Whatever Seemed Right in Their Own Eyes

One of the most common phrases Christians love is "the Bible is clear." I often hear Christians talk about how they "just read the Bible for what it says." The implication is that their conclusions from the text are the obvious—and only—conclusions in which to arrive.

One of the (many) problems with this approach is that it neglects how your own perspectives shape the ways in which you read the text. For example, consider how you'd interpret the following statement found in Judges 17:6 and 21:15:

"In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes."

Sounds a bit like anarchy, right? We might imagine lawless people running amok, doing whatever they wanted, regardless of the consequences (see also: a Sunday-morning church parking lot after the closing song). If you were raised in the church as I was, you have likely been told this verse numerous times as a caution against our own evilness and our need for healthy spiritual authority over us.

Except that explanation may not be what this statement is referring to at all.

Dallas Willard interpreted this passage differently from the way it is often presented (even today). For context, Willard is best known for his books The Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart. He was an ordained Southern Baptist minister who held orthodox views on most doctrinal questions. In his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, he writes:

It is a curious fact that many today who read that in the period of the judges all did “what was right in their own eyes” think that something terrible was covered by that phrase. Indeed, the people of this time went wrong in many ways. But to do as one pleases is the ideal condition of humanity, what is often called “freedom,” and does not imply wrongdoing at all.

Here, Willard challenges the way many of us read the passage in Judges. To be fair, many scholars read this refrain as genuinely ominous. Willard swims against that current and invites us to consider whether we are bringing that conclusion into the text rather than reading it from it. Instead, Willard suggests that this is actually a critique of our overreliance on authority and government to rule us. He suggests this may indicate that we do not have a properly formed ability (as God would want for us) to make our own decisions.

In the book of Judges, doing what was right in one’s own eyes was not opposed to doing what is right in God’s eyes, but opposed to doing what some governmental official saw as right. God has all along intended that we walk with him on a personal basis, be pleased by the right things, and then do what is right in our own eyes. This is why we were made and what constitutes our individuality. Which means that one of the token verses to imply we need authority over us may actually be an indictment against our over-reliance on authority. My own experience in ministry has shown how much this is often the case.

If you know the story of the ancient Israelites, you know God was not pleased when they wanted a king to be their authority. Here is where I find Willard's argument the strongest. That's because inserting an earthly authority distanced them from focusing on God's authority in their lives. This is still true today, although we now call them pastors, elders, or bishops (or numerous other titles). After Israel asked for a king, we see that neither the prophet nor God was happy about it.

Samuel was displeased with their request and went to the Lord for guidance. “Do everything they say to you,” the Lord replied, “for they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer. (1 Samuel 8:6-7)

And yet I'd argue, like Willard, that God's desire is not for us to need an authority figure over us to function in a healthy way. Instead, the goal should be the ability to follow the Spirit on our own. We can rely on people to help us develop that ability, but not as an end in itself. Yet as many others have experienced, often the people who introduced us to Jesus no longer recognize where Jesus has taken us today. This is a confusing reality that I spend a lot of time walking through with people. If you're in this situation, your choice is to defer to authority or follow where Jesus is taking you.

The kings in the Old Testament give us one example of authority, and when we get to the New Testament, we see the writers also use the Old Testament Law in a similar role of authority. There's a pattern here worth naming. Israel tried a king. When that failed, the Law stepped in as an authority structure. 

This is Paul's argument in Galatians, when he says, "The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith. And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian" (3:24-25). Paul's argument in Galatians is that this was always meant to be temporary.

The goal is not for you to need something else in your life to tell you to do the right thing, whether that be a person or a clear set of rules to follow. Healthy, fully functioning adults don't need a guardian.

The goal, especially for those of us living with the Holy Spirit, is to learn to hear and follow God's Spirit in our own lives without needing a king or any other spiritual authority to tell us to do it. This is what it means to experience "the ideal condition of humanity," as Willard called it.

This means you don't have to fit your beliefs into what someone else tells you makes sense to them. It means you don't have to shrink to fit into a community that doesn't allow you to express who God made you to be. It means you don't have to go along with something that your logic shows you makes no sense. It means you can say yes when Jesus nudges you forward, even when others don't know how to make sense of it.

The goal of mature spiritual discernment isn't just personal liberation. It was always about what becomes possible when a people learns to hear God together, without needing a human institution to mediate that for them. The irony is that the demand for spiritual authority over individuals is itself a communal failure. It means the community hasn't done the work of forming people who can discern. So the institution fills the gap, and then defends its own necessity.

When enough individuals reclaim their own discernment under God, something shifts in the community around them. The counter-current becomes possible. One person turning doesn't change the water. We need enough bodies moving together for the water itself to begin to change direction.

Then we see the beauty of all of us doing whatever is right in our own eyes.

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Photo by Tomasz Zielonka on Unsplash