Half-baked People
The land of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, was fertile and open, Old Testament scholar G. Adam Smith tells us, whereas Judah was more isolated, aloof and (not quite) barren up among the hills and mountains. In through Israel's many gates to the world the foreigners and merchants came and they devoured his strength and turned his hair grey. But Israel (called "Ephraim" because many of the kings came from that tribe) didn't know the signs of age were showing in him. "Foreigners sap his strength, but he does not realize it. His hair is sprinkled with grey, but he does not notice (7:9)." And what did those images mean? Israel's interest in God leaked away, she had grown weary with the burden of her destiny as a light to the nations; though she appears to have had little sense of it at any time. A sense of destiny and mission drives people and sustains them even through times that make colossal demands.
The world and "worldliness" came in with a vengeance when more "things" and "stuff" became available. Consumerism and paganism came in hand and hand and with the bigger world came the consumer's yawn as life became increasingly cluttered and tasteless. Their world and by and by their fears grew bigger and God remained the same parochial, limited little god they had come to think he was, so when trouble came they fretted and looked elsewhere for help. Not only had Israel aged too soon he had become a half-baked nation. "Ephraim mixes with the nations; Ephraim is a flat cake not turned over." (7:8) Like a silly dove that flutters this way and then that (7:11) the nation finishes nothing it starts. Indecisive, uncertain, not fully committed to anyone or anything; like a lump of flattened dough burned on one side and raw on the other he never becomes anything in particular much less what God had destined him to be. Egypt knew Israel wasn't committed to her and Assyria knew that despite the treaties that Israel wasn't committed to her and God certainly knew that Israel wasn't committed to him.
To live without a single driving vision saps our strength. How painful it is to come to think of oneself as fluttering between ten thousand tiny little loyalties that keep us from genuine and single-minded commitment to one grand thing. Scratching the surface rather than digging, nibbling rather than eating, sampling rather than digesting, chatting rather than proclaiming and so we can go through life, half-baked and a half-baked spectacle to those wise enough to see beyond our busyness and our appearance of well-roundedness. For the blind man of John 9 there was "one thing I know," for a psalmist there was "one thing I desire" and for Paul there was "one thing I do." There's a tragedy and great sadness in not having one grand goal that calls us but there might be something more tragic: To have a grand goal and to throw it away for trivia. And maybe that's why we don't find fullness of joy and life in God. Somewhere in the middle of the whole process, though we're sure he is fully committed to us we aren't willing to pay the price and press forward for the prize (Philippians 3).
Didn't Alfred Tennyson in his The Holy Grail paint a sad picture of Sir Gawain who gave up the quest? Some scholars say the Holy Grail is a symbol for the holy life and to "see" it was to become wholly devoted to God. Sir Gawain began, but by and by he grew "much awearied of the quest" and found himself a silken tent in a lovely countryside filled with dainty ladies. By then he had completely lost interest and from the ashes that once were his dreams we're saddened but not at all surprised to hear his flat-toned oath:
But by mine eyes and by mine ears I swear,
I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat,
And thrice as blind as any noonday owl,
To holy virgins in their ecstacies,
Henceforward.
God deliver us!
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