Samson and the haircut that saved his life

Poor Samson, he always seems to make the list of bad role models in the Bible. He’s put out there as the ripped hippie who whacked Philistines, chased skirts, got his head shaved, and eventually got himself killed. For generations, Sunday School kids (including me) have been warned, “Samson was immoral. He didn’t take God’s rules seriously enough. If he had obeyed God, he could have done so much more good. Boys and girls, don’t be like Samson. Vow that you will follow God’s laws so he can use you to do great things for him.” 

Ok, I’ll be blunt: such moral-centered Sunday School lessons are theological BS. But that’s not their only problem; they also assume the story is all about Samson. It’s not. It’s about the loving work of God in Samson’s life. Samson is not much different from you.

Our Kinship with Samson

Most people picture Samson as an OT version of the bulked up bodybuilder, but you may be surprised to hear that his size is never mentioned. Minus the long hair, he might have looked like the average Joe Israelite. Yes, of course, he’s very strong but that strength is from the Spirit not his biceps. He’s an ordinary man with extraordinary strength­— that’s all.

He certainly was like us in one respect: he knew what he wanted when he saw it. He saw a Philistine girl who looked good to him, so he told his parents he wanted her for a bride. Later, when his enemies deceived him, burned his wife and father-in-law to death, and had his own countrymen running scared, he saw red and let loose a bloodbath against his foes. 

He saw a prostitute he wanted, so he paid for her services. 

And finally he saw a woman he actually loved, Delilah, who wound up rewarding his love by accepting a cash reward to sell his secret. 

Samson knew what he wanted when he saw it, and most of the time, he walked like a blind man straight into an ambush. 

That’s why I feel such a kinship with biblical (anti-)heroes like Samson. I know what I want when I see it. I’ve lived by sight, and those two ocular liars sunk into my face have beckoned me into a thousand and one ambushes.

Pluck Out Your Eyes and Stick Them in Your Ears

To live by sight is not to live by faith, for faith is the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” (Heb 11:1). In other words, faith is a different kind of vision. It is seeing through your ears—ears that are hearing God’s voice in his word. 

To live by faith is to pluck out your eyeballs and stick them in your ears. It is to see what God speaks, to see as he sees, to view things as they really are, not as we perceive them to be. 

Sight and faith view Samson’s ultimate demise in entirely different ways. When Delilah finally nags Samson to death to discover the secret to his strength, she pockets the cash, has his head shaved, and his foes pin him down and gouge out his eyes. There stands great Samson—he lost everything.

That’s what sight sees, but faith sees something radically different. Faith sees this moment as God’s ultimate victory in his child’s life. It was only when Samson was reduced to nothing that God was ready to make him everything he wanted him to be.

This is how the Lord works. “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that he might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God,” (1 Cor 1:27-29).

 As a man who had nothing and was nothing, Samson was in the perfect position for God to be at work in his life. Thus, when Samson cried out to God to remember him and restore his strength, he did. 

We Are Samson

We are Samson, in one way or another. All of the problems we have, God is at work in. He doesn’t cast us aside. He doesn’t throw us away. Rather, he unites us with himself. There we who are nothing are made everything God wants us to be. 

Reprinted with permission