Reality Check: 1 Samuel 12:6-18
We cannot expect people to grow if they are not grounded in reality. Growth implies an understanding of who you were, who you are, and where you want to go. Take any of those three dynamics away and what growth does happen becomes far more haphazard. Our growth is a function of our understanding of past, present, and future.
Samuel comes down hard on the people in his farewell address. Samuel doesn’t sugar-coat their prior disobedience and follows it up by assuring them of their future disobedience. He tells them their wickedness is great. He even summons up a storm with God’s help as a demonstration for God’s affirmation of the truth.
This story strikes hard against a modern understanding of leadership, mentoring, and even parenting. How many leaders spend more time affirming and encouraging the people underneath them rather than looking at growing edges? How many mentors spend time telling their mentees about their strengths so they can feel good while ignoring conversations about their weaknesses to help them improve? How many parents coddle their children and believe them to be perfect instead of loving them through their faults and flaws?
Samuel doesn’t take this approach. Samuel, like the God he serves, does love the Hebrew people. If he didn’t love them, he wouldn’t have been a judge over them. If God didn’t love them, He would have left them to struggle in Egypt! However, neither God nor Samuel is blinded by their love for the people they serve. God and Samuel demonstrate their love by holding the people to a high standard and asking them to rise. Samuel does not coddle; Samuel tells them their wickedness is great.
My greatest fear about modern culture is our developing softness. Statistics groups, the Anxious Generation and the National Institute of Health as two examples, point to increasing anxiety levels among teenagers. Self-reporting of moments of serious anxiety nearly tripled in the years between 2008 and 2022. Teens reporting significant moments of depression surged from around 14% to 61% from 2016 to 2023. Modern psychologists are spending significant time publishing research on topics like the coddling of the American mind.
Anxiety increases when we shelter people from their flaws. When people avoid confronting their mistakes because their mentors and guardians make excuses for them, people fail to learn how to accept, deal with, and correct their flawed behavior. Mistakes which used to be fixed by a sincere apology and a change in behavior now become emotionally crippling events.
Samuel understands this. Samuel doesn’t wish them well and send them on their way. He doesn’t perform the typical rah-rah speech reinforcing how much he believes in them – even if he does love them. He confronts their wickedness and, even more importantly, he forces the people to confront their wickedness. Samuel speaks words grounded in reality when he deals with the people. We cannot expect people to grow if they are not grounded in reality.
