Like most factors in natural life, distraction may be beneficial or it may be damning. It may be large or small, so large it becomes sin, so small that it is undetectable. Where it is an important option the disciplines of self-control, choice, and purpose must be invoked. Jesus and the disciples were intensely involved in ministry, so demanding there was no time for respite, even to eat, so to maintain energy for further ministry. He halted the service, withdrew with the disciples for R and R. (Mark 6:31-33) They were soon at work again when pressed by the crowd. The world is ministered to by weary persons. But the servant of the people must sometimes be served. Correctly the first meaning of the break ordered by Jesus was the necessity of rest, nourishment, and recovery of energy to carry on. But, life is a compound, not an element. It is a menu, not just one ingredient. In the recipe of life there is place for a pinch of distraction here and there to go with the large factors we talk about, and rightly accent. We need our own Sabbaths of change, of vacation, to better serve and live. Within context we choose temporary rest from duty.
Our concern here is related to distraction as an ingredient of wrong-doing. When David looked over the balcony and saw Bathsheba at her bath, he was distracted. Certainly the great issue was related to the morality of sexual practices, but there was an ingredient of distraction. Before this date, David would have been with his men in the field. While they were dying in combat, he was dallying with one of the officers’ wives. (2 Samuel 11) The officer, Uriah, was one of David’s most loyal friends, who will lose his life for the moral distraction of David with his wife. David would like to distract both God and Uriah by giving Uriah a furlough. Uriah refused. The scenario is an ugly part of the story of the gifted and spiritually oriented (usually) David. It is a story repeated thousands of times in the course of the history of leaders, great and small. Sin is commonly aided by distraction. David sullied his reputation with God (v.22).
We do not have the full story of Judas. His betrayal seems to us to be so heinous that we have not gone far beyond the narrative of the betrayal. (John 12-13;18) I imagine that he had a social program, largely secular, that would address the matter of Israel’s subjugation, to the needs of the people, and general social good. Had it not been so, it is likely that the disciples would have seen through him well before the final days leading to Christ’s crucifixion. The reference to carrying the silver given for the itinerant ministry of Jesus and the disciples notes he was team treasurer. He likely needed to make up for some misuse, with the thirty pieces of silver posted for his betrayal. He ultimately saw his duplicity, and it became unbearable. He took his life. (For Christians, Judas became the Benedict Arnold of the Church.) He was likely distracted because he believed charity to be primary. His earlier service to Christ is presumed insincere. We may have similar deceptions in leaders who take the tithes of the faithful to enrich themselves or take on styles that do not fit the ministry of Jesus, a style that calls for some self-denial. (Matthew 10:10; Mark 6:9)
It becomes clear in Scripture, that success falls to those who keep their focus, who are fully aware of the holiness of God that works most effectively through the righteousness he will provide that holds firmly in the mind and conduct of God’s faithful servants. The servant is first faithful to God, not only as a child of God, desiring to please the Father, but also to reduce the distractions of hypocrisy, or distortion, and to retain constancy for redemptive truth. It is well to be reminded that hypocrisy may be transferred by persons from the hypocrite to the person the hypocrite claims to represent. Some persons are eager to glom on to any presumed evidence for the negatives they hold and feel about God and God’s plan for the creation. That plan includes mankind, and has some features in it that inspires rejection and judgment from God. Man does well to take the humble road that calls for assistance in living righteously so to honor God and win persons for the hope Christ offers. In studies of history related to the story of Christian redemption and the nature of man, we are impressed by the tendency of many to create distractions from the specific message of Scripture. We advance redemptive specificity in Scripture. We sense the problem in the remark of the Apostle Paul that Demas was distracted by the world – 2 Timothy 4:10 *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020