Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; November 17, 2024
Readings: Judges 16:4-20 (children’s talk); Secrets of Heaven §10367.5; Divine Providence §35
It’s really obvious that Samson shouldn’t have cooperated with Delilah. He shouldn’t have told her the secret of his strength. What we’re going to focus on, in this portion of the service, is why he did this. Why did he behave so foolishly? The answer to that question isn’t exactly a secret either. The story tells us the answer in the very first verse: “it happened that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah” (Judges 16:4). He loved Delilah, and that meant more to him than a lot of other things.
But even if you bear in mind that he loved her (or thought he loved her), when you look at this story with anything approaching a rational mindset, the questions just come flooding in. It’s obvious that he distrusted her from the beginning, because he told her lies from the beginning. Why, then, was he with her at all? Why does he bother to make up these elaborate lies about how he can be bound, once he’s had the opportunity to realize that Delilah will test his lies and she will see through them? And she accuses him of mocking her—she says, “How can you say, ‘I love you’” (vv. 10, 13, 15). No one wants to hear those sorts of things from someone they’re romantically involved with, but surely Samson could see what Delilah was trying to do to him. Why was the opinion of someone who was trying to destroy him worth so much to him? How could those accusations weigh on him more heavily than his desire to preserve his integrity and his own life? Is love really powerful enough to make us that irrational? Well yes, it is.
Of course, our real focus today is on this story’s application to our own lives. The Word has an internal sense or a deeper meaning that is entirely about spiritual things, and both Samson and Delilah symbolize things that are part of our internal, spiritual, landscape. Last week we learned that Samson stands for a part of us that receives strength from the Lord. Specifically, we learned that Samson’s hair, which he was never to cut, symbolizes the truths of the letter of the Word—the teachings that are written in this book (SS §49.3, et al.). These truths have way more power than they might appear to. In the Heavenly Doctrine of the New Church we’re told: “The power of Divine truth is especially a power against falsities and evils, thus against the hells. One must fight against these by means of truths from the Word’s literal sense” (SS §49). As long as he didn’t cut his hair, Samson represented the power that can be present with us by means of the Word of the Lord. That’s why he was so strong.
But at the end of today’s story, Samson gives away his secret, and his hair is cut. This is a picture of us allowing ourselves to be separated from the truths that we know. Our spiritual enemies want to distance us from the Word, so that it becomes vague and remote, and not something that’s present in our lives with power.
As I said to the children, Delilah symbolizes an evil spirit, or a hellish influence that is present with us (cf. SEm §§4746-4747). The story makes it pretty clear that Delilah is just not a nice person. It says that she “pestered [Samson] daily with her words, and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death” (Judges 16:16). What sort of spirit treats us like that? Then when she’s finally defeated Samson the story says that she “began to torment him” (v. 19). So she stands for something present with us that really doesn’t wish us well. But Samson loved Delilah—that’s the crux of the whole story. This thing that Delilah symbolizes is something that we love—something within our spirits that we value, and listen to—even though it’s clear that it isn’t good for us. So the question is, what are the “Delilahs” in our lives? What is it that we love, and hold onto, even though we know that it doesn’t do us any good?
There are two things that I want to address, just to get them out of the way, so that they don’t lead our thoughts down the wrong track. The first is that sometimes we treat love like it’s always a good thing, but love can be unhealthy. When we say that a man loves a woman, we could be talking about a husband’s commitment to his wife, which is a beautiful kind of love, or we could be talking about a really shallow kind of love—love that doesn’t go much deeper than infatuation with a woman’s beauty. It’s pretty obvious that Samson’s love for Delilah was the second kind.
The second thing I want to address is that this story is not making a universal statement about relationships between men and women. In this particular story, Delilah is the villain and Samson, though he’s not very bright, is the hero. This is not a commentary on our own relationships. Notably, this story is not here to give men permission to conclude that the women in their lives are the problem. Really, the story isn’t about romantic love, or relationships, at all. These things are just illustrations of spiritual dynamics. Both Samson and Delilah stand for things that are present with everybody’s spirit: Samson is a part of us that’s strengthened by the Lord’s truth, and Delilah is something that attracts us—something we love—even though it means us harm.
