Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 8-10.

I’ve thought this for awhile, but never wrote about it in my blog because I try to avoid politics, but today I finally saw how it fits with what I believe about how God wishes us to live our lives.  Israel from the time of Joshua until King Saul was a libertarian nation.  It had laws, but no government.  When the people asked Samuel to give them a king, God told him that it was not Samuel they were rejecting, but God.  The people were not satisfied with God as their king.  Rather than obey God, they chose to forsake God and seek fulfillment through things other than obeying His commands.  If they had worshiped God and served Him with their whole hearts, they would not have needed a government, the laws which He gave them would have sufficed.  The writer of the Book of Judges felt that the lack of government which existed during the period of the judges was a bad thing, while the writer of the Book of Samuel saw that kingship, particularly Saul’s, had its own problems.  The message of the beginning of today’s passage is that a society composed entirely of those who truly worship and obey God does not need a government.  In 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 Paul speaks to this same idea.  Those who are part of the people of God should not seek judgement between themselves from those outside of God’s people.  Instead, when they have a disagreement with another believer, they should mutually seek a believer to judge between them on who is right and who is wrong.  They should not seek someone with the power to coerce either party to agree, they should agree because they would rather be cheated than risk doing contrary to God’s will.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.