Which Way Modern Man?
It is up to you.
This week we are going to take a break from our series on Nehemiah. But don’t worry, it will pick back up next week.
I am sure that most of you have seen the “Which Way Western Man?” or “Which Way Modern Man?” memes bouncing around the internet. Depending on the point their originator is trying to make, they will typically either compare two options that are both bad, or in the case of pages like Trad West and others of that type, they will compare a typically of modern image one showcasing traditional values.
One version of the meme shows a young man standing at a split in the road. To the left, the path continues off into a green landscape where the sun is shining. To the right is a dark castle with roiling clouds and purple lightning. Each meme proposes a single question. Which way will you choose?
Sometimes a cynical meme creator will replace the path on the left with a duplicate of the path to the right, as seen in the corpo rat/government shill dichotomy above. Often, some background knowledge is needed to understand the meme, such as the identity of the two men in the image on the right.
Another version of this meme leaves out the path and shows two contrasting visions of the good life (left/right, Christian/Secular, progressive/conservative, etc). The images will be accompanied by a list of offerings or “what to expect” from either ideal, followed by the “Which Way?” question.
The Bible is full of these, “which way” depictions showing two men who are superficially similar but choose different paths.
This week I’m going to discuss three “Which Way” incidents we see in the Bible. I hope you’ll go read their whole stories in God’s Word.
A Tale of Two Bedouins
Abram and Lot were both nomadic shepherds. God had called Abram out of Haran where his father had settled and promised to make him a great nation. God blessed Lot, Abram’s nephew, and they both became very rich men. They became so rich that it started to seem impossible for them to live together, and their herdsmen started to fight amongst themselves. Finally, Abram told Lot that he thought they should separate.
A similar conversation happened between two widows in the time of the judges: after years of tragedy that included the deaths of all the men in the family, Naomi told her daughter-in-law, Ruth, to go home to her birth family. Ruth’s response tells us everything we need to know about her. She said,
Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.
Lot could have responded to Abram like Ruth responded to Naomi. He could have said, “God has promised you this land and to make you a great nation. Therefore, my flocks will become your flocks and my herdsmen your herdsmen. Where you live I will live, and my daughters will marry your sons. Do not urge me to leave your or turn away to the side.”
Instead, Lot looked around and saw the good land that was available outside of the promise that God made to Abram.
Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Velley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord[…]. So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom.
Peter, the apostle, said that Lot was a righteous man who was tormented by the evil around him, and God rescued him from the destruction he brought on that evil society (2 Pet 2:7-8). Lot did not separate himself from Abram because he was a bad guy, or even because he was rejecting the Lord. He just saw prosperity and took it. But Lot put himself in the middle of the evil around him voluntarily, and the result was that he missed out on Abram’s blessing, which he could very easily have made his own. Lot’s choice of immediate prosperity over God’s promise eventually cost him everything that mattered, including the eternal souls of many of his descendants.
Lot’s choice of immediate prosperity over God’s promise eventually cost him everything that mattered.
A Tale of Two Nazarites
Samuel and Samson were judges of Israel who lived at approximately the same time.
Samuel and Samson’s mothers were both barren women who received their sons through a miracle, and both men were Nazirites1.
Samson’s mother, Manoah, was visited by an angel who prophesied that she would conceive and told her that her son must be a Nazirite.
No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he will begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.
Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was also barren, and while she was not visited by an angel to foretell his birth, she did beg God to open her womb, and she made a promise to God very similar to what the angel commanded Manoah.
O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.
The lives of Samson and Samuel diverged early, but in this article I want to just look at the very first and last times that we see each of them in scripture.
The first time that we see Samson, he starts by placing himself in a compromising situation.
Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, “I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife.”
Meanwhile, Samuel ministered to the Lord at the Tabernacle, working under the corrupt leader Eli.
For each of these men, the first thing we learn about them is where they place themselves:
Samson places himself in the home of his enemies.
