Samson: Hero or Villain?

A favorite Bible character for many people is Samson. The Old Testament figure is preserved for us in the book of Judges, and his life was truly noteworthy. He never had a single haircut (well, he had one near the end of his life, and it was very costly), he killed a lion with his bare hands, and he was known for his incredible strength. He was so powerful that some have suggested the Bible exaggerates his feats (a position I do not hold). 

 

By all accounts Samson was a bad man. Here are some of the highlights of his life:

He proposed a riddle to thirty people, and the wager involved a change of clothes—thirty for him if they could not solve it, and one for each of them if they could. When they solved his riddle, he killed thirty Philistines, disrobed them, and presented their clothes as his payment. On another occasion he caught 300 foxes, tied them together by their tails, and set them on fire; this sent 150 sets of burning foxes running through the Philistine fields, devastating their crops. After visiting a Philistine prostitute, he ripped the city gate off its hinges on his way home, and carried it forty miles away. His last act on earth was a murder/suicide, something that if occurred today would be called a terror attack. 

 

Bad guy, right? If that is all we ever read about Samson we might conclude that he was a failure, a villain that would go down with people like Nabal, King Saul, or even Queen Jezebel. But the New Testament has something nice to say about the intriguing judge; of all places, he appears in Hebrews 11, the “Hall of Faith” of the Bible. After naming great people of faith, the writer adds this conclusion:

 

“And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens (v.32-34).”

 

I’m sorry, did I just see Samson’s name on that list, in the same breath as David and Gideon? The author of Hebrews recognized something in Samson, particularly what we see in the last line, he “became valiant in battle,” and “turned to flight the armies” of the Philistines. Bestselling author Stephen Miller wrote, “Some historians say Samson’s legacy assured Israel’s survival. Before he came along, the kingless Jews were in the process of becoming assimilated into the culture of their stronger neighbor…Samson forever changed the relationship by driving a wedge of distrust and anger between the two nations. In time, the Jews would emerge as winners in the war for the Promised Land.” 

 

I love Samson because, even though he had his many faults, he is proof that we are not defined by our worst moments. He messed up many times, but when push came to shove, he demonstrated faith in God. Many of our Bible heroes are just like that: a collection of successes and defeats. Please don’t misunderstand me: I am not saying that it doesn’t matter how we live or what we do. We should do our best, but the reality is we will make mistakes. The most important thing, then, is if we have faith in Jesus. Let your faith be what defines your life, not your feats or failures. 

 

 

 

Laziness

 

Are you a lazy person? I’m not talking about enjoying times of rest; we all need that. But rest is actually a break from activity. The lazy are inactive, so they cannot actually rest. The lazy are the people who would do anything to never have to do anything. When there is work to be done, they cannot be found. 

 

Solomon had nothing good to say about the lazy, and nothing but good to say about those who work hard. In Proverbs 6 he uses a loathsome insect as an object lesson, writing, “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest (v.6-8).” Solomon was right; as far as we know, ants have no overseers in the field making sure they do their work, yet off to work they go. To the best of our knowledge, there is no recourse for an ant not doing his job, but you will never see one lounging around with his feet up. In fact, ants can be seen carrying an astonishing fifty times their own body weight with just two arms. No wonder Solomon pointed to the ant as an example of work ethic.

 

Turning his attention back to the lazy person Solomon continued: “How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man (v.9-11).” Ants always have plenty to eat because they work for it, but if the sluggard isn’t careful, he will walk to his pantry and discover its shelves to be bare. Poverty will come upon him like a bandit, and he will have no one to thank but his own inactivity. 

 

What have the lazy ever contributed to society? I have never walked through a museum and heard the tour guide say, “And in this room we have all the accomplishments of lazy people.” I have never seen a monument erected to honor a lazy person. There are no museums or monuments for the lazy. On the other hand, we honor people like George Washington and his men for crossing the Delaware because they were exhausted and low on rations. We honor people like Thomas Edison for not letting his earlier failures keep him from perfecting the lightbulb. When the going got tough, they pushed through. 

 

If you want to do something significant then you can’t be lazy. Aside from the fact that laziness is a poor testimony for Christians, it reduces our lives to insignificance. God made us on purpose for a purpose, and He expects us to work. If He was done with us He would have already called us to heaven, so as long as He leaves us here, we need to be busy. 

 

 

Carried Along

 

When it comes to how we understand the Bible, there are several different opinions. Some believe that the Bible is nothing more than the words of a handful of people who were starting a man made religion, while others believe the words of the Bible are nothing less than the words of God Himself. The latter position holds to the idea of inerrancy, that the Bible is absolutely free from errors (there are varying degrees of belief in inerrancy, but I am a firm believer that what is inspired is surely inerrant). 

 

Perhaps the best clue we have to the claim for inerrancy is found in II Peter 1. There we read “Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (v.20-21).” The King James Version says these men spoke as they “were moved by” the Spirit. I want to focus on that word moved or “carried along” in the English Standard Version. 

