Today's Reading: 1 Samuel 14:24-52

Impaired Decision Making

We can see from today’s reading that king Saul is beginning to become impaired in his thinking and decision making.  At the beginning of his reign, he had been humble and filled with the Spirit of God.  And the Lord gave him many victories over Israel’s enemies. But slowly the spirit of pride started to grow in his heart which led him to rebellion and disobedience to God’s commands.  This ultimately led to the loss of his ability to make sound judgments. 

In today’s passage, Saul arbitrarily issued an order that his soldiers were not allowed to eat any food that day on penalty of death.  This, in itself, was an impaired decision as any military commander would want his troops to be well nourished and strong before entering battle.  But Saul’s mind wasn’t right.  He just couldn’t see the error of his command.  (Now, some believe that the bread in Israel had been contaminated with some sort of toxic substance, and that Saul was simply protecting his troops from sickness.  If that were the case, a command to abstain from the contaminated bread would have sufficed.  There was no rational reason to mandate abstaining from all food). Saul’s judgment was impaired.

When Saul found out that Jonathan had disobeyed his command and ate some honey (even though he had done it unintentionally), he ordered his execution.  This was another sign of Saul’s cognitive decline.  He had reached a point in his mental state where he just couldn’t reason things out rationally and sensibly.  Fortunately for Jonathan, the people rallied around him and rescued him from Saul’s rash sentence.

It has been noted that Saul’s prideful departure from God led to his mental deterioration.  Because God was no longer ruling in his mind, he became disassociated with reality.  It is known that some of the signs of manic depression are “exaggerated optimism and self-confidence,” “aggressive behavior,” “inflated sense of self-importance,” “poor judgment, distractibility,” and “reckless behavior.”  Saul was experiencing all of these symptoms.

Tragically, this is often the result of anyone who allows the spirit of pride to grow in their heart and it leads to rebellion and disobedience to God.  The human mind is a delicate thing.  This is why God has given us the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), to protect us from such folly.  “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7)  A sound mind is a terrible thing to waste!