Make no mistake, the Spartans of ancient Greece were all these things and didn’t care if you knew or were put off by it; they trained almost from birth for physical fitness and martial prowess.  If you were born weak, you were left to die.  Even their personal lives, such as they were (men living in communal mess halls throughout their adult lives was not uncommon) reflected an almost fear of adornment.  After one victory, a Spartan general looked at the opulent tent of his enemy and remarked “see how they lived like this, and came to rob us of our poverty?”

Say what you will about a people who considered war a relaxation of military discipline (each year the Spartans would declare war on their helots or slaves, to justify anything they did to keep them in line) … in fact, all we know of the Spartans outside of archeology was what others said and wrote about them.  Not many societies have this dilemma; oh, the pure-Aryan incursion Aryans come to mind, but usually a culture that seeks to last leaves records and art behind to tell anyone who wants to learn about them.

The ancient Israelites via the Old Testament did not have this problem; in fact, it’s easy to get lost in reading the history of kings and prophets and foreign incursions.  The first time Israel’s mentioned outside the Bible – in a late thirteenth century B.C. Egyptian victory tablet – it’s not favorably.  “Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.”  We run the risk if we let others tell our story rather than we ourselves of getting distorted and misquoted and overall misunderstood, no matter how many sources talk of us.

Sinful as we are, we’re not immune to this tendency and God knows it.  It’s easy to say, “all we know of Jesus is what the Gospels say about Him [for He didn’t write anything Himself]” and walk away.  But here’s the rub: if we walk away from something uncomfortable just because it is, then we’re lying to ourselves when we say we’re seeking truth.  That’s “truth”, not just validation for what we already believe and act upon.  And God is asking us to look for it!