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Current news headlines of a spiralling descent from ‘one miserable crisis to another’, and ‘unstable and dysfunctional leadership’ - are phrases which also have been used to sum up stories found in the biblical book of Judges.

The book covers the history of the people of Israel more than three thousand years ago following the death of the successful leader Joshua to the time of the prophet Samuel. It is a series of cycles where the people turn away from God and find themselves in a mess of internal disfunction and external threat. Again and again, God raises up a judge, a deliverer, who brings salvation and peace to the land – for a short while.

These judges, such as Deborah, Gideon or Samson have often been held up as heroic role models for children in church Sunday Schools or clergy leadership conferences. While the judges are commended in the New Testament for their faith in God, this approach fundamentally misses the central message of the book. These leaders were failures in that following their death, the people were in an even worse mess than they were before. The headline ‘The Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the Lord’ recurs with depressing regularity. The book’s conclusion reflects the writer’s despair of a broken community governed by self interest - ‘everyone did what was right in their own eyes’.

In fact, the only true hero of the book of Judges is God. It’s God who sees the distress of the people and acts in response, giving countless second chances even if the people don’t take them. This is a God of patience and mercy who continues to love those who reject and resist love and righteousness. So, this is no leadership manual but a pointer to the hope that God never gives up on people. This hope is focused for Christians in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a very different kind of heroic saviour, who offers change not through structures of power but through the power of love.

Of course, there is a huge cultural and temporal gap from the book of Judges to the fevered political scene of today. But I find that its stories are a caution against thinking that it is simply in a change of leadership that all problems will be solved. Further a community does not grow by selfish individualism, but it grows when built on God’s values of justice for all, and a special care for the poor and needy. And faith in that God gives me hope.

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