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The book of Judges switches back and forth between mind-numbingly evil behavior and action-hero awesomeness. (If Judges wasn't in the Bible, your parents wouldn't let you read it.) Judges 11 relays to us one of the Bible's most disturbing stories. In Judges 11:30-31, Jephthah--one of the judges of Israel -- makes a deal with God: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (NIV). That sounds pretty good at first, until you think back to what the Israelites were supposed to sacrifice as burnt offerings: bulls and rams. Even if Jephthah, for some reason, let his bull stay in the house with him, bulls are not known to be attached to their masters in such a way that they come out of the house and low “Hellooo.” A ram might come out and give a friendly head butt. That might be irritating enough to make Jephthah want to burn that stupid pet ram. Maybe Jephthah's wife had a dog that constantly chewed Jephthah's sandals. Or, maybe Jephthah's sister lived with them. But dogs were unclean animals–unacceptable as a sacrifice--and human sacrifice was forbidden. Anyone who sacrificed a person was to be stoned to death. Unless Jephthah kept a bull in with his China, this story is not going to end well.

Jephthah won his battle against the Ammonites, and his daughter, his only child, came out of the house to greet him. Jephthah was heartbroken. He could not break his vow to God, so--in his attempt to please God--he sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering.

What is going on here? How could Jephthah think that this would please the LORD? Moses told them many times that God hated this practice. Judges 10 gives us some insight into Jephthah's warped mind. The Israelites were worshipping the false god of the Ammonites, Molek. And they worshipped Molek through human sacrifice. Now, Jephthah was worshipping the one true God, but he was worshipping Him the way the culture around him worshipped Molek. He had taken his culture's values and applied them to the LORD.

While we live in a culture that has a higher view of life than Jephthah's culture had, our culture is also more deceptive. It is easy to see the line between sacrificing a bull and a daughter, but even this bold line was blurry to a man living in that culture. Where are our lines? What accepted practices in our culture have we adopted into our lifestyles without recognizing what God thinks of them?

Clearly, we cannot rely on our culture's standards to lead us into a life that brings worship to God. But how can we know what God desires? If Jephthah could be confused by something so blatantly evil, how can a Christian living in today's Western culture keep from being deceived by the world? If only God had written down everything He wanted us to know. Wouldn't you read that over and over and over again, to make sure that your life is "holy and pleasing to God" (Romans 12:1, NIV)? Wouldn't it be great to be able to read it and "not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2, NIV)? I would read something like that everyday, wouldn't you?