Samuel places himself in the house of the Lord.
The word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.
Samuel had chosen, despite the bad example of his mentor, to place himself as near to the presence of God as he could.
As a result, God began to speak to him.
Samson placed himself among the enemy, and he fell for one of their women. Samuel placed himself in the presence of God, and he received a message from the creator of the universe.
The last time we see each of these figures in scripture directly relates to the first time we see them. Their lives followed the paths that early decisions about where they would spend their time inevitably produced.
Samson had moral failure after moral failure throughout his life. Finally, he was defeated by a woman. He had his arms bound, his hair shorn, his strength palsied, his eyes blinded, and he became a slave. After all of that, he found himself standing in the temple of his enemies, right back where he chose to be when he was a youth. At the last moment, he seems to have understood.
“O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.” And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight against them…. Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life.
Samuel’s death is more subdued. 1 Samuel 25:1 says, “Samuel died. And all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Ramah.” But if you turn back a few chapters and look at the last act he performs, you will see something very different. His last official act was to take his horn of oil, at the Lord’s command, and anoint the new king of Israel.
Samson had placed himself in the house of his enemies throughout his life, and that was where he died; Samuel had placed himself in the house of the Lord, God had spoken to him there, and the last thing we see him do is speak the words of the Lord in anointing Israel’s king.
Samson placed himself in the presence of God’s enemies, married one of their women, was defeated, and eventually died in their temple. Samuel placed himself in the presence of God, heard the words of the Lord, and as a result became God’s spokesman to his people.
A Tale of Two Kings
During his life, Samuel anointed two kings on God’s behalf. One of them was rejected, and eventually his whole line would be wiped out. The other received God’s blessing, and became the ancestor of Jesus Christ, our mighty ruler and eternal king.
Neither Saul nor David was perfect. Both sinned and disobeyed God’s command.
Saul’s job was to fight. Samuel’s job was to offer the sacrifice2. In 1 Samuel 13, the Philistines came to fight, and Samuel sent a messenger to Saul telling him he would arrive in seven days to offer sacrifices before the battle. When Samuel was delayed, Saul took it upon himself to offer the sacrifice, rejecting God’s clear guidance.
Later, God gave Saul another explicit order to completely wipe out the Amalekites and destroy all their goods. Instead of obeying God, Saul picked and chose what to destroy and what to preserve.
And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.
As a result, God rejected Saul as king.
Hearing just Saul’s side of the story it seems obvious. Of course, God replaced Saul with David.
But it isn’t that clear cut at all. David had his own set of failures. Deuteronomy 17 gives some rules for how Israel’s kings should behave, and one of them is “he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold” (vs. 17).
As you read through David’s adventures, you will notice that he seems to have picked up a wife after each adventure the way retirees buy RV stickers for each new national park they visit. This is direct disobedience to the commands that Moses laid down for helping a king rule faithfully3.
This first sin leads to a greater sin. By 2 Samuel 11, David had the kingdom so well in hand that he imagined he could relax and let his generals go fight his battles for him. The author4 clearly thinks this is a terrible idea, and he lets us know in the most passive aggressive way possible: “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab” (vs. 1). This is a beautifully scathing sentence, and it’s the prelude to horrific failure.
While David was relaxing instead of ruling, he went out on the veranda one evening to look over the city. While there, he saw a beautiful young woman bathing. Instead of turning away, he thought to himself, “I need a closer look at that,” so he ordered his servants to go get her.
One of David’s servants subtly tried to prevent him from committing the sin it must have been obvious he was about to commit by telling him that she was married, but David didn’t care. He ordered her to be brought to him, and he slept with her. Considering the power differential between the two of them, most modern people would consider this a rape, whether she appeared to be a willing participant or not.