With those things out of the way, let’s go back to the idea that Samson’s love for Delilah caused him to make bad decisions—decisions that flew in the face of reason. The same thing happens to us. Unhealthy loves will persuade us to make decisions that we know to be bad. Love can make us forget the truth we know. We’re going to turn, now, to the Heavenly Doctrine—to a couple of passages that talk about love’s ability to override the truth we know. The first of these passages is from Secrets of Heaven: [read §10367.5]
The basic message of that reading is that people who love their evils can know the truth, but they can’t be healed by it, or empowered by it. The passage says that people who love their evils, whatever those evils may be, can’t be regenerated. They can’t go to heaven. That’s a scary statement, but it doesn’t mean that there’s no hope for you if you love something bad. One of the fundamental truths of the faith of the New Church is that we can change what we love. We can reject evil loves and learn to love better things. The reading also says that everyone can “grasp and have some understanding” of the truths of the Word—and it says that the ability to do this is something that the Lord preserves in everybody, even in evil people, because that ability to see the truth is what makes it possible for us to be regenerated. That ability is our lifeline, when we’re in a dark place. And the last thing that the reading says is that when people love evil, the truth they know only makes it as far as the external mind. And truth that is in the external mind, and not at the same time in the internal, has no power over us. It’s just knowledge. We like to imagine that knowing the truth, or knowing what we should do, is enough to make us do what we should do. But when merely external knowledge butts heads with what we want, what we want is going to win, every time.
The next reading gives makes it even easier to understand what this merely external truth is like. This passage is from Divine Providence [read §35].
Wisdom that isn’t joined to love is the same thing as merely external truth. Such wisdom is “like a meteor in the sky that vanishes, or like a falling star.” That image is pretty helpful. Can you think of a time in your life when you wanted to do something, and the truth “I’m not supposed to do this” flashed across your mind like a shooting star, and then that truth went dark, and you did the thing you wanted to do? We are ruled by what we love, and rational truths that we don’t actually care about have almost no power to withstand what we love. Our loves can make us forget what we know—they can override our rational minds. Just like Delilah did to Samson.
So, again, what are the things in our lives that behave like Delilah? They could be any number of things. They could be patterns of interaction with other people: we get nasty and give someone a piece of our mind, or we talk about people behind their backs, even though there’s a part of us that knows that we’re going to feel bad when we walk away from those conversations. Addictions behave like Delilah. To be addicted is to be in a pattern of indulging a behavior, because we feel like we need that behavior in order to feel good, even though the behavior is causing us harm, and we know it. The “classic” addictions are to drugs and to alcohol, but people can be addicted to all kinds of things: food, pornography… even endlessly scrolling on their phones. And these are just a few examples of things we might do as a result of holding on to what we love, even when it’s plain to see that those loves are harmful.
The way out is simple enough, though it isn’t easy. The reading from Divine Providence told us what we need to do: “A person has a love of wisdom to the extent that he shuns the devil’s crew, which are the lusts of evil and falsity” (§35). When we shun the lusts of evil and falsity, the wisdom, that we possess is joined to love, and that’s when we receive the power to resist evil. So we need to shun—or flee from—that thing that behaves like Delilah. We need to look at it as honestly as we possibly can, and be as honest as we possibly can about the hell that that love is dragging us into. And we need to reach a point where we’re willing to say that we don’t want that thing. Remember, the Lord preserves our ability to see the truth, even when we’re soaked with desires to do the wrong thing, and that ability is our lifeline. The light of a shooting star doesn’t illuminate very much, but even that fleeting light can tip us off that the thing we’re in love with is monstrous. We need to reach a point where we want to get away from that thing. Being honest enough ask ourselves “why am I doing this?” is a first step. And then we need to run away from that thing that behaves like Delilah.
Rejecting that evil can be the same thing as fighting for the Lord’s truth, because the Lord told us not to do evil. He said, “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal,” and so on (Ex. 20:13-15). One of the reasons why these commandments are phrased in the negative is that sometimes the truth that evil is evil is just about the only truth that we can see clearly enough to hold onto. If we reject evil, and we reject it not just because it hurts us, but because the Lord said not to do it, then we’re holding on to the truths of the letter of the Word. And those truths have power. And that’s like Samson refusing to let Delilah cut his hair.
Of course, in the story Samson does let Delilah cut his hair. So today’s story is about one of those times when the bad guys win. There’s really nothing that’s cheerful or uplifting about the story that we heard today. But that’s because the story isn’t over. Next week we’re going to look at the part of the story where Samson’s power is restored to him. If we look at the whole arc of the Samson story, one of its clearest messages is that the Lord can redeem us even when we really mess up. As long as we draw breath there is hope, because the Lord will always give us a chance to try again. And with God all things are possible.
So where I want to leave you today is with the thought that sometimes Delilah wins—sometimes the hells get their way. And that doesn’t mean that it’s over. In the book of Micah we read:
Do not rejoice over me, my enemy;
When I fall, I will arise;
When I sit in darkness,
The Lord will be a light to me. (7:8)
Amen.