Why do we act like Samson was a hero?
On integrity and the importance of context when reading Scripture... especially in an election year
I grew up thinking Samson was a hero. We had a set of records of Bible stories, and I’m pretty sure that was one of them. That whole pulling-down-the-building-around-the-Philistines thing was presented as a heroic deed, done in honor of God. Also, I didn’t know Samson died. I thought he just defeated everyone else.
Sanitizing the Bible for children, I guess.
There are stories told in the Bible that are just horrible, and no matter what you do, you cannot justify them. Virtually every line of Samson’s life story is revolting. He sees a girl he wants. He goes to his dad and whines, “Get me that girl.” When his parents say, “Honey, she doesn’t share your faith,” his response comes across like a petulant child: “But I want THAT one!”
He gets his way, of course, and then plays macho with a bunch of guys, who use the wife to beat him at his own game. And when he loses, he abandons her and sends her off with his best man. (As I said: petulant.)
But then later, he decides he wants her again, and when the dad is like, Uh, no, you abandoned her (and by the way let me pawn off another daughter on you, because clearly I also am without morals), Samson goes off and kills some more people in a temper tantrum.
You see what I’m getting at here? This entire story drips with moral offense.
Even that pivotal story of pulling down the pillars isn’t some final act of devotion to God. What he says is, “Let me avenge myself on the Philistines at one blow for my two eyes.” It’s not about God. It’s about HIM.
Whenever he doesn’t get his way, he throws a temper tantrum and kills people. And in the end, the best his religious formation gives him is that he knows how to dress up his ego with a passing reference to God in his closing speech, so that millennia of people can ignore everything else and remember him as a hero.
I’ve been grappling with this for quite a while. My kid, based on his Action Bible, still thinks Samson is a hero. So my first thought was that maybe this is an example of bad judgment by those who pull stories out for kids, and it has a ripple effect into adulthood.
Then I thought maybe this is an example of how some of what’s in the Bible is “descriptive,” i.e. unvarnished history, rather than “prescriptive,” i.e. moral guideposts.
But in the last week of Advent, the daily Lectionary uses the story of Samson’s birth. Paired with John the Baptist.
I struggle with this.
As I laid on my living room floor, listening to those readings while doing my daily stretches, all I could think was, “Maybe this is a lesson in the importance of context and integrity.”
In other words: Two boys, born as a blessing to parents suffering infertility— a soul-eviscerating condition that, at that time, had the added bonus of being seen as divine judgment on the parents.
Both boys had the benefit of being raised with profound access to God.
Both were given profound talents by God.
One chose selfishness, and became… revolting.
The other chose to diminish himself in order to prepare the way of the Lord.
One chose gluttony, self-indulgence, and ego. The other chose integrity, that is, God.
This seems like a really important thing to grapple with in the particular time and space in which we live— namely, as we enter another election year.
Holding up Samson as a hero seems like a particularly bad idea now, given how easy it has proven to abuse faith in God. How easy it has proven to manipulate people of good will for selfish and power-mongering ends that are diametrically opposed to what God calls us to be. If we hold up Samson as a hero, it’s no stretch to do the same for contemporary public figures who display the same tendencies: tantrums, threats of vengeance for real or perceived slights, etc.
Integrity matters.
Our public discourse these days displays a profound lack of integrity.
There is a disconnect that has become so embedded in our politics, I’m not even sure we recognize it. There is a desire to have America reflect Christian values— while using tactics to gain and retain power that betray those very values.
To name a few low-hanging fruits:
Or claiming election fraud repeatedly and insistently, even though it clearly, demonstrably, was not. At the personal level, accepting those lies as truth, or shrugging and acting like it doesn’t matter, that this is no different from anything we’ve seen in the past.
Or using violent rhetoric and bald-faced lies to whip up a crowd until they break into the halls of Congress and do terrible violence and threaten more. At the personal level, accepting such things as justified, or at least something it’s acceptable to gloss over. Or worse, to rewrite history to pretend the violence never was all that bad, and insist everyone is overreacting.
When my husband and I taught natural family planning, we used to talk about how pursuit of good ends through bad tactics is not okay. The example we used was: a man who wants to support his family: holy. A man who does so by getting a job: holy. A man who does so by robbing a bank: Not holy.
The ends do not justify the means. Not in God’s eyes. Any political gain achieved by these ends is tainted. If you employ or embrace manipulation, dishonesty, and outright falsehoods to gain power, there is no way the fruit of that power is going to be holy. It is impossible. You have betrayed God to get the power in the first place.
Samson can and should be a warning to us. Samson demonstrates that when you choose self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement and power, you end up selling your soul. Even if you started in the right place.