"It is not lawful for you to have her."
Herod wanted to silence John the Baptist in order that he might not have to hear words that stung his guilty conscience. He knew there was a formidable power that was working through John, and even found much of what he had to say interesting. He must have been concerned that someone with John's reputation would speak against him, and so put him in prison where his words couldn't easily reach the masses. Yet their opinion also helped to spare his life. The crowds regarded John so highly that, although he got away with imprisoning him, he wasn't at all sure how they would respond to his death. The fact that he imprisoned him rather than killing him outright meant that the troublesome and irritating voice that seemed to speak in the name of his own conscience was actually closer and louder than it had been. He may have prevented the world from hearing it, but only at the expense of being more subjected to it himself. And yet, this proximity, though it did not come without irritation and provocation, also became interesting to him in a way he did not anticipate.
When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he heard him gladly (see Mark 6:20).
The trouble for Herod is that the two chief motivating forces that seemed to control his life were the opinions of others and his own curiosity. His curiosity is what aroused him to pay regard to what John said, and together with the way the crowds viewed him, it made him concede that "mighty powers" were at work in him. If he had not believed that it would not follow that Jesus was John raised from the dead on the basis of the mighty powers at work in him. The regard of the crowds for John was for a while enough to ensure that his life be spared. But the trouble with caring so much about the opinions of others was that they were always shifting, and the particular representative sample that one heard could change from moment to moment. If one sample of individuals could help convince Herod to spare John another could just as easily persuade him to keep an oath requiring him to take his life.
The king was distressed,
but because of his oaths and the guests who were present,
he ordered that it be given, and he had John beheaded in the prison.
His concern for popular opinion and his curiosity might have remained sufficiently potent to keep him from killing John had his intellect not been entirely overwhelmed by the sensuality of the dance of the daughter of Herodias. It was something that seemed to short-circuit his already weak moral reasoning. He forgot about the crowds who believed in John entirely. His concern for popular opinion narrowed down to one specific moment in time, losing track of the ramifications of the larger situation. Suddenly the only ones he cared to please were the girl and her immediate audience. He promised her anything, and could not take it back because they had heard. The rationale didn't go any further down the path of potential consequences than that.
Herod was a case in point for how sin makes us stupid. It makes us willing to promise even up to half our kingdom for something that seems good in the moment but eventually turns out to be entirely trivial or destructive. He demonstrated how acting well merely because of what others think is not sufficient to keep us from sinning, and how curiosity is too tenuous a tie to the truth to keep us tethered in a time of trial. We may know that mighty powers are at work in Jesus, and may act rightly because we want to appear to act as a Christian should act in the eyes of others. But neither of these will be enough to save us in a moment of particularly pressing temptation. We need a tighter relationship to the truth, and a concern for what God thinks of a situation rather than public opinion about it.
It shall be a jubilee for you,
when every one of you shall return to his own property,
every one to his own family estate.
God isn't trying to trick us when he speaks to us through our conscience. He is trying to create the conditions necessary for robust human flourishing, so that we can set aside selfishness and menial concerns in order to celebrate an eternal jubilee. We sometimes fall short of this, but that is why he sent us Jesus to redeem us and restore us. Let us learn to listen to his voice above all, and to follow him even and especially in the hour of temptation.
Casting Crowns - Voice Of Truth
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