Joel: Slumber

After the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina were first coming to light, one prominent Christian figure pronounced, “This is one wicked city, OK? It's known for Mardi Gras, for Satan worship. It's known for sex perversion. It's known for every type of drugs and alcohol and the orgies and all of these things that go on down there in New Orleans. There's been a black spiritual cloud over New Orleans for years.”

In the midst of COVID-19 one pastor announced that it was a fulfillment of his prediction of God’s day of judgment on the world’s violence against children through pedophilia, human trafficking, school shootings, and abortion. “All idols will come crashing down, crushed to dust, and the playing field will be leveled. The richest and the poorest alike will face the same conditions. Once this judgment strikes, it will devastate the entire economy.”

It would be easy to make a list of all the historical plagues, devastations, droughts, floods, fires and earthquakes that have been attributed to the judgment of God on sin. Perhaps they are but that is not the emphasis of the prophet Joel. Yes, the plague of locusts is devastating and, yes, it is a call to repentance but, unlike other prophets, it is not God’s response to a list of offenses or any particular sin - like the worship of idols, rampant injustice, or the wickedness of kings. I am sure all of those were present in Judah but it is their persistent drowsiness that has provoked the plague of locusts. They have become numb and, literally, senseless. Their sins are neither heinous nor abominable. In “Screwtape Proposes A Toast” the senior devil, Screwtape, complains about the quality of the souls served at dinner in Hell. “But it would be in vain to deny that the human souls on whose anguish we have been feasting tonight were of pretty poor quality. Not all the most skillful cookery of our tormentors could make them better than insipid. Oh, to get one’s teeth again into a Farinata, a Henry VIII, or even a Hitler! There was real crackling there; something to crunch; a rage, an egotism, a cruelty only just less robust than our own. It put up a delicious resistance to being devoured. It warmed your inwards when you’d got it down.” Not so for the people of Judah. There were no delectable sins.

Of course, there are a number of passages in Scripture illustrating the dangers of sleep and drowsiness. 

First, there is the sleep leading to the failure of responsibility. There are the foolish virgins who fail to stay awake for the arrival of the bridegroom and are locked out of the feast. Instead of being even more vigilant knowing the crisis is near, the disciples in Gethsemane fall into the “sleep of sorrow.” The guards in Babylon fall asleep at their posts while the invading Persians sneak past them beneath the city. We know we should remain alert but sleep sneaks up on us.

Second, there is the sleep of avoidance. Charles Spurgeon said of Jonah, “Jonah was asleep amid all that confusion and noise; and, O Christian man, for you to be indifferent to all that is going on in such a world as this, for you to be negligent of God’s work in such a time as this is just as strange.” When we are overwhelmed by the conflicts, the problems, the sheer evil in the world we pull the covers over our heads and try to make the world go away. 

Finally, there is the sleep that Scripture describes as stupor or, literally, stupidity. Isaiah, a contemporary of Joel’s, writes:

Drug yourselves so you feel nothing.

    Blind yourselves so you see nothing.

Get drunk, but not on wine.

    Black out, but not from whiskey.

For God has rocked you into a deep, deep sleep,

    put the discerning prophets to sleep,

    put the farsighted seers to sleep.

It is the sleep that has come upon the prophets and the seers of the nation. These are the very leaders assigned to guide the people into righteousness by hearing and attending to the word of the Lord. They are the sources of wisdom when all the attractive voices of idolatry grow louder. When the prophets and the seers fall asleep the future is bleak. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” When the prophets and the seers sleep the rest of us too easily forget God. Like Judah, a whole nation slumbers. 

Neither people nor societies can afford to sleep. It is sometimes not a particular sin that causes the undoing. It is the gradual and unnoticeable falling into sleep, into stupor, into stupidity that lulls us into destruction and we wake up suddenly to a plague of ravenous locusts gorging on everything we held dear.

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Art by Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko

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