Episode 146: God's Steadfast Love While Everyone Did What Was Right in Their Own Eyes (Aaron Schade)
Y Religion
BYU Religious Education
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How does God's love keep showing up for us, even when we struggle? In this episode Professor Aaron Schade reframes the book of Judges as more than a collection of heroic stories. Instead, he describes it as a sobering account of spiritual decline, broken covenants, and the consequences of living according to "what is right in our own eyes."
Professor Schade explores the recurring cycle found in Judges: ancient Israel turns away from God, experiences suffering, cries out for relief, and is delivered only to fall again. Rather than celebrating the judges as flawless leaders, he highlights their imperfections and the deeper message of the text as a lament over moral confusion and a society unraveling without covenant guidance. Further, Professor Schade explains that at the center of the book of Judges is the example of God's steadfast, unwavering love. Even as His people struggle to truly repent, He continues to reach out, deliver, and invite them back into a relationship with Him.
This episode invites us to wrestle with difficult questions about agency, obedience, and discipleship while discovering the powerful truth that God's love persists. Even in the midst of our failures, God's love is always calling us back to Him.
Publications:
- "Broken laws as 'Every Man Did That Which Was Right in His Own Eyes,'" in From Wilderness to Monarchy: The Old Testament Through the Lens of the Restoration, Religious Studies Center (2025)
- From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament Through the Lens of the Restoration, Religious Studies Center (2021)
- The Book of Moses: From the Ancient of Days to the Latter Day, Religious Studies Center (2021)
- "'Many Plain and Precious Things': Using the Joseph Smith Translation in Teaching the Old Testament," Religious Educator 26.3, Religious Studies Center (2025)
- Phoenician Inscriptions (Writings From the Ancient World, Number 45), with Robert D. Homstedt and Philip Schmitz, Society of Biblical Literature (2026)
- "Sacred Center: The Iron Age Temple at Biblical Ataroth," Biblical Archaeology Review, Biblical Archaeology Society (2026, forthcoming)
Click here to learn more about Aaron Schade
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, why religion friends? John Hilton here. |
| 0:03.0 | One of the fears many parents and grandparents carry is, |
| 0:06.0 | what if the next generation doesn't keep the faith? |
| 0:09.0 | What if the things that matter most to us start to feel optional to them? |
| 0:14.0 | Well, that fear is close to the surface in the book of judges. |
| 0:18.0 | It tells the story of a people drifting spiritually until it gets to the |
| 0:22.5 | point where everyone did that which was right in their own eyes. That line, everyone did that |
| 0:29.0 | which was right in their own eyes, becomes a haunting refrain in the book of judges, showing us |
| 0:35.0 | the terrible consequences of moral relativism. |
| 0:38.9 | The book of judges is honestly not where most people go when they're looking for hope. |
| 0:43.4 | Yet strangely, in this very book, we can see how persistent God's compassion really is, |
| 0:49.5 | even as his people wander from him. |
| 0:52.1 | One of my favorite parts of some of the stories and judges is it uses a verb Niham. |
| 0:57.0 | And it's one that can be described, sometimes it says, |
| 1:00.0 | it repented the Lord. |
| 1:02.0 | Yet the verb in Hebrew represents something like to move to compassion. |
| 1:07.0 | So he hears the suffering of the people, so he sends the Spirit of the Lord upon a judge |
| 1:14.1 | to help alleviate that suffering. Not because they deserved it per se, but because as a loving |
| 1:19.3 | God, a loving father, he does not want to see people suffering. In this episode of Why |
| 1:26.0 | Religion, we'll find many hidden treasures in the Book of Judges |
| 1:29.2 | that will strengthen our lives and those of the rising generation. This conversation will help |
| 1:34.1 | you rethink the Book of Judges, better understand God's character, and increase your hope |
... |
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