But when the judge died, they would relapse and do worse than their ancestors, following other gods in service and worship, relinquishing none of their evil practices or stubborn conduct.
Judges 2:19
He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good.”
Matthew 19:17
The readings for today are easily overlooked: the first because it seems merely to chronicle the infidelity of the Israelites, and the second because Matthew seems merely to have glossed over the much more striking version of Mark 10:18, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Yet there is a wealth of meaning to be found within these texts.
One key meaning stands out to me today, but it requires us to have a keen awareness of how the first reading speaks spiritually to us as well. We must overcome the temptation to think of the Israelites as particularly sinful or disobedient. God’s chosen people are no worse than us; but then, in fact, we are no better. Their tendency to forget even in the face of wonders and miracles is no different from our own habit of losing sight of God in the midst of modern comforts. In fact, just as the Israelites relied too much upon the judges to lead them through difficult times, so also do we rely on figureheads, celebrities, and heroes.
This tendency manifests particularly in today’s “cult of the experts.” When an American today wants to do even something as natural and timeless as child rearing or breast-feeding, we turn to the library, the bookstore, and the Internet. We collect a vast range of expert “scientific” advice on the best way to do every little thing from burping to quitting the pacifier. The depth of this dynamic is so pronounced that books tend to have the letters “Dr.” or “Ph.D.” featured as prominently as possible. It sells. The irony is that in many cases we go for child-rearing advice to “experts” who have no children; for marriage advice to “experts” who are even more experienced at getting divorced; for religious advice to “experts” who refuse to set foot in a church.
Much of this pattern was established by the flow of modern thinking out of the Enlightenment. Modernity has created and established the myth of the “genius,” who inhabits the American consciousness as the “self-made man” who “lives the American dream.” It’s true that sometimes history-making accomplishments were primarily the work of “one man.” Yet for the most part, history only appears to us to be driven by the actions of the elite few because it is the elite who, through the exercise of power, shape the public narrative about past and present. “History is written by the victors,” and the myth of the genius is promoted by those who benefit from it the most.
Thomas Edison is a classic example; we think of him as foremost among the great “Inventors” who pioneered modern technology and “the American way.” Yet we see Edison in this light precisely because he wanted it to be so. Edison had a vested interest in promoting himself as a brand, and thus he took credit for accomplishments as if they were the direct product of his own individual efforts. The truth is that most of Edison’s accomplishments were made possible by a large team of engineers, who often did most of the work and received none of the credit. In short, the cult of the expert grew out of the very ideal of capitalism as a self-sustaining mythos; Edison as the “expert” fueled both the consumer’s desire to buy the product and the public’s confidence in the market as a free and unbiased sphere in which any American, through sheer effort and ingenuity, might someday become rich. Our belief in the providential equality of the market sustains the very inequality of the entrenched status quo by making the wealth of the wealthy seem like a well-deserved reward for their unique personal genius.
Now it’s certainly not wrong to seek advice when we need it. Yet in our culture, we easily become fixated not upon the truth taught by those with experience, but rather upon the persons themselves who claim to be “in the know.” In much the same way, the judges were a gift meant to lead the Israelites to the true worship of the Truth itself. Yet in becoming dependent upon mere mortals–who often made their own mistakes–their faith never grew any genuine roots. When the judges died, so too did the faith of the people, who quickly looked for some other master to lead them around by the nose. Hence the hero or saint, rather than serving as a guide and a model for imitation, easily becomes a kind of idol. Hero-worship is a type of bloody self-sacrifice, the immolation of one’s freedom after the pattern of Moloch. Freedom is a terrifying thing because it implies genuine responsibility, so we look for figures (like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor) to “free us” from freedom itself.
If we pay closer attention to the judges themselves, we see that such hero-worship has no place. In fact, the example of Judith provides an interesting counter-point. Judith is not one of the traditional judges, but she is a later type of the judges, and her story combines elements of the Deborah story (including Jael’s murder of Sisera) into one person. As with the judges, Judith is an ordinary women who stands up to take the lead in a time of great turmoil. The others around her are all too willing to leave it all to her. Yet her act was never about self-promotion, nor does she make an idol or celebrity of herself. Rather, she cuts off the head of the enemy, both literally and figuratively. In doing so, she actually destroys the very power dynamic upon which hero-worship feeds. When an army depends upon its general, it scatters upon his death. When a culture depends upon its heroes, it collapses when the idol loses its power.
By the same token, when we, like the rich young man, wish to become the religious elite who do everything just right, Jesus reminds us, “There is only One who is good.” The Gospel is the great equalizer, which makes the first last and the last first. We should not rely then on figureheads, leaders, celebrities, or living saints, making them idols who seem to take away our sins by hiding them under their own cult of personality. Jesus does not call us to become followers of Paul or Apollos, but Christians. The only true genius, the only one whom we can rely upon to be our leader in this life and the next, is Jesus Christ himself. When the judges die, the people turn to idols. Let us turn then, here and now, to the one true Judge who can never die, for he has overcome death for all time.