Response in the Face of Tragedy

Judges 6:13 (ESV) And Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”

Gideon is a case study of how humans typically react to tragedy because of their inability to hear God. The Lord sent a prophet in Judges 6:1-11 to tell Israel that they had forgotten and forsaken Him. Their troubles were now the result of their own apostasy. They did not get the message because when God comes to Gideon as the angel of the Lord Gideon wants to know why all these bad things have happened. 

Here is the human problem. Instead of seeing anything wrong with us we tend to see what's wrong with the world around us and question God. The human heart is so infected with a distorted perspective through sin it cannot even perceive the problem on the merits. So the most basic and "natural" response to the bad things in our lives is to wonder where is God or even worse, blame Him.

This was the case with Adam and Eve. They sinned, they disobeyed, then they ran and hid and told God it was basically His fault. The woman was given to the man by God (Adam's response), the serpent was made by God (Eve's response). Both offer lame self-justifying excuses that avoid the nastiness of their sin altogether. 

This is our default spiritual programming. 

So what does the Lord do for Gideon? He doesn't give him a lecture like I would have done. He doesn't correct Gideon's theology. He encourages Gideon to do something about the mess and then reveals Himself to Gideon. 

After Gideon offers the reasons for why he could not possibly be God's man, the Lord uses a sacrificial offering to show Gideon just who he is meeting with. 

Judges 6:21 (ESV) Then the angel of the LORD reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. And fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight.

Why does the story have this unusual turn? Beyond simple encouragement is an intercessory sort of encounter whereby Gideon gets a glimpse of God before his task of saving Israel begins. The reason is that God must first reveal who HE is to a man in order to produce God-inspired mission through that man. 

Let me make it clearer: It is vital to be in God's presence so that we are empowered to challenge people's opinions. Israel was engrossed in idolatry. The whole country was ignoring God. Most notably, even in Gideon's father erected a notable idol to Baal. For Gideon, that idol will be ground zero for righteous revolution. 

Yet Gideon will begin at night and quietly as he grows into the leader God wants. The narrative gives us the opportunity to watch Gideon blossom through doubts and fears into a righteous leader while not chastising Gideon for the slow progress he makes. 

How encouraging for us! Yes, idols in our own hearts will blur our perspective toward tragedy. Yet God will still speak to us about it and challenge us to do something. And yes, an encounter with God can embolden us before people but this is often a process and not an immediate experience (see Moses as well). And finally yes, through God's faithfulness we become who He wants even though the process is ugly and uneven as we will see with Gideon in these next few chapters.  

The final tally? God is true and faithful. We are deceived and distorted. But the hope we have is not in us. God works in spite of us to produce His righteousness in us. And for this we can be grateful and patient in the process.