Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Jan­u­ary 13, 2012

I just don’t get the peo­ple in today’s first read­ing. Samuel is get­ting old and his sons are no good, so the peo­ple ask for a king to judge and lead them. But they already have God to judge and lead them. I can’t imag­ine that a human king could be a bet­ter judge or a leader than God. And that is Samuel’s posi­tion as well. He tells the peo­ple that a human king will have his own agen­da and will tax the peo­ple, and con­script their chil­dren into the army or use them as ser­vants. A human king will take advan­tage of his pow­er and take from the peo­ple. Samuel warns them that the cost of that lead­er­ship will be high. They will be bet­ter off in prob­a­bly every way if they do not insist on a king. But the peo­ple do insist on a king. They want a king because all the oth­er coun­tries have kings. They want a king to lead them in bat­tle. They want a king to judge their dis­putes. And these are all very human desires, but they are not in the people’s best inter­est. God’s law is bet­ter than nation­al law. God’s judg­ment is always fair and not swayed by decep­tion. Fol­low­ing God is a bet­ter way to live than fol­low­ing a human king with his own agen­da. But the peo­ple insist on the path that will ulti­mate­ly hurt them rather than sup­port them.
I don’t under­stand it, but I also don’t under­stand why peo­ple today vote against their own self-inter­est. They vote to sup­port the very rich and they vote to decrease ben­e­fits from strug­gling peo­ple who need help. They vote to keep peo­ple (like me) from hav­ing access to health care. They vote to deny chil­dren edu­ca­tion and nutri­tion, both things that could be very help­ful for them­selves in the long run. Even being told that their own per­son­al sit­u­a­tion will suf­fer as a result, they, like the peo­ple in Samuel, refuse to heed the warning.

And any time any of us waver from God’s law, pick an earth­ly path rather than a spir­i­tu­al one, or look to a judge who is human rather than divine, we are like­wise act­ing against our own inter­ests. I still don’t think there is a bet­ter judge or a leader than God. Fol­low­ing that leader will give us a true ben­e­fit, and look­ing for lead­er­ship else­where is not in our best interest.