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 Tanya Wilmuth.

Who is your hero?

We teeter on the edges of hero worship and hero deconstruction in our culture today. Look no further than the most recent Super Bowl when Taylor Swift recently named Times

Person of the Year entered the stadium to a chorus of booze.

Now, this is the same person who sold out concerts in the U.S.

with crowds surpassing NFL attendance records, night after night while police officers, kids, moms,

and Swifties exchanged friendship bracelets in the streets surrounding those stadiums.

We want our heroes, and we also want to tear them down.

We want them to save us from our boredom and our regular everyday lives, but we also want

them to be like us, so we don't have to feel like our own lives and work

do not matter. This struggle is not new. It was present in ancient Israel during the time of the

judges, particularly in the story of Samson. The people of Israel were searching for deliverance,

but they were also caught in a cycle of disobedience and

destruction. Judges 131 tells us that the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

Again, and we're going to hear that again. So he gave them into the hands of the Philistines

for 40 years. This phrase is repeated over and over in judges. The writer makes it clear.

The people no longer saw their actions as a problem. Idol worship became normal to them.

In their own eyes, everything seemed fine, but in God's eyes, their behavior was wicked.

How often do we determine what is right and wrong based in our own understanding

rather than God's standard? We tell ourselves, do what feels right, do that because it feels right.

But God's standard for holiness is something we can never meet on our own. Thomas Brooks,

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