Judges 16-18

This post is part of my ongoing series of writing down my thoughts on the Bible passages I read each day. Some days I hope to have great insight that the Lord gives me, and many days, I will likely struggle through the text and not know what to write down based on what I read. My hope and prayer is that as I make this a habit, just as I did daily writing for so long, that I will improve on my ability to read and understand the passages I’m reading. Please keep in mind that many of these posts may be published late at night or with little time studying and simply be my first thoughts after reading. This is in no way a commentary that one should use to discern the Bible, but my own personal thoughts.

There may have been some earlier passages, but this is the first time I’ve seen the phrase “and all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” I may have even mentioned it in my post yesterday, but this seems to hit home in the times we live in. I just had a conversation with a few people yesterday about the world we live in and they seem to have this thinking that the only person who can truly know you is yourself.

It makes sense in some ways. To our human mind, obviously who else could know us better than our own selves. They pursue happiness through all manners of ways, but they never truly lead to actual fulfillment. They talk about emptying themselves as if that will lead to contentment, but truthfully, emptying yourself only leads to you filling it up once again with something else. A human can not live empty. It’s what they choose to fill it with after they empty themselves that matters.

I believe that if you fill it with anything you come up with on your own, it may be good for a time, but it will ultimately lead to ruin and destruction in your life. This is what the phrase reminds me of in the old testament. “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”

Instead, we must do what is right in God’s eyes. This is the true way to live a content and joy-filled life. If we give up what we think we want for what God commands us, we end up living a life much more content than we ever could on our own.