Stand With God Or Be Mauled By Bears (The Choice Is Yours!)

Awesome: Elisha has bears maul his mockers!

I am often treated to the following conversation with my daughter Reagan:

"Daddy, I wish you had hair," sighs Reagan as she runs her little hands over my shaved sides of my head.

"Me too, Reagan, me too," I say, remembering what it was like to actually have hair growing on the top of my head.

"Well, you have a little bit of hair," she says, clearly trying to comfort her father.

Reagan doesn't mean anything by it.  She speaks from the naive perspective of a little girl who adores her Daddy, hair or no hair.

However, it's not always that way.

Baldness is one of those things in society that it seems to be cool to make fun of.  Random people you don't know will mock you, or make some joke about the glare off your head.  Even if they don't know you.

So I can relate to Elisha.  I really can.  And to be quite honest with you, dude was awesome.

Pretty early in his ministry he finds himself the victim of anti-bald hate crimes.

Poor Elisha, minding his own bald business as he goes about his way, is greeted by a gang of thugs on his way to Bethel.  It's unclear what (besides rabid anti-bald prejudice) motivated this attack.  Perhaps after a long day serving the Lord Elisha is quite simply tuckered out.  Perhaps he's moving a little slowly.  Maybe "healing the water" took a lot out of Elisha in the previous verses.

For whatever the reason, this gang of ne'er-do-wells come up behind the follicly-challenged prophet on his way to Bethel and begin their mocking in 2 Kings 2:23:

"From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. 'Go on up, you baldhead!' they said. 'Go on up, you baldhead!'"

(For the King James folks, he is referred to as "thou baldhead.")

Now, Elisha the prophet who just healed the water and is on his way to Bethel (translated as "House of God") doesn't turn the other cheek.  He doesn't try to reach out in love to these ruffians.  How does the prophet respond?

His response makes him a hero to bald folks across the world.  In his fierce defense of bald folks all across the globe we find inspiration and comfort.  His bold rebuke of these dastardly anti-bald radicals demonstrates without any question how much God loves baldies.

For after being mocked as a "baldhead" by these agents of evil, 2 Kings 2:24-25 tells us that:

"He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria."

He didn't pray for the wayward youth.  He didn't ask God to forgive them for not knowing the glory of bald-headed people.  He called in the name of the Lord and two bears came out of the woods and "mauled" 42 of them to pieces.

Mauled to death by divinely guided bears.  Now that's awesome.

And even more awesome is the following line whereby he just continues on his way like nothing ever happened.  So he calls two bears to maul 42 hooligans to death in the name of the Lord and then just turns around and continues on his way to Mount Carmel.

Mount Carmel, interestingly, is where his predecessor Elijah had the big showdown with the prophets of Baal where fire came down from heaven to consume the offering made to God by Elijah in one of the most awesome displays of God's power recorded in history.

It would be a cool place to visit in their day.  A reminder of how powerful God was and how awesomely he could rout his/your enemies.

So in my mind, Elisha went up to Mount Carmel and said "who's bald now, punks?  Yeah, that's what I thought!"

Although this story is awesome, it is a comfort to know how powerfully God fights for us.  This is why the scriptures always tell us to "be still" in knowing that He is God.  (Or perhaps be still to not draw attention to yourself while in the presence of blood-thirsty bears.)

It is this same power and protection of God that Moses chided the whimpering Israelites about right before the parting of the Red Sea.  Confronted with the advancing Egyptian army, the Israelites had already begun murmuring, whining, and sniveling about how God was going to let them die in the desert and how they should have stayed being slaves instead.  Moses, however, commanded them to stand firm and see the deliverance that God would bring to them today.  Those scary Egyptians advancing on you, you won't see again, he promised.

And then they were devoured by the crashing down of the Red Sea and the Israelites were safe and sound on the other side.

Elisha surely smirked as he probably thought to himself "stand firm and these anti-bald radicals that taunt you will be silenced by blood-thirsty bears."

The bottom line is that you have before you this day a choice between life and death.  You can stand with God or be mauled by bears.  The choice is yours.