The Tradeoffs of Sin

False kings and other spiritual addictions

Glover, VT

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Yet [Samuel’s] sons did not follow in his ways but turned aside after gain; they took bribes and perverted justice.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me.”

1 Samuel 8:3-7

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Lake Willoughby, VT

Playing the Tape Through

Spiritual addictions are everywhere in the Bible.

As someone who has recovered from some addictions and has family in recovery, addiction is obviously very complicated and personal, and I have no universal answers to people’s struggles. But I want to share something I learned for myself from the SMART Recovery program, which teaches cognitive-behavioral therapy techniques. One of these is something you might have heard before called “playing the tape through.” 

To “play the tape through” is to think through the whole consequences of your addictive behavior when you get a craving to engage in your addiction. You want to pause and not just think about the behavioral reward but all that happens afterward. In order to do that, you make this big sheet of tradeoffs. You get a two-by-two square and list all the pros/cons: the pros of using vs. the pros of not using, and the cons of using vs. the cons of not using.

In order to do the tradeoffs right, you have to be honest about what you actually gain from it. For some addictions, you might say, “Well, the pro of using is it would feel good,” or “it would be entertaining,” etc. But then you also have to be honest about all the tradeoffs that happen as a result, whatever they may be: the lost money, the hangover, the possibility of making other bad decisions, the health impact, the relationship costs, whatever. 

For many addicts, this is where you start to get an edge in your battle. You remember alllll the trades you’re making, and the pro/cons become very clear. You start to win by losing the power of the addictive spell, the lie that tells you the addictive tradeoff is worth it.

Baby grackle

Samuel Recap

In our reading today from 1 Samuel, God is trying to help Israel play the tape through and see all the tradeoffs of a king. They aren’t ready. They are too addicted to something else:

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So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots, and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves and the best of your cattle and donkeys and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And on that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you on that day.”

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! We are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

1 Samuel 8: 10-20

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Here’s a refresher on Samuel. As I wrote about last week, Samuel is a miracle-birth kid who is mentored by the priest Eli who has allowed his own sons to get away with evil. Samuel is the first prophet of Israel and the last judge, helping Israel make the transition to king. Rather than starting a new line of spiritual geniuses, his sons are also doing evil, just like his mentor Eli’s sons; human nature is on full display.

The period of the judges (captured by the Book about them) was not great. In fact, it was a trainwreck of evil. But just like in Isaiah, the people want to fix a spiritual problem with political solutions, something technocratic: “If we just get a king, we’ll be able to compete on a global level.”

It’s a symptom of their ongoing idolatry, making something or someone king besides God—something we all do, whether it’s money, sports, transcendent experience, or yes, politics. Samuel knows this is foolish, and maybe he takes it personally, but God reminds him that no, “They haven’t rejected you, they’ve rejected me.” And then God reminds them that just how there’s “no such thing as a free lunch,” there’s no such thing as a free king. Not for the people, and as the story of the future king Saul unfolds, it’s not free for the king either.

God tries to warn them about the tradeoffs more explicitly: “Sure, have your king. But let’s play the tape through of what that looks like.” God always tries to teach us the true cost and the true reward of everything. In contrast, evil always tries to obscure the true tradeoffs of our decisions through temptation: the snake and the apple, the devil and Jesus, and here, the people to themselves. 

From Bluff Mountain overlooking Island Pond, VT

The (False) Freedom of Evil

Like much of the Old Testament, this is a story that brings up what’s often called the “problem of evil.” Why does God allow it? In this case, we might ask why God would allow them to make such a huge mistake. 

One common answer is freedom, and I agree with that on one level. God gives us the ability to make choices because the cost of taking away our freedom is simply not worth it to God; love can only exist between two free beings, not coerced or manipulated. When humans had the freedom to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, we became self-conscious and self-aware beings, but the tradeoff was that we realized we just made ourselves painfully separate from God. The trade was the pain of knowing there was no turning back. And for the first of a billionth time, humans discovered the cost of trying to become like a god is realizing you ain’t. 

Free will is a much more complicated subject than this in Reformed theology (how much freedom we really have in light of God’s irresistible grace, all that), and much more than I will get to today. But at least on some level, God created a world where we experience making free choices. Every Christian's basic choice is responding to God’s grace and following him, or following ourselves.

And so, to balance the freedom we are giving to sin, God tries to give us wisdom as another gift of grace. He wants us to have informed consent about what trade we’re making. “You can have a king, but you’ll get slavery.” Like your parents might have told you, you can stay out past curfew, but you’ll be sorry you did. 

Temptation

Again, we can all notice how often evil works by offering us bad trades and obscuring what we’re truly trading. And just like our teenage selves and just like Israel, we are in a dangerous place if we think there aren’t any trades behind our choices. Just like our addictions, or just like Pinocchio when he goes to Pleasure Island, you may not know what you’re trading until you’re already turning into a [donkey]. Whenever some new fad comes along, whenever someone is marketing something to you, whenever someone makes it sound like there’s no downside, it can take practice (and a bit of embracing a tamed-dose of cynicism) to get in the habit of asking, “What’s the catch? “

When the devil tried to tempt Jesus in the desert,¹ he tried to hide the true trades he was offering and marketing Jesus with fake trades. “How about stones into bread?” No, Jesus knew that the true trade would be spiritual disobedience, a far greater cost than hunger. “How about jumping off the tower to feel how much God loves you?” No, for Jesus knew the difference between testing God and trusting him. Jesus knew the true trade was to embrace spiritual pride in exchange for forcing God’s validation, and he knew the true cost of presuming you can do no wrong in God’s eyes. “How about all the power in the world? You could fix every problem if you just worship me.” Jesus knows that this trade appears the best of all but is in truth the worst of all, for worshipping evil is no power at all, but is slavery. Every time, Jesus sees through false freedoms and shows us the true ones.

Even though evil has lots of apparent freedom to offer us trades, its freedoms are illusory. Deep down, evil knows it is not free to totally defeat what is good, and it loses in the only trades that matter.

Northeast Kingdom of Vermont

The Trade of Grace

As Jesus says over and over,² the offer of forgiveness is absolutely there for our worst sins, blasphemies, and every possible mistake.³ He is always inviting us into the easiest trade to make if we knew what we were trading for. 

I don’t know that the main reason God allows evil to exist is for our free will, per se. I don’t think that’s wrong, but I believe it’s bigger than that. Even more than that, I believe God allows evil so that it may be conquered by his grace and so that we may witness its defeat over and over. I believe while some injustices are never resolved in this life, God’s justice reigns in the end. We don’t know exactly how everything shakes out, but we know that God did not allow death and evil so that death and evil may reign, but only allowed them that he may destroy them. And Christ is and was working in the background of the whole human story. No matter what kind of spiritual addictions we are trapped in, no matter what trades evil is fooling us with, there is no people, no mistake, no slavery, and no false king that could separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ. 

Christ traded our sins for his forgiveness, his freedom for ours, and his life for ours. We just have to say yes to his offer.

Glover, VT

1. Matthew 4

2. Mark 3:28

3. Sans “blaspheming the Holy Spirit,” but that’s for another day.