Funny thing how Gideon built an altar and called it "The Lord is Peace", which he follows up with a sword and a war cry of "For the Lord and for Gideon!" I'm not a fan of the whole idea of dressing up the violence of war with nice, fanciful terms like peace. I remember visiting a military base and learning about nuclear weapons, being told that one of them was called the "peacekeeper". I was young, so I may remember my details inaccurately, but I thought they said it would only take 7 or 8 to blow up the whole world, and we had 4 or 5 times that many in our possession. I'm not sure that' s a true peacekeeper as much as it is a fear-instiller. The other issue I have is that these people went to war in the name of God, but even more than that, in the name of another human being. Gideon must have been some character - testing and retesting God, then getting others to fight in God's name, but also his own. The thing I most take from this passage tonight, is to beware of making gods of ourselves, which was the same thing Gideon was ironically trying to instill in the people. Perhaps he replaced the worship of baal with worship of the self?
What do you think? Am I being too hard on Gideon? He was, after all, trying to respond to God's call...
-melanie
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