decentralization—The
Distribution of functions, power, and authority.
What’s Judges have to do with Decentralization?
-During this time period Israelite society was dispersed and
governed on a tribal level.
-One of the consequences of decentralization is that truth
and tradition are harder to pass along without a centralized authority.
-Theoretically this distribution of authority allows for God
to be the sole authority. Hypothetically one of the ways a theocracy can work
is that there simply are no earthly rulers, or they are so weak that no one pays
them any mind.
3 Stories to think about Decentralization:
Walter Cronkite
I
hear tell there was a time when authority about current events was centralized.
Everyone turned on the TV and listened to Walter Cronkite, and that settled
matters. Not so now, now interpretation of current events and even what constitutes
news, is diffuse, broken into pieces by 24 hour cable news, algorithms and
media silos.
St. Paul and the Werewolf
One
Sunday a visitor to the congregation I was serving came up to me after worship
and let me know he was an ex-Roman Catholic, because they were hiding things. After
a few conversations over a couple of weeks, I found out he had “discovered,”
from some amalgamation of the “History” Channel and chat rooms on the internet,
that the difference between Protestants and Catholics was that Protestants
acknowledged that the Apostle Paul was a werewolf (that was the thorn in his
flesh).
When we got into extended conversation
about this idea, and the actual historic divisions between Protestants and
Catholics, he didn’t let go of this idea; instead he decided I, an ordained Protestant
Pastor, didn’t really know the difference between Protestants and Catholics.
For him, I was instead an authority figure hiding the truth.
Part of our decentralized,
hyper-democratic society is that anything that looks like a centralized
authority is automatically suspect. The slogan “Question Authority” becomes a
highest ideal, even as it can at times be exercised without common sense.
Flash mobs and
Terrorist Cells
Up until
now my examples of Decentralization have been fairly negative, but the act of
democratizing function, power, and authority can also be transformative, it can
do big things—that is the central premise of The Starfish
and the Spider. Two examples:
-Flash
mobs are an amazing feat. By decentralizing the whole process of putting on
a concert, a small group of people are able to give a whole performance without
ever practicing together.
-Similarly, terrorist cells are small groups delegated all
the function, power, and authority of making war, and they can do damage like
you wouldn’t believe. Even if one branch of a terrorist organization is caught,
it rarely does long term damage to the organization, because everyone has been
empowered to make war.
The Elephant in the Room—The Internet:
Probably
the biggest example of decentralization we experienced on the day to day, is
the internet. It has flattened the whole world, everything is interconnected,
function, power, and authority can be spread out not just among a small group,
but among millions, even billions, of people.
Challenges:
I’m sure
you can intuit some of the challenges decentralization brings to the church,
but here are a few:
-As the Israelites found within one generation of entering
the promised land, passing on the faith in a way that doesn’t get confused and involve
werewolves is hard without centralized authority figures, leaders, or meeting place.
-In so far as the faith involves claims made by a religious
authority, be that authority based on charismatic experience or theological
education or lines of tradition, they are all suspect in a decentralized world.
The watchword of most people that think about this is that any respect for the
pastoral office, any religious sway that can be mustered, comes from pastoral
authenticity, not pastoral authority. So, if you notice pastors in skinny jeans
who say things like “I’m just being real with you” that’s the move from Pastoral
Authority to Pastoral Authenticity.
-Cyberspace, the internet, social media, all of that—poses a
grave challenge to the Christian faith, in so far as we are a faith that believes
that material stuff matters, that Christianity is an embodied tradition, that
God took on a body, took on flesh and blood—matter matters! As we all
unfortunately found during the Covid years, a disembodied faith, a cyber faith,
is quite malformed. There were neat things we got to try, virtual services, home
Holy Week packets, Bible Studies on zoom, meetings on zoom, continuing
education on zoom, zoom zoom zoom. But, even the Gnostics among us who notoriously
denigrate bodily life, got tired of that disembodied form of decentralized church.
Possibilities:
-One of the founding stories of the Christian faith is that
a small group of disciples shook the Roman Empire and beyond by dispersing and
using the new technology of a codex (a bound book) to spread the Gospel. This
is like a flash mob or a terrorist cell, decentralization having a
transformative power. Why not again? Why isn’t there a space for a small group
of Christians to use technology in a dispersed way to: re-evangelize our world,
humble the Powers and Principalities of our era, and re-tune the Church to the
Spirit’s calling today?
-Now, for decades we’ve bought into the church growth model
of ministry, ultimately Church is about becoming bigger and bigger. There have
been instances of pushback of course, the Slow Church movement, the Emergent
Church, etc, but by and large those movements have been snatched up and misused
to achieve the same goal as Church Growth—bigger is better. But there is a case
to be made that small is attractive, that the drive for growth ultimately sours
people to these churches (there is evidence that for every person entering Saddleback
during its heyday there was another person leaving). In short, what if we’re
supposed to be small, salt and light, not every ingredient of the soup, not the
sun itself?
-What if the Church is the antithesis of Cyber-Gnosticism? As
everything in our society pushes toward the anonymous and depersonalized (or
the frighteningly hyper-personalization of AI), the Church as an awkward and
weird third place. A place where people are authentically who they are, where
you can only be so anonymous for so long, if you sit among a small group of
people and worship for more than a week or two, they’re going to get to know
you. Maybe that’s what we need in this world?
So, even as decentralization has its challenges, maybe we
can hope that nimble small churches can navigate those challenges and tame some
of those dynamics in order to proclaim the Gospel.
