Today’s
Scripture Reading (February 2, 2019): Judges 8
Communication often starts with telling people how
great they are. Apparently, we need the
affirmation. I used to have a couple of friends who would sit in and listen to
my sermons, and I would also sit in and listen to their preaching. The idea was
that we wanted to become better speakers, and so we needed objective eyes and
ears to tell us where we were falling short. Maybe the easy way to accomplish
this would have been to have a short meeting where each person would highlight
one area where they felt improvement was possible. After all, that was the
purpose of the exercise. But that never happened. We had a rule. When offering
our words about areas of improvement, we first had to identify something that
the speaker did well. Then, we offered our criticism or an area where we needed
to improve. Finally, we offered a second thing that the speaker did well. To give our criticism, first, we had to be willing to give twice as much encouragement
than we gave criticism. It is not a bad idea. Speaking groups all over the
world are arranged around the same idea – a criticism sandwich, starting off and ending with a message of praise about
the person being criticized.
When dealing with power, especially power that is
critical of your performance, the same principle
can be applied. If you want a political leader to ease up, don’t criticize
them. Offer them your praise. We all have experienced times when the only thing
we could do is to step up and kiss the ring of the king, usually offered with a
phrase of affirmation about how great they are – even when the truth is that
they leave much to be desired.
One of the power
tribes of Israel was the Tribe of Ephraim. So as Gideon closes off his battle
with Midian, the question that comes down to him from power is “why did you not
ask us for help?” The truth is that the problem had existed for a while and
Ephraim had never lifted a finger to help resolve it. The other side of the
truth is that God had decided that this would be his battle. He was going to
take a scared farmer with no self-confidence, add a few weak, would be
warriors, and win the battle that the powers in Israel refused to fight. That
is the truth.
But the truth wouldn’t have helped Gideon, so he
chose to take another action. He decided to kiss the ring of the powerful.
Gideon tells Ephraim that his campaign against the Midianites does not measure
up to all of the wonderful things that Ephraim had done (reality check, what
God did against the Midianites was amazing). And then he adds that the least of
the grapes that Ephraim had to offer is better than the best that Gideon’s
family could muster. Abiezer was Gideon’s ancestor. At best, this was an
exaggeration.
So what Gideon tells the Ephraimites may not be true
on a literal level. But maybe a better way to read this passage is with an eye
on the humility of Gideon. Gideon did not care how Ephraim or anyone else
viewed him. He was comfortable returning to his role as a humble farmer. His own people wanted to make him a local king, but
Gideon recognized that there could be no other king over Israel than God. What
Gideon accomplished, he accomplished through the power of God. He was
uncomfortable taking the glory and wanted all of the praise to go to God.
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: Ruth 1
No comments:
Post a Comment