The Few, the Faithful, and the Stupid

April 19, 2009

Today's Reading: Judges 7-8 and 1 Corinthians 6

In the book of Judges, Gideon has quite an army to do his work of liberating the land. Apparently, this was not good enough for the Lord, who apparently wanted to see an underdog army beat an entire empire.

Let me put it this way: in the original Star Wars (1977 version), there were about six or seven X-wings that audience saw approaching the dreaded Death Star. It was a case of the few versus the many, and it seemed like that Rebellion didn’t have a chance.

This was changed in the revised edition 20 years later, when computer graphics gave a view of an entire fleet of X-wings attacking the Death Star. I suppose this was changed because special effects improved to make the cool pan shot that George Lucas originally wanted for this. Not only can the audience thrill at the shots of the renegade starships, but they can see the pilot moving around in them.

Wow. Except there is just one thing: seeing a fleet of X-wings gives me way too much hope that the rebels will win. Not that I don’t know that they will win, but I much rather preferred a small army, otherwise I won’t think that the Force was with them.

In the same way, God preferred a 1977 version of the rebellion against Midian. Not only does he bring the army down more, but he brings them down even further. Does anyone think that the test of how the men drank their water would make them more worthy of battle?

If anything, I would have chosen the people who used their hands to drink the water to be the ones I would have picked. The guys who drank it with their mouths like dogs would be the ones I would have found slovenly. I don’t know if I’m even using that word correctly.

What makes the “lappers” more worthy of battle? I heard that Caleb means “dog-like”, so maybe the ones who are “dog-like”, licking up the water, are more like the hero Caleb. Yeah, I don’t believe it either.

Isn’t it odd that God uses these people who you wouldn’t expect to do great things? I don’t really know why. Why does God use these people who would be deunces to do things like “judging angels” as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 6.

Is it possible that this is all that God has to work with.