The biggest complaint I hear from people about 2 Samuel 6 is the death of Uzzah. He was after all trying to help. It might have just been a natural instinct not a conscious act of disrespect. Why would God be so unfair? But is that the whole story?
NO.
To explain I often start with the proposition that a well intention action doesn’t prevent injury. If you move a live electrical wire way from a child, you may mean well, but those intentions don’t save you from the current in the wire. However, this being the case that isn’t what is happening here. What is happening is the ark is being moved by the same method the Philistines used and not the way God commanded the Israelites to move it. If the priest would have been carrying it the way God intended, then this would never have taken place. What we see is not the illustration I used above. A better picture would be someone wiring a house wrong and while trying to plug something into the outlet a person dies. Who is responsible in this later illustration? The person doing the wiring, not the person plugging in.
What we do not know is if Uzzah was both the person who should have known better than to put the ark on a cart or just the person trying to do right. The truth is in this world actions have consequences even if the person has the right motive and the actions of others can affect you. They can even kill you. God wasn’t being mean he was following the rules he set in place. God’s rules like electricity don’t change because people have a good motive.
Good motives can’t undo wrong behavior. Perhaps that is a lesson we can learn here. Motives and attitudes can influence our actions and behavior and we might wish that our motives can undo bad behaviors, they never do. Certain behaviors result in certain outcomes no matter our motives. It is a truth we need to remember.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
No comments:
Post a Comment