Sin has a way of finding us out, so of course, Bathsheba became pregnant. David immediately hatched a scheme to hide the sin by calling her husband back from the front lines to sleep with his wife. But Uriah—the cuckold husband—proved himself a better man than David and refused to even go home for a visit while at the palace, so David switched to plan B and sent him back to the front lines carrying his own death warrant, adding murder to his rape/adultery.
Once Uriah was safely dead, David took Bathsheba for his own wife.
If there were a hierarchy of sins, whose sin would be worse? Saul’s or David’s?
Why was Saul rejected while David became the progenitor of the messianic line?
The answer is not in the sin; it is in the response to the sin.
When Samuel confronted Saul about his sin, Saul’s response was all about saving face.
Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice….I have sinned; yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel, and return with me that I may bow before the Lord your God.”
David responded completely differently when Nathan reproached him for his atrocious behavior. He didn’t think about saving face. His thoughts immediately went to the damage he had done to his relationship with the Lord. He said,
“I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin.”
It seems strange that God immediately forgave when David acknowledged his sin, especially since Saul also acknowledged his sin, but if Psalm 51 details what David meant when he said, “I have sinned against the Lord:”
Have Mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Against you, you only have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight.Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
These are just some excerpts from the prayer. I encourage you to go read the whole thing.
The difference between Saul and David is not in the sin. It is in how they dealt with that sin.
Saul attempted to save face, asking Samuel to come with him even though he had sinned and honor him before the elders of Israel. David didn’t care about his own honor. He cared about getting right with God, and he threw himself on God’s mercy.
That’s the response a heart like God’s produces.
Coda
As anyone who has been reading this sub for a while knows, my typical modus operandi is to choose a character from the Bible and tell his story without a huge amount of theological commentary. I want to remind you, and myself, just how awesome our spiritual heritage is, and I believe that narrative is unavoidably character forming. Reading an awesome hero story will literally make you more heroic. This is why it matters what kinds of stories you read. They don’t need to be explicitly Christian, but their heroes need to be noble, powerful, brave, and self-sacrificial.
The men we read about in the Bible, though imperfect and prone to failure, were almost never the “men without chests” that C.S. Lewis warned us against in The Abolition of Man. They were awesome warriors and adventurers, and their stories are full of passion, pathos, and adventure. If you don’t see that when you read the Bible, you aren’t reading closely enough. Anyone who thinks Homer or Virgil were epic, but the Bible is “full of begats,” hasn’t done the reading.
But sometimes it helps to look at more than one person at a time so you can learn from the white space between them. There are plenty of possible pairs of men in the Bible who we can learn from. The three pairs we discussed here are just a few examples.
One Last Comparison
But if we just compare the two men and say, “this one was better than that one,” we haven’t really accomplished anything. There’s one more comparison that we need to make. We must take the lesson, hold it up like a mirror against our own lives, and see how we compare.
Do you make your decisions based on what will bring you prosperity? Or do you make your decisions based on what will put you in alignment with God’s plan and promises?
Are you surrounding yourself with God’s enemies? Or do you choose to place yourself in God’s presence?
When you find yourself in sin do you attempt to save face? Or do you truly repent and seek to bring your heart back into alignment with God’s heart?
These things matter, and they matter not just for you, but for every future generation of your family. You are creating the environment where your sons and daughters’ character will be forged. Your son will be like you, and your daughter will marry a man like you. Seek to be a part of God’s plan. Place yourself in his presence. Repent when you fall, not because you don’t want to get caught, but because you want to be a worthy servant for your king.
It’s up to you.
Which Way Christian Man?
As I have discussed elsewhere, kings and priests had very different roles under the old covenant. Part of Christ’s work was opening the doorway to God for all believers, so that St. Peter could say, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood,” (1 Pet 2:5), and the Hebraist could say that since Jesus is our great high priest, “let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” (Heb 4:14 & 16). But before Christ came and opened that door, only the Levitical priests and certain judges could offer sacrifices.
Building a harem. As far as I know, buying National Park stickers is not a sin, even for a king.
Possibly Nathan.