Optimization And Obedience

“And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.” – Judges 1:19

In the book of Joshua, we saw God’s faithfulness in bringing his people into the promised land, defeating their enemies, and giving them rest. But at the time of Joshua’s death, there was still much to be done in settling the remainder of the land and pushing out its inhabitants. Joshua leaves them with exhortations to trust and obey God: and here, in the book of Judges, which covers the period from Joshua’s death until the first kings, we see how they do. 

Judah is the first tribe God tells to go and claim their portion of the land: “Judah shall go up” (1:2). Then something curious happens. Judah does go up, but instead of trusting completely in God, he asks the Simeonites to go with him as well: “Come up with me” (1:3). He obeys, but not completely. God still gives Judah victory, but we see later that Judah does not completely drive out some of the Canaanites, “because they had chariots of iron.” From there, it’s a cascade of similar behavior from all the tribes: that of Joseph, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, who allowed the Canaanites to live with them. Even worse were the Asherites and Naphtalites, who went to go live among the Canaanites. By the end of the chapter, there’s a sad kind of contrast: the language is now not about the boundaries of God’s promised land, but “the border of the Amorites” (1:36).

The Israelites’ obedience to God was diluted by their own human calculations, by what seemed to make more military or economic sense. And on first reading, it all works. On first reading, this is a chapter of great conquest: the Israelites were living in the land, living a life their enslaved predecessors would never have dreamed of. But in reality—and the previous book of Joshua makes this unmistakably clear—they have not fully obeyed God. They trusted in their own assessments more than they trusted God.

This is a constant temptation for us, particularly living in an age where we rely so much on data, data that we can optimize for and with. As Virginia Heffernan from The New York Times writes, “In the last few years, The Huffington Post has doled out advice on how to ‘optimize’ your three-day weekend, your taxes, your Twitter profile, your year-end ritual, your sex drive, your website, your wallet, your joy, your workouts, your Social Security benefits, your testosterone, your investor pitch, your news release, your to-do list, and the world itself.” Optimization, she points out, is back-formation. It worships efficiency or performance. It flattens values: “there’s optimal at one end and the dread of suboptimal at the other.”

Optimization is like a functional crutch here in the Bay Area. When faced with a goal, we simply look at the data, research from experts or figure out what everyone else is doing, and back-engineer to increase our odds of achieving the outcome. It tends to lead to anxiety and FOBO (Fear Of Better Options). But that is not how God calls me to live. My mission is dependent on Him, not on data. He values faithfulness over outcomes and obedience over optimization. At the heart of it all is this question: who do I believe has true power and control, God, or me? God, or the data? God, or my chariots? God, or my ability to make things happen? My answers to these questions may not be outwardly obvious, but they change everything. The book of Judges ends with horrific levels of disobedience, but it is here too, however early and small.