Christian, think only the best!

Once when they [Elkanah and Hannah] had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s house. ¹⁰ In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. ¹¹ And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”

¹² As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. ¹³ Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk ¹⁴ and said to her, “How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine.”

¹⁵ “Not so, my lord,” Hannah replied, “I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. ¹⁶ Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.”

¹⁷ Eli answered, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”

¹⁸ She said, “May your servant find favour in your eyes.” Then she went her way and ate something, and her face was no longer downcast.

In my lifetime as a minister I have had plenty of reason to feel embarrassed and even ashamed. People I have let down, for example… situations I have misjudged… So I find it hard not to feel some sympathy for Eli the priest of God at Shiloh in those far off days of the Old Testament judges.

People often made a practice of going every year to Shiloh to worship God, and sometimes they would combine this with partying, and things would get out of hand. Eli would (quite rightly) have seen it as his responsibility to try and keep order, and this would no doubt be trying, and would tend to make him cynical. But that was no excuse for what happened one day…

A man called Elkanah has come to Shiloh with his two wives Peninnah and Hannah. (This kind of marriage arrangement was permissible under Israelite law, though far from ideal.) Hannah is childless, and a deeply unhappy woman, though she receives a lot of sympathy and understanding from Elkanah, who seems to be a basically good man.

She decides to go into the house of God to pray, and this is where Eli gets things badly wrong: watching her at prayer he sees her lips moving and her tears flowing, but all under her breath, and he jumps to the conclusion that, no doubt like many other people he has had to deal with, she was drunk. He rebukes her harshly: “How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine”.

Hannah respectfully puts him right, and, to be fair to Eli, he accepts the rebuke and pronounces a blessing over her. And what had seemed a long-standing impossibility becomes a reality; a baby boy, Samuel, is born. In due course he was to became one of the giants of Israel’s history.

It’s a heart-warming story, viewed from the perspective of Elkanah and Hannah. But what about Eli? We read in chapter two that his sons Hophni and Phineas were “worthless men”, as one translation puts it, who “had no regard for the Lord”. This must have been a cause of great bitterness to Eli who, as the book unfolds, comes across as well-meaning but weak. (I wonder what had happened to his wife?) You can see why, as a pastor, I am inclined to come at the story from Eli’s perspective as well as Hannah’s. Some very obvious lessons stand out…

First, don’t jump to conclusions, especially about people you don’t know. Putting it another way, don’t be quick to pass judgment.

One of the personal incidents I had in mind at the start of this blog, where in fact I ended up making an apology (in fact, what I might call a full five-star grovel), arose from my listening to somebody who had a grudge against somebody else: a malicious gossip, in short. Foolishly, I swallowed it whole, only discovering later that it was totally untrue. (What made it all the more humiliating was that the person I had to apologise to was someone I didn’t really get on with too well: having to swallow one’s pride is never a pleasant experience, though no doubt “good for one’s soul”!)

Jesus tells us pretty bluntly: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged… with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:1-2). Paul asks the Christians in Rome: “Why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt?” Why indeed! Have we ourselves got everything right? Oh, what fools we can be!

There are of course times when we have to exercise wisdom in our dealings with people, and we must be open to the possibility that they are indeed in the wrong, and need correcting. But let it be done with true humility and a prayerful spirit, and after proper investigation.

Second: always think the best of the other person, not the worst - unless you have a very good reason otherwise.

You may be an exception to this rule, so please forgive me if it doesn’t apply to you, but I suspect that for most of us one of the results of the fall is that we have developed a tendency to look down on others.

Perhaps we are, deep down, pretty insecure within ourselves, and it makes us feel a little better about ourselves if we can look at others with contempt. Or it may be something as sinful as plain racial prejudice: their skin colour is different from ours. Perhaps, though they call themselves Christians, their denominational loyalty or some other “theological” issue means that they are rather “unsound” (unlike us, of course). Or perhaps they strike us as just not very impressive, whether physically or personality-wise. They may have a habit or other mannerism that we secretly disapprove of – the way they dress or do their hair, even something as basic as the accent they have or their upbringing. Perhaps we just take a dislike to them for no particular reason.

Oh what fools we can be! How arrogant, how self-assured! Isn’t it one of the supreme glories of our faith that we worship as Saviour, Lord and King a man who was accused (yes, accused!) of mixing with tax-collectors and sinners, the very lowest of the low, with prostitutes and outcasts.

How then dare we, even in our most secret hearts, look down any fellow human being, however lowly and contemptible in our eyes? God, have mercy upon us.

Father, please give me Spirit-led wisdom to know when someone is false or bad, and to respond appropriately and humbly; but otherwise to always think the best rather than the worst of them. Amen.

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 [CS1]