Jeremiah 44:15-19: a reflection

15Then all the men who knew that their wives burned incense to other gods, and all the women who stood by, a great assembly, even all the people who lived in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, 16“As for the word that you have spoken to us in the LORD’s name, we will not listen to you. 17But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of the sky and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil. 18But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of the sky, and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.” 19The women said, “When we burned incense to the queen of the sky and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her, without our husbands?”

In one of the most defiant scenes in Jeremiah, the people flatly refuse God's word: As for the word you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you. And they justify their idolatry with a striking piece of reasoning: when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, they say, we had plenty of food and prospered and saw no trouble; but since we stopped, we have lacked everything and been consumed by war and famine. They read their circumstances backward, crediting their idol for past good times and blaming their troubles on abandoning it.

Notice the self-serving misreading of cause and effect. The people took the mixed fortunes of their history and interpreted them to justify exactly what they wanted to do anyway, keep worshiping their idol. Prosperity when they served the idol, they credited to the idol; hardship after they stopped, they blamed on stopping. It is a distorted reading of the evidence, bent to support a conclusion they had already reached. They wanted to worship the queen of heaven, and they arranged the facts to justify it.

That is a temptation we know well. When we have already decided what we want to do, we are remarkably good at reading our circumstances to justify it, crediting our compromises with our good times and blaming our troubles on our attempts to do right. It is a way of using a distorted cause-and-effect to excuse what we had already chosen. Beware of that self-serving reasoning. Do not bend the facts of your life to justify what you have already decided to do. Be honest about cause and effect, and let God's word, not your rationalizations, guide you.

Lord, your people defiantly justified their idolatry by misreading their history, crediting their idol for good times and blaming their troubles on turning back to you. Guard me from that self-serving reasoning, the way I can bend the facts of my life to justify what I have already decided to do. Keep me from crediting my compromises with my blessings or blaming my troubles on doing right. Help me be honest about cause and effect, and let your word, not my rationalizations, guide me.