I’ve been reading lots of the history behind the Scouts movement. My conclusion? Robert Baden-Powell (the founder) was pretty much a ninja that trained other ninjas. Scouting. Stalking. Stealthiness. Always being prepared. That sounds like a ninja to me! To any Scouts reading this: if anyone ever tries to hassle you for being a Scout – tell them you’re training to be a ninja and that they should watch their back.
Scouts have a (Ninja) LAW they are to abide by and a (Ninja) PROMISE they are to keep. Part of the Promise is about doing “my duty to God”. And so my question is:
“What happens if you can’t fulfil your duty to God?”
Is it really that bad?? Does it mean you can’t be a Scout anymore?? Is it even possible to fulfil your duty to God??
Jesus hung out with an expert in religious law one day and they talked about “duty to God”. In their discussion, it comes out that God requires 2 things from people in their duty to Him:
- You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.
- and Love your neighbour as yourself.
The religious law expert then asked “And who is my neighbour?” Jesus answers by telling the story of the Good Samaritan.
The Good Samaritan
Do you know the story? It’s pretty famous (READ IT HERE). Basically, there’s a Jewish man beaten up by bandits, robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. A Jewish Priest sees the man, but doesn’t stop to help. A Jewish Temple Assistant also sees the man, but he doesn’t stop to help either. Then a “despised Samaritan” sees the man and feels compassion for him – so he stops to help him, and then covers the cost for further care.
The Priest & Temple Assistant Failed in their Duty to God.
They both failed. The Jewish man in the gutter, he was one of their own people, yet they did nothing to care for him.
The Despised Samaritan was the True Neighbour
It’s incredible that the Samaritan stopped to help the Jewish man. Samaritans and Jews were not friends, actually they were more like enemies.
Jesus says to the religious law expert to go and do the same as the Samaritan – that’s what it really means to be a a good neighbour. You don’t just help out your friends, you’ll even do good to people who don’t like you.
Massive Problem
Scouts love solving problems, but this is a problem that not even a stealthy ninja-like Scout can’t solve. The problem? We’re more like the Priest and Temple Assistant than we are like the Samaritan. We fail to love our neighbour. We fail in our duty to God.
The Bible calls this problem “sin”. Sin is when we fail to love our neighbour and fail to love God as we should. Sin gets in the way of being friends with God.
The question we started with: “What happens if you can’t fulfil your duty to God?”
ONLY JESUS can fix the problem
You can’t just try harder to fix the problem, you’ve got to let Jesus fix it for you. Jesus is kinda like the Good Samaritan. Jesus comes and does something incredible to help his enemies.
“BUT GOD demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
God shows how much he loves us. Jesus comes and dies for us even while we are sinning against him. Jesus is the only one who didn’t have this sin problem, he lived the perfect life. And then he died a death like no other.
When Jesus died on the cross, he did it in our place. That means that Jesus took upon himself the penalty we deserve for our sin.
“Be Prepared”
Scouts will prepare you for life.
It’s only by trusting and following Jesus that you can “be prepared” for eternal life.
Want to find out more about Jesus? Check these out:
Hey Dave,
Unbeknown to most people I spent a large part of my youth training to be a green clad ninja (scout). A lot of it taught me some great life skills, but in today’s world it has become way to politically incorrect to talk about one God to the point that they changed the ‘scout law’ to say “do my duty to MY God” to create a tolerant pluralistic sort of feel so that everyone is a little happier.
In my experience especially as I got older, for a lot of people involved in scouting it became clear to me that their god was themselves and their mates.
Whilst I remained involved I always tried to ensure that My life was different to those I did stuff with, living as a witness to the truth. The only reason why I stopped being involved was because of my priorities in ministering at a church clashed with a lot of activities with scouting.
Will read yr post shortly, but thank you thank you thank you for adding mobile viewing option. Means I’ll follow yr links fm fb/Twitter now
Thanks Nate dawg. Good reflections
richard, glad you’ve discovered the mobile version!
Sounds good. I gather this was the talk you gave?
Hey, do you reckon the good Samaritan is meant to be Jesus? He is the one who died for his enemies? That was alluded to in your talk but I’ve never read the passage that way before. You might be on to something!
Yep, more or less, this was the talk.
For a long time I’ve read Jesus into the Samaritan type role. The first time i did it was at uni. In drama class, the teacher was trying to make some point from this parable, it was pretty whack – so I told the class that the gs is a bit like Jesus.
But I’m careful not to make too much of it!! Notice my language above “Jesus is KINDA like…”
I read Leon Morris on it recently. He said that for centuries people have taken it there, he says it sounds good, but that it’s difficult to be certain that was Jesus’ intention.
So I want to be careful not to allegorise too much!!