“The Disobedient Prophet” by Benjamin West, 1793 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
Cards Drawn: Flexible, Ignore Responsibility and Take Charge
I drew these cards last Wednesday and there were a few stories I considered writing on. But this morning I had something happen that called my attention to a story in 1 Kings 13.
The story goes, that an Unnamed Prophet is sent to King Jeroboam in order to get him to turn away from his evils and turn his face towards God. To ensure that the king gets the message, the Unnamed Prophet declares that the incense altar will split. As the King points to the Unnamed Prophet screaming "ARREST HIM!", the kings hand withers and the altar splits in half spilling all of the ashes to the ground.
Seeing that this is clearly not just a threat, the King asks the Unnamed Prophet to pray that God will restore his hand. After doing so, the king offers the Unnamed Prophet food and drink. But the Unnamed Prophet declares “..it was commanded me by the word of the Lord , saying, ‘You shall not eat bread, nor drink water, nor return by the same way you came.’” (1 Kings 13:9). The Unnamed Prophet left after this.
Then the story turns to an Old Prophet who’s sons come to tell him what the Unnamed Prophet had done. The Old Prophet determines that he will go out and find the Unnamed Prophet and offer him a meal. When he comes upon the Unnamed Prophet and gives offers him a meal, the Unnamed Prophet refuses and reaffirms what God commanded of him. But the Old Prophet wasn’t giving up (Flexible & Taking Charge), and said “I too am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord , saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’” (1 King 18). But the Old Prophet had lied about this.
Giving in, the Unnamed Prophet returns to the man’s home and eats. This angers God and when the Unnamed Prophet leaves, God sends a lion to kill him. When word gets back to the Old Prophet what has transpired, and that the lion will not leave or eat the Unnamed Prophet, he realizes what he has brought upon Samaria by his actions (Ignoring his Responsibility to the people as a Man of God himself). The Old Prophet retrieves the body of the Unnamed Prophet and buries him. When he is finished burying him, the Old Prophet “spoke to his sons, saying, ‘When I am dead, then bury me in the tomb where the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones. For the saying which he cried out by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, and against all the shrines on the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, will surely come to pass.’” (1 Kings 13:31-32)
He wasn’t wrong, King Jeroboam didn’t turn from the evils he committed against God.
More than just the cards it relates to, this story has some really good lessons we can parallel to the Jedi Compass.
Because of the Old Prophet’s lack of integrity as a Man of God, he caused the Unnamed Prophet to go against God’s wishes. Had the Old Prophet had any integrity, he would have seen the situation for what it was, and instead encouraged the Unnamed Prophet to continue on. Or even asked the Unnamed Prophet what he could do to help the situation in Samaria.
But the Unnamed Prophet isn’t an innocent either, he lacked discipline and objectivity. When given an opportunity to ask God about the truth of the Old Prophet’s visit from an Angel, he took the Old Prophet at this word and gave into his hunger.
Both were Reckless. The Old Prophet recognized his own recklessness upon hearing of the Unnamed Prophet’s Death. But it’s a curiosity as to whether or not the Unnamed Prophet knew the stumblingblock he had created by returning to the Old Prophet’s home. That is, after declaring before King Jeroboam that he was commanded by God to neither drink, nor eat in Samaria, nor go back the way he came, the moment that the king discovered that the Unnamed Prophet was doing exactly those things at an Old Prophet’s home, the prophecy would be “dead in the water” so-to-speak. But if he left, then the message has weight.
This morning I saw this same kind of recklessness from someone who wrote me out of the blue (read, I’ve never met him online or off). He approached me as a Christian and said something that seemed a bit out of place for someone who has only just met you. Having recently inquired something from God myself, I asked the individual if he could clarify what he meant and explained that I was asking to see if him reaching out to me might be an answer to my prayer. Explaining that the details of his comment were important to determine if this was true, he sought instead to encourage me by saying “Yes, this is an answer to you from God.”
This is something I see, not just in the Christian Community, but also the Jedi Community. Amongst the Jedi it is taught that everything is connected and that everything happens for a reason. To be fair, this isn’t unique to Jedi, it’s a very common thing amongst many theological and philosophical schools of thought. In either case, this teaching has become taken so far to it’s extreme that we interpret many chance situations as being opportunities we are meant to take, rather than weighing out whether or not involving ourselves in something may become a problem for ourselves or others down the road.
In your own life, can you think of something that you did thinking it would help, but in the end it did more damage than you could have even calculated?