 

One of the best ways to get an understanding of what a word means in this situation is to see how the same Greek word was used elsewhere. A good help to us is the word’s appearance in Acts 27:15 where Luke described their shipwreck: “And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along.” The “driven along” at the end of the verse is the same verb Peter used to describe the process by which men wrote the Bible. Derek Thomas wrote about this word, saying, “These men…were not simply prompted or led by Him, but by carried by Him. When someone is carried, he is set down at the destination of the carrier.” 

 

Benjamin Warfield added, “What is ‘borne’ (carried along) is taken up by the bearer and conveyed by the bearer’s power, not its own, to the bearer’s goal, not its own.” Luke and everyone else in the ship were completely at the mercy of the wind. They lost all control of themselves and would wind up only where the wind sent them (interestingly, the same word for wind gives us the Holy Spirit). 

 

Peter’s point, then, is that the men God used to write the Bible were the instrument in the hand of the Holy Spirit. Yes, their human hands physically penned the words on the paper, but the message came from God. The men who wrote knew they were writing; they were not in a trance or mere secretaries transcribing a dictation. But the finished product was exactly what God wanted recorded. It was not Paul’s opinions, Micah’s musings, or David’s daydreams. It is Holy Scripture, something breathed out by Almighty God, written by men, and preserved by the church for thousands of years. We can trust what we read because what we read was written by our Lord. 

 

Enduring Pain

 

I used to play a lot of basketball, like seven days a week. I was always on teams or just playing in the driveway. I have always loved the sport. One of the downsides of playing a contact sport, however, is that it leads to injuries. I always had jammed fingers or sprained ankles, not to mention broken bones. If left untreated, these small injuries can turn into long lasting ailments. 

 

Do you know what the best treatment is for a sprained ankle? The answer is an ice bath for your foot. If you fill a bucket with ice and submerge your ankle into the icy depths, you can greatly reduce your recovery time. The only problem is that keeping your foot under ice is excruciatingly painful. If you can keep your foot in the ice for two solid minutes you will cut your recovery time in half. Leave it there an additional minute and you will be walking the next day. It’s a great remedy, but leaving your foot in ice for three minutes brings a level of pain most people are not willing to endure. Instead, they will hobble around for days or weeks, when all they needed was three minutes of pain. 

 

James 1:2-3 holds the title of MVP of the “easier said than done” verses in the Bible. James wrote, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.” That word patience, translated as steadfastness in newer versions, comes from a combination of two Greek words, meaning “to remain under.” James encourages us to count our trials as pure joy because the hardships we face produce within us the ability to remain under for a longer period of time. If we have come to recognize that many of our trials have been allowed by God in order to refine us, we can think of our trials as that bucket of ice; it isn’t pleasant, but it will bring about some good. 

 

When most people give up on the ice after a minute, they shortchange themselves and miss out of their healing. In a similar way, when we beg God to end our trials, that is like taking our foot out of the ice before it is time. We end up aggravating the injury, so to speak, going through more and more trials because we haven’t learned the lesson God is trying to teach us. Our trials build up our endurance and make us able to “remain under” the ice until the full and proper time. 

 

In his book When Life is Hard, pastor James MacDonald asks, “Why remain [under]? Because the nail that doesn’t remain under the hammer will never reach the goal; because the rough diamond that doesn’t remain under the chisel will never become a precious jewel; because the gold that doesn’t remain under the fire will never be a thing of beauty; because the Christian that doesn’t remain under the hand of God will never see His purpose for trail accomplished and will never experience the blessings on the other side.” 

 

Let me encourage you to remain under when you go through trials. They are a guarantee, so we might as well learn the lesson we are meant to learn. Instead of begging God to end the storm, ask Him what He is trying to teach you. 

 

Two Different Paths

 

In his classic poem The Road not Taken, Robert Frost described stopping at a fork in the road as he took a walk through the forest. The poem begins this way:

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

We often come to similar forks in the road in life. We can choose the worldly life, described in Psalm 1; this is the man who stands in the path of sinners and takes his seat among the ungodly. We can also choose the Christian life, where we put on the full armor of God and cultivate the fruit of the Spirit. The choice is completely up to us. 

 

Proverbs 5 mentions different paths. While giving advice to his son Rehoboam, Solomon told him to avoid the path of the adulterous woman because “her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell (v.5).” That word used for path in Hebrew refers to that which is movable, and has been translated elsewhere as slippery. Today we speak of something as a slippery slope, meaning that if Rehoboam began to spend time with this woman, before he knew it, he would be slipping and sliding down the path that would ruin his life. 

 

Sometimes in a store or mall I see signs posted, alerting shoppers that someone has recently mopped and the floor is still wet. That is what Solomon is doing here. He is putting out one of those yellow wet floor signs for Rehoboam, warning him that he is certain to fall if he isn’t careful. Instead of bruising his tailbone, Rehoboam could lose his life. 

