Chapter One: The Troubler

Chapter one recounts that very familiar story from 1 Kings 18 when Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. The unique feature of this chapter, though, is the walk with Jubal. Jubal is a (fictitious) 9th century BC farmer from the Northern Kingdom. What makes this walk with Jubal unique is listening to his explanation of why this showdown is so important, and why the Northern Kingdom has found it so easy to worship both Yahweh and Baal. I think I would like to highlight two aspects from this chapter. The first is why worship Baal. And the second is the idea of compartments.

In this chapter, Al Truesdale did a good job showing us that the worship of Baal was not due to the fact that the people were backward and ignorant. Nor were they simply perverted in the lust. We need to remember that all myths (and by myth I do not mean false) about local deities are in their essence a way of explaining the workings of the world. Today we seem to think that because of the elevation of reason during the Enlightenment, and the proliferation of science and scientific discoveries, that we have the tools to really understand how things work. But in reality, our science functions in exactly the same way as did the myths that informed the people back in Elijah’s day. Baal was the best science of the day. It explained how the world worked. And besides that, up until this point, it was effective.

There is something anachronistically arrogant when we dismiss these myths as stupid. Of course, that doesn’t make them right or okay for the people of God, because God told them not to have any other God and not to worship anything or anyone but Yahweh. They knew better, not because they had better science or more intelligence, but because God told them. We are told that it really wasn’t a problem because “it is all matter of respecting boundaries. Some parts of life belong to Yahweh, and some to Baal” (27).

It seems to me that this is the open door that invites idolatry. Whenever we allow our lives to be divided into compartments where God either plays no role or that role is held to a minimum, an idol of some sort will always come around to fill that space. One of the most telling ideas in this chapter for me was when our companion Jubal tells us that Yahweh is the God of power and deliverance, the miracle-working God of the desert. “But that has little to do with the everyday affairs of life such as receiving rain, growing grapes, and paying bills” (27). Today we call that “being relevant.” It made me pause and wonder if the whole idea of being relevant has become an idol. I have a feeling it has.

Into the midst of all this comes the Troubler—Elijah. He tells the people that they cannot have compartments. Yahweh is not a God with boundaries. He gathers everyone on together on Mount Carmel and a showdown. We know what happens. Fire falls, consuming Elijah’s offering. Yahweh is God, Yahweh alone.

I guess the question for me is twofold. Where have I created boundaries/compartments? And where have I allowed the myths of our world to infringe on my exclusive worship of God?