The Battle Of Peer Dependency: Chapter Four - Part Seven

Hello, dear readers!

We've had a run of cold, wet days here in Western Michigan.  The kind of days where everything outside feels slimy because nothing has a chance to dry before the next band of rain makes it through.  I've been trying to keep my tomato and pepper plants going by keeping them covered with a makeshift plastic tent.  The tent worked fine in dry weather, but is alternating between blowing off and sagging under the weight of the water now.  I've ordered some PVC pieces and a few landscape timbers from my local hardware store to see if I can make a low tunnel. Hopefully, that will shed water better and with fewer blowdowns once I've got the plastic sheeting under rope lashings.  

We are somewhere into the never-ending slog that is Marina Sears "The Battle of Peer Dependency".  Chapter Four has been a disjointed, confusing and boring march through the evils of friendship and spectacularly bad discussion of the Bible.    The poor scholarship continues on pages 49-55 - but it is so bad that I'm not going to discuss it point-by-point.   Instead, I'm going to give a simple paraphrase of 1  Samuel 14 and 15:1-23 to demonstrate how badly 1 Samuel 15:23 is being used out of context to force children to be always obedient to their parents.

1 Samuel 14:1-13:  Jonathan and his armor-bearer skirmish with the Philistines and take out a group of twenty soldiers. 

1 Samuel 14:14-23: God causes the Philistines to panic.  Saul sees the panic and does a head-count.  He realizes that Jonathan is missing.  There's a bit involving the Ark of the Covenant.  Saul and his men attack the Philistines (who are doing a good job of decimating themselves).  A bunch of Israelites who had deserted return.   Israel pushes the front back.

1 Samuel 14:24-30: Saul's vow that no one could eat that day has made everyone hungry, weak and angry.   The Hebrews come upon a forest dripping with honey.  Most soldiers fast because of the oath made by Saul - but Jonathan does not.  When reminded of the oath by another soldier, Jonathan tells the soldier that the vow was stupid and the Philistines would have been routed even more if the Israelites had been allowed to eat.

1 Samuel 31-35:  The hangry soldiers begin to eat captured livestock without ritual slaughter or the correct sacrifices.  Someone tells Saul.   Saul tells the troops to knock it off, builds his very first altar, and correctly sacrifices the captured livestock so everyone can eat. 

1 Samuel 36-46: Saul gathers his generals together and asks about pursuing the Philistines through the night.  The generals have no objections, but the priest reminds Saul to ask God.  God refuses to answer Saul so Saul starts throwing divine lots to figure out who sinned.  When rolled for Saul/Jonathan or the generals, the lot says that the sin was with Saul/Jonathan.  The second lot says that Jonathan sinned.  Jonathan admits to eating honey against Saul's oath and is ready to be killed.  Saul agrees.  The generals object and Jonathan is ransomed.  The Philistines escape back to their land.

Ironically, Mrs. Sears missed a great lesson about obeying your parents in this section.  After all, Jonathan ignored his father's vow, verbally disrespected his dad and was nearly killed as a scapegoat because of that!   That actually works....kind of.....well, as much as any of this is going to work when the premise of "Family first - friends are evil" is severely flawed.   

1 Samuel 47-52: A mishmash of verses reminding us of how many enemies nations Saul had surrounding him, the fact he was pretty good at defending Israel from them, a fast genealogy of Saul's kids and how Saul is related to his generals, and a reminder that there were a lot of wars going on.

1 Samuel 15: 1-8:  Samuel tells Saul that God wants Israel to completely destroy the Amalekites by killing all the people and animals. Doing this would avenge when the Amalekites attacked the Hebrews as they left Egypt.  Saul tells the Kenites to flee since they had protected the Hebrews during that attack and begins to destroy the Amalekites.

1 Samuel 15:9:  Actually, they kept the good animals.  They killed the people and weak animals, but they kept the good animals.

1 Samuel 15:10-11: God is very angry with Saul because of his continued bad behavior and lets Samuel know that God regrets making Saul king.   Samuel spends the night praying.

1 Samuel 15:12-16: Samuel goes to confront Saul in the morning and finds out that Saul is busy building a monument to Saul's greatness in another location.   Samuel travels to find Saul.  When Samuel arrives, Saul swears he followed God's instructions perfectly.  Samuel points out that he can hear the captured animals bleating.  Saul attempts to punt by swearing that the animals were captured to be sacrificed to God - and that really pisses Samuel off.

1 Samuel 15:17-23: Samuel makes one last ditch effort to call Saul out on disobeying God.  Saul declares that HE obeyed God; it was just his soldiers who disobeyed God.  Samuel replies that Saul has turned his back on God - and that God has turned his back on Saul.

Alright.  After all of that, Ms. Sears' attempt to make 1 Samuel 15:23 into a general commandment for all people rather than a specific discussion of Saul's wrongdoings feels forced:

Samuel then makes a very profound statement. One that many Christians can quote but may not fully understand. Application seems appropriate for the teenager who is wearing a leather jacket and chains, or has had trouble with law enforcement, but would any parent ever consider the Scripture for themselves or their six or seven year old blonde haired, blue-eyed angel. " For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou has rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected thee from being King." ( 1 Samuel 15:23) (pg. 55)

I don't see myself ever using this quote with a troubled teen because the quote sounds patently insane outside the Biblical context.   

I don't see myself ever using this quote with myself or my spouse because we'd end up arguing how sinful stubborness is compared to iniquity and if that is different than comparing stubbornness to idolatry - and which one of us gets to be King if the other one is dethroned.  

I don't see myself using this quote with an elementary school kid because I doubt the kid knows what iniquity and  idolatry means - and I highly doubt a 7 year old has the same level of cognitive development as Samuel or Saul did during this whole scenario.

But most strangely - why on Earth did Ms. Sears describe the 7-year old as a "blonde haired, blue eyed angel" instead of simply a young angel?  Are Nordic kids more angelic than kids of Iberrian, Mediterranean, Hispanic, African, Asian, Pacific Islander or First Nations descent?  

Ugh.  This book is just toxic.  Don't use it to raise kids, alright?  Thanks!