When Israel got it wrong.

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I am not a historian by trade or training, but here is something I believe about history.

Every country that is on this earth has some horrible things in its past. England, the United States, and several European countries have slavery in their past. (So do many other countries, of course.)

Germany has Hitler, who killed millions. Russia has Stalin, who likely killed more than even Hitler. (Most of the world knows Hitler was evil. Far too few know of the evil of Stalin.)

Not every evil is in the past, of course. There is a great deal of evil in many countries around the world. You see some of that on the news once in a while. But deaths in Burundi, corruption in the Congo, and civil war in Sudan don’t sell news in the U.S., so the stories are uncommon here.

In the same kind of way, we ignore (at our own peril) the lessons of the past from this country or that. Even our own.

What many people love to do, though, is to trot out the past when they need to justify some opinion they hold now. And, based on what I wrote above, it is never a problem to find some national dirty laundry.

In fact I was just reading a response to a very popular podcast host who has been leaning on a few hand-picked incidents from the past to support a present point of view. The problem is, those events have been stacked together in a very shaky way, and they will collapse.

But we persist.

Where the trouble begins

James Carville was a political strategist for Bill Clinton, who was running for president in 1992. He wanted his staff to stay on message, so he apparently hung a sign in headquarters with three main points.

One of those was this: The economy, stupid. That phrase — with a leading It’s — is often attributed to Clinton, but Carville wrote it for his team.

As it turns out, “It’s the economy, stupid,” could have been a campaign slogan for dozens, if not hundreds, of political leaders around the world.

Money, or lack thereof, is often fodder for political unrest. It becomes a primary concern when the difference between the haves and have-nots gets more and more dramatic.

Now someone might say, “Exactly! That describes America right now.” That would be wrong, but I can imagine it being said.

The Fragile States Index includes three economic indicators, and one of those includes Economic Equality. The U.S. has a good score there, as it does in overall Economy and “brain drain.” I’m not saying the economy in the U.S. can’t be improved. It most certainly can. And I’m not saying there aren’t poor people in America who genuinely need help.

But countries often fail because the leaders of that country have failed their people economically.

Stalin was one of those. Among the several genocides he carried out while in power was one against the kulak. These were peasants who owned land — perhaps 3 acres or less. Because they were making their own way and didn’t need to join the revolution, Stalin eliminated them.

He killed or imprisoned (mostly meaning killed), about 1,000,000 of them. Because they were farmers in Ukraine, the bread basket of Russia, the decimation of the kulak led to a famine that killed at least 3,000,000 more people.

Revolution

Of course the whole revolution, led primarily by Lenin and then Stalin, was justified economically.

But once upon a time there was a different kind of revolution, this one in Israel. It wasn’t about money, it was about national social status. And it happened a long time ago.

The history of the Israelites is long and bumpy. One of the bumpiest parts is where I derived my title, When Israel got it wrong.

The time is around 1,000 BC, and for many years Israel had been led, especially in times of battle, by judges. Eventually the people of Israel went to Samuel, the current judge of Israel, and said, “We want a king like all the other nations.”

Samuel was upset but still prayed to God and passed along the request.

God said, “…do what they ask, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.” Then he added, “You shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

Samuel warned them (1 Samuel 8:10-18), but they still wanted a king, “that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

In business, and in life, there are decisions that have long term consequences. This — not the form of government, but the rejection of God as their king — was one of those.

We want to be like them

Occasionally we look around and say, “I’d like to be like that.” We do it individually and we do it collectively.

It seems to me that almost every time we make that statement, it is because we think our lives would be better if we just had… a king, a socialist government, a higher minimum wage, a bigger house.

We forget that king probably means dictator, socialism has never worked, higher minimum wages hurt poor people the most, and that bigger houses mean bigger bills.

What I’m suggesting we should want, both individually and collectively, is for God to lead us. Interestingly, God can lead us and we can still have abundance. But as soon as the wealth or the power we seek replaces God, we become like ancient Israel.

When Hamas invaded modern Israel almost exactly 1 year ago, my prayer was that everyone in Israel would cry out to God for the safety of the hostages, for the comfort of the families of the slain, and that God would lead Israel.

What would God as king have us do? The Bible is clear: love God, love one another, and do good.

Let’s be like that.

Do good. It’s in you.

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