Spiritual Drift
Judges 4:1-10
Ocean Drift
I wonder if you’ve ever had one of those strange feelings as I had in the ocean. I waded out about chest-deep, just jumping up when waves came to let them carry me, and I’d walk back up to position. It didn’t feel like much time had passed, but when I looked back at the beach, I couldn’t find my chair or wife or hotel because the current had taken me and I drifted a few hundred yards down the coast.
How did I get way down here so quickly when I wasn’t even aware I was moving?
That odd sensation serves as a reminder of what can happen in our spiritual lives. How easy it is to drift off course. I call it spiritual drift. It happens slowly, imperceptibly. Suddenly you look up, and you realize you’re not where you were not long ago. You realize you’re not quite how you want to be, unsettled, or frustrated, or angry/bitter, and impatient. You make decisions that don’t reflect who you really want to be. Your best self.
And you ask, what happened? How did I get here? You didn’t set out to be that way, to act like that, to feel like that. But there you are. Again.
Spiritual drift.
It happens gradually. Other matters and concerns seem more urgent than attending to the simple things that make you your best self. Things like focusing on the positive, being grateful, helping others, carving out time for reflection, and prayer. Going to church. Not you. Obviously. Other people. The Pew Charitable Trust Foundation has been studying the decline in church attendance over the last several decades. Most people who stopped going didn’t stop believing or get mad about something. They just fell out of the routine.
You miss a few of these practices, then a few more, and now it has been a while. You hold grudges, you get sour, gloomy, and cynical, and you are more likely to snap at people you care about.
When we lose our routines, our spiritual center, things can really get out of hand. Bad decisions stack on top of each other. Even really good people can wind up doing really bad things. They never set out to be that way. The key is to realize when we are drifting and make corrections before we get into trouble.
The Cycle Named by Judges
The book of Judges is a story of the consequences of spiritual drift. A little recap. Last week we talked about how the Hebrew people under Moses were led to freedom, learned to rely on God, and received the commandments. But soon afterward, they danced around a golden calf. They got right again. The Ten Commandments were kind of the table of contents for hundreds more commandments found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
They weren’t all about moral sins but about forming a culture and disciplines that would keep them mindful of God, practices to keep them from spiritual drift.
They had a good run. After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, they finally entered Canaan and spread out. And according to the book of Joshua, they took the territory by force. It’s the hardest stuff in the Bible. Some biblical authors tried to justify it, claiming God told them to do it. But Jesus never presented images of a God who would operate that way. He never glorified any of that stuff—quite the opposite.
The book of Judges shows us a slightly different picture. After the people settle in Canaan (about 1,200 years before Christ), they live in tribal clans, surrounded by many other cultures. But even after all that God had done for them, they drifted and wound up doing evil. Over and over. The beginning of the book of Judges gives us an outline of the cycle of their behavior.
The people are grateful to God, love God, and do right by their neighbor. But soon they drift away, forgetting God and breaking the commandments. They get in trouble. They cry out to God in desperation. God hears their cries and sends a deliverer to rescue them from trouble. They get right with God, fall away, cry out, and God sends a deliverer. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Can you relate to that cycle? Maybe God bringing you here today is an intervention, an attempt to get you back to the top of the cycle. The spiritual life is like driving a car. You don’t just point it and go. No. You have to keep your hands on the wheel, constantly making adjustments to keep going in the direction you want. There’s no autopilot for the spiritual life.
Deborah is a model of faithful leadership.
The book of Judges is called the book of Judges because that is what the country’s leaders were called in that era. It was a time before they had a king. When a need arose, someone would step up, unite the people, and confront the threats around them. They weren’t judges in the way we think of them today. They were part military leader, part popular leader, and part expert in the commandments. And the best one of them all was Deborah. In fact, some argue that the best time in Israel’s entire history was when Deborah led them. The true golden age. One of the oldest parts of the whole Bible was the poem about her in Judges 5. The poem predated the compilation of the narratives of the rest of the Bible.
What is remarkable is how unremarkable it was to the biblical authors to say that their wisest person, military strategist, and faithful leader was a woman. The story is told straightforwardly without comment about how surprising it was in that culture for a woman to achieve such recognition. It doesn’t make a fuss about it or say, “Surprisingly, someone without a lot of testosterone was the judge. The story assumes this is perfectly reasonable. Of course, women can be extraordinary leaders. It’s not wokism. It’s empirical fact. Biblical fact.
Deborah’s Campaign
Deborah sits under a palm tree resolving disputes. She listens, she discerns, she rules by fairness. She’s with the people under the palm tree, not in a lavish palace decorated in gold and continually expanding. A palm tree is her symbol.
The people have sinned, fallen away, and got themselves into trouble. There is a big bad king with 900 iron chariots, that is, superior weapons technology, threatening to wipe out the Israelites.
They cried out to God, and God sent Deborah to do something about it. So, she summons Barak, the military commander. (In biblical Hebrew, “Barak” means ‘lightning.”)
She tells him to gather the troops to take on the overwhelming opponent. He doesn’t salute and say, “As you command.” Instead, he says, “I’ll go if you go with me.” You don’t send other people into battle and remain safe and aloof from the consequences of war. You’re accountable for these decisions.
She agrees to go. They assemble their forces, surprise the opposing army, and defeat them, despite their iron chariots. From Judges 5, it looks like there was a storm and the chariots bogged down. There is a constant refrain throughout Judges and the Old Testament that superior forces and weapons technology do not guarantee victory against a lesser but crafty opponent whose leaders are guided by wisdom more than brute force. The Bible has dozens of these David-vs.-Goliath-type stories.
The opposing general, Sisera, flees. But earlier, Deborah had told Barak that the real hero of the campaign will be a woman. Her name is Jael. When the general flees, he finds Jael and presumes on her hospitality, but while he’s asleep, she uses a mallet to drive a tent stake through his temple all the way into the ground.
Build routines to avoid spiritual drift.
The opponent is vanquished. People are grateful and return to faithfulness, only to drift away and get into trouble again. The cycle repeats, and each time things get worse; the trouble is existential. The point is not the glorification of violence, but the tendency to drift no matter how dramatically God has rescued them in the past. The lesson is that we need to stay vigilant. Stay with the practices that keep you mindful and on the right track.
Study. Worship. Pray. Help others. Treat others as you would have them treat you.
It’s not so much about willpower to do these things. The most successful people build it into their routines. It’s not about choosing to do it every day but making it part of your routine. My wife and I walk every morning. I have markers on the route where I pray for certain people every day. There is a stone I touch, expressing gratitude with every walk; I look for something in nature that inspires awe. It’s routine, regular. I don’t have to force myself to do it. It’s part of the routine. What can you build into your routines, into what you are already doing, that will help you to continually correct course?
Look up? Look at your life. Are you drifting further from where you want to be? The story of Deborah gives us good news. God will help us get back on track when we are open to it.