 

At the end of that same chapter Solomon wrote, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LORD, and He ponders all his paths (v.21).” This word paths is different than the one in the fifth verse. This Hebrew word describes the path made by wagons and horses where there were no paved roads. This word came to speak of a person’s habits because following the same path over and over would develop grooves in the ground. A person’s paths were the things he did repetitiously. The warning is clear: do not follow the slippery path of the adulterous woman, because the Lord knows your paths. God knows full well the patterns in our lives. 

 

Jesus mentioned two roads—one broad and easy to traverse, and the other narrow and difficult. Many, He said, meaning the majority, travel the broad road, and few—the minority—travel the narrow.  

 

Frost concluded his poem this way:

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Few people choose the straight and narrow road. It is unfortunately the road less traveled by, but choosing it makes all the difference. 

Jesus is the Word

 

In John’s Gospel he famously referred to Jesus as “the Word,” writing, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (1:1).” How do we know the Word is Jesus? John tells us in verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  

 

It is clear John called Jesus the Word, but why? The simplest answer is that John was referring to the words spoken by the Godhead during the week of creation, for John wrote, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made (v.3).” By calling Jesus the Word, John clearly pointed back to the words spoken in the opening chapters of Genesis, when God said “let there be…and there was.”

 

But John meant more than just the spoken words. He used the Greek word logos, which is a special word. He could have used the word rhema, for example, but he didn’t. Logos is deeper than just the words used, but speaks to the thought process behind the words. As William Dembski wrote in his book The End of Christianity, “Logos is therefore an exceedingly rich notion, encompassing the entire life of the mind.” 

 

Etymology refers to the study of a word’s history, and the etymology of logos is interesting. The Greek word stems from the root lego, translated as “to speak,” but the earliest definition of lego is actually “to lay something down.” Over time, lego began to mean “to pick up and gather,” and then “to select and gather.” As it relates to speaking, then, logos means “to select and gather words.” Logos is not just about speaking, or even speaking certain words, but in choosing which words to speak.

 

Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon has among their many definitions of logos, “the word by which the inward thought is expressed.” The etymology continues when we trace the variant root lec (rather than leg), which appears in our English words intellect and intelligence. Intelligence literally means “to select or choose between.” 

 

Now we have something larger than just saying Jesus spoke the world into existence. Logos speaks to the question of motive. God chose to create the world; speaking was just the vehicle by which He accomplished His will. Logos speaks to the intelligence in our Creator. Jesus was the brains behind the operation, not just the one who carried it out. Isn’t this exactly what we see when we look at the universe? The world attributes everything to random chance, but the Bible points to intelligent design. The universe is far too intricate to have been a coincidence or luckiness; our Lord—the Logos, the Word—put it together as only a sovereign God could.        

 

 

Augustine’s Pears

 

Have you ever stolen anything? If so, it was probably for a reason. A beggar steals food because he is hungry. A child steals candy because he wants to put that chocolate in his mouth. An addict steals anything of value to fund his habits. Others steal out of jealousy and a desire to have what others have. 

 

In his classic autobiography titled Confessions, Saint Augustine of Hippo recounted the time he stole some pears from another man’s tree. He was only sixteen years old, and many might dismiss his actions as a harmless teenage prank, but for Augustine, his theft revealed a deeper heart issue. Listen to how he would later describe this pivotal event in his life: “We carried off a huge load of pears, and after barely tasting some, fed the rest to hogs. We had no intention of eating the pears, but to simply steal them. This act pleased us because it was forbidden…I had no desire to enjoy what I had stolen, but to enjoy the theft and the sin itself.” 

 

Far from sweeping this petty crime under the rug, Augustine lamented, “Behold with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon!...I loved my own undoing…I had become to myself a wasteland.”  

 

Typically people steal to feed themselves or a habit. Augustine’s thievery accomplished no moral purpose. This was not a situational ethics case of arguing that the ends justified the means (Better to steal than starve to death). For Augustine, the act of stealing pears was symptomatic of a larger problem—that his heart was totally depraved and far from God. It mattered not whether he stole pears or pearls; the dollar amount was of no concern to God. 

 

His brutal honesty in assessing his fallen condition is what ultimately led to his salvation. As long as we insist that our sin is no big deal and try to downplay its seriousness (Relax, it’s just a few pears!), we will never come face to face with our own separation from a holy God and need of a Savior. Many who live in sin choose to view God as an officer of the law, someone who just waits for us to mess up so He can make the big bust. Augustine viewed God differently. He wrote of his Lord, “…as I recall in the bitterness of self-examination my wicked ways, that you may grow ever sweeter to me, You who are sweetness without deception! You are sweetness, happy and assured! You gathered me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces while I turned away from you…”

 

The Bible is clear that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23),” and that “the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).” We will not make it to heaven by sinning less than other people, by sinning for noble causes, or by sinning in only minor infractions. It all comes down to your heart. The natural person—the one who has not yet been saved by grace—sins for sin’s sake. Sin is what sinners do. Is your heart a wasteland, or have you been saved?