Snapshot
Key Characters: Samson.
A Case against the Christian
I am saying, dear brother, before you denounce brother Samson too quickly, how is it with your first love? Has your job not provided you with more structured security as Delilah’s lap to Samson’s head? Hasn’t the lust for success, reputation, and career advancement robbed you of that whole-hearted consecration you once jealously had and cherished?
Your successes, unlike Samson’s, may have come legitimately. God may have used it to motivate you to greater holiness, deeper consecration, and a more profound longing for His coming kingdom. But have you not reclined like Samson and are now relying on them? Have they become an impregnable wall of defence around you against God the giver? Again, I am asking, has the means not been converted to an end by you? The goal of all God’s gifts is he the Giver, more by the recipient to possess. Are you possessing God, or his mere add-ons are rather possessing you? Brother, sister, you are lulling on a dangerous lap, a structure that the Lord did not put together with an axe to its roots. It will soon crumble.
You may repent right now. But I bet many of us may never be whole-hearted enough to turn absolutely from these founded elements, people, and activities. The wisdom of God thence becomes clear for letting Samson go all the way in sin and pulling back the leash before he totally broke away.
All hope would have been lost if the Philistine lords killed Samson on the spot. But they ignorantly speared him and made a spot of him to their own detriment. Have you lost your consecration to any form of lust? Lust of the flesh - association with the sin-, material-defiled men? Lust of the eyes - the desire for everything that appeals to the sense and offers a form of satisfaction and approval? Pride of life - anything that provides consent in human activity aside from God?
Fallen? Yes? Good, but not out. Would you, like Samson, in his blind state, trace someplace like that photographer of old who needed deep darkness to develop his photographs? And through that so fellowshipped with God where none was nor could interfere. This he summarized in a hymn titled, “I come to the garden alone.” He detailed one of his experiences in one of its lines, saying, “…and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other can ever know.”
The secret of Samson’s secret fellowship was known to no one. But, quite obviously, something had drilled into his heart. Through his inner sight that has been opened, new zeal entered, attachments to earthly reputation and gain waned. And more excellent was his end than the beginning thereof.
Before a Christian criticizes Samson, may he be enlightened enough to consider the current state of their love and devotion. May they, with utmost sincerity, contemplate the probable state of the legitimates that must have robbed them of their first love. And then sit right well to see if his current zeal is sufficient to inspire him to die selflessly for a heavenly, ignoring whatever posterity humanity holds. That is giving up himself as far as the victory of God over his enemies is attained.
Then and only then may you be right in criticizing Samson or hold a significant view against God’s wisdom in driving him down the dungeon of mill grinding. What more could here care for than having one more opportunity and putting that to the best use. Have you not fallen and risen many times? When amidst your resurrections has your radical resolve soared half as much the heights of Samson’s? Would there not be many in heaven who, on the judgment day, would wish they had suffered the fate of Samson for their eternity to be secured?
Have you not also prostituted with self-seeking and desire for elf-glory? Samson had no mentor, Bible, creeds, or checks and balances. You have Christ living in you. You have fellowship with the Father through the Holy Spirit, which is expected to be timelessly endless. How zealous have you been for the glory of God? Repent now, or your next stop off this slope might be the same valley where Samson shamefully found himself.
He came for prostitutes like us. Little wonder why Christ had so much compassion for prostitutes in His lifetime. Before you are apprehended like the other woman caught in the very act and brought shamefully to Christ, would you instead acknowledge your ills and turn from straying to the “Shepherd and Bishop of your soul (1 Pet 2:25)”
