Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jensen Holt McNair.

Looking back on my childhood, growing up in the church, if you had asked me to name a judge from the book of judges, I would have named Samson. And if you had asked me to tell you his story, I would have named Samson. And if you had asked me to name a judge from the book of judges, I would have named Samson.

And if he had asked me to tell you his story, I would have told you that he was a really strong and powerful leader of the Israelites who was tricked by a woman and died heroically defeating the Philistines.

Now, maybe that's the story that you've been told as well. Some may argue that when teaching

children the story of Samson, this is the necessary PG version of the text. But when I open

up and read chapters 13 to 16 of the book of judges, when I read about this final judge of Israel,

I'm confronted with an entirely different narrative.

Like, when you add back in the PG-13 or R-rated portions of the story, when you allow the facts

to be laid bare, you don't get the picture of Samson the hero. And if you try to shape him

into a hero, if you attempt to stick to the narrative you've grown up with,

you'll find yourself trying to find justification for his actions and ultimately wondering,

what about this man does God find so heroic?

The good news is that we don't have to stick to this narrative of Samson as the hero. In fact, when we read

the story of Samson in the context of the whole book of judges, we're able to get a better vision

for why the author is even telling us his story at all. You see, you and I, we love a hero. We love

a good guy, redemptive arc, where the hero saves the day and makes

the right choice in the end. But the book of Judges doesn't really have a redemptive arc.

If you remember all the way back in Judges 2, we talked about the downward spiral the book

would follow. As the Israelites follow their pattern of sin, punishment, repentance, deliverance, peace, and then

falling into further sin, the story was going to get darker and darker. The people of God would fall

farther and farther from God's vision for them. They would look more and more like the nations

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