Spiritual Boom and Bust Cycle

Spiritual Boom and Bust Cycle

This seems to be a major theme of the book of the Bible called “Judges”. 

 

I said earlier that we had to be careful applying things that God did with ancient Israel to modern entities because Israel had a unique relationship with God. However in this 'boom and bust' cycle it is human nature that is in question and so we should still be able to learn valid lessons. Also God's mercy and kindness even when his covenant people flagrantly broke the covenant and brought on themselves the dire consequences this involved is something we can take great comfort in.

As readers may be aware, mostly these “judges” were not judges in the legal sense. They were national leaders raised up by God in times of emergency to rouse Israel to fight and defeat enemies who were oppressing them. With two notable exceptions: Deborah, a prophet, seems to have been a law-court type of judge. On God's orders she appointed a military leader to throw off Canaanite domination. Samuel was another law-court judge doing yearly circuits of Israel. When the neighbouring Philistines attacked the Israelites gathered at Mizpah, Samuel did not lead the army but prayed and in response God threw the Philistines into such panic that they fled from the Israelites.

I think it will be best to describe this cycle in the Bible's own words from Judges Ch 2.

6 After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. 7 The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. …….

1  After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. 14 In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist.15 Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.

16 Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. 17 Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands.18 Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. 19 But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.

So the pattern seemed to go like this: God rescues them and they stay faithful for a while, then the next generation ditches God in favour of attractive human-invented “gods”. God leaves them to the consequences … eventually they cry out to him, he rescues them and so the cycle starts over.

It seems to me that this (and the continuing occurrences through the Old Testament) tell us something about human nature and human-invented religion (if we can include modern secularism as a religion!). Our human nature is intrinsically flawed. This nature rebels against true religion and coming into a friendship with the God who really exists. Jesus had quite a lot to say about this, and it is eloquently described at the start of John's gospel

“9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: (KJV – for the poetry of it!)

What our human nature feel more comfortable with is this:– a religion which does not require us to repent of our sins and seek and receive God's forgiveness and henceforth be ever in God's debt – infinitely in his debt! That our proud human nature abhors! Yet to those who subdue their human pride, turn to God and devote themselves to being like Jesus, it is infinitely precious: forgiveness, adoption as God's sons and daughters, recipients of his love and heirs to his promises of eternal life with him in heaven.

So humans find for themselves other gods. These may make cruel demands: the O.T. condemns the people turning to worship “that detestable god” Moleck and burning their sons and daughters alive in his fiery statue. Today tourists may see Hindu devotees carrying a kavardi by metal skewers piercing their skin, and be awestruck at the torment they are prepared to endure in the course of their religion. On the other hand they may be religions that pander to our lusts: the worship of Asherah seemed to involve much sacred prostitution and adultery.

But the point is that the people who knew God and had been beneficiaries of his kindness kept turning away from him to these human religions. As he said through Jeremiah: (2:10 ff)

“Cross over to the coasts of Cyprus and look,
send to Kedar and observe closely;
see if there has ever been anything like this:
11 Has a nation ever changed its gods?
(Yet they are not gods at all.)
But my people have exchanged their glorious God
for worthless idols.
12 Be appalled at this, you heavens,
and shudder with great horror,”
declares the Lord.
13 “My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

So we should not be at all surprised that we have seen a general falling away from Christianity over recent decades in the West. The rise of a stridently anti-Christian secularism is also explained once we recognize it as a human-invented substitute for religion of the old sort. This may not have advanced our thinking on the how of revival, but it has shown us that every generation needs one!