Samson The Super Fool Series

Charles Steinmetz was a puny little man less than five feet

tall and a hunchback. He was not very impressive to look at,

but he was a giant in intellect. When he came to the United

States from Germany in 1889 he was considered a genius in

the field of electricity. General Electric wanted him to come

and work for them, but he refused to leave the company who

had sponsored him as a poor immigrant. G. E. wanted him so

bad that they bought the entire company to get him. They

had a problem they had to solve. The problem was lightning.

When it struck it melted power lines and damaged

transformers and generators. They needed someone to study

lightning, and to discover the secret to controlling it.

Steinmetz was their man. He studied lightning and learned

how to reproduce it. Then he developed the lightning rod

that would send its power into the ground.

Lightning is a tremendous power, but even a little man like

Steinmetz could learn how to control it by learning some of

the secrets of its power. Learning the secrets is the name of

the game. That is why the world is full of spies. If you can

learn the secrets of other nations, you have some control over

their power. Much of the labor of life is to learn secrets.

Nature has many secrets that keep science busy. Government

has top secrets; business has trade secrets; alcoholics and

gangs have their social secrets, and families have their dark

secrets. People are fascinated by secrets, and that is why the

paper and magazines sell like crazy. It is because they reveal

the secrets of celebrities and politicians.

The story of Samson and Delilah have always been

fascinating to many, and that is why it is a popular theme for

Hollywood to develop. You can't ask for a more appealing

theme, for it has love, sex, violence, and all of it revolving

around the exciting story of probing for a secret. Delilah

would never be known in history, but would have been just

another obscure woman used by men had she had succeeded

in discovering the secret that made Samson the most powerful

man in the world. Here is the weaker sex winning a major

battle in the war of the sexes because Samson, so strong in

body, was weak in mind.

Clarence Macartney portrays Samson as the great joker of

the Bible. His best joke brought the house down, and made a

deep impression on everybody. Horse play was his specialty.

He cared off the gates of Gaza and put them on the top of the

hill. He is the equivalent of the present day superman and

Halloween pranks. It use to be a standard prank to take

people's gates and put them on top of a barn. Samson was a

show off with his power. God endowed him with such

superhuman strength. Samson is probably the best reason

you need as to why God does not do this very often. Samson

never got around to taking life seriously until it was almost

too late. Life was all fun and games for him. He got his way

with the Philistines and with women, and basically just lived a

life of a spoiled giant.

It is hard to feel sympathy for Samson in his tragic fall, for

the temptation was so weak that led to his fall. We could see

how Joseph might yield to the temptation of Potiphar's wife.

The need was there and the opportunity was ripe. She was

very available and persuasive. All the ingredients were there

for a fall, but he did not fall, and so he became one the of the

greatest examples of the power of a loyal life. Samson, on the

other hand, had little or no pressure. He had no sexual need

unsatisfied, for he freely used prostitutes, and was sleeping

with Delilah on a regular basis. She was not offering him

anything he did not already have. He had nothing to gain by

telling her his secret except to stop her nagging.

His behavior seems inexcusable, and if it was not for the

gouging out his eyes and making him blind, it would be hard

to feel sorry for him. His folly off sets so much of the good of

his life that it is really hard to admire Samson, and think of

him as an example to follow. He was a total abstainer from

alcoholic beverage, but it seems superficial to exalt him for

that. When we see he did not abstain from immoral sex, and

from bloody and unnecessary violence. His gambling over a

riddle led him to commit cold blooded murder to pay off his

gambling debts.

He obeyed the Nazarite vow and never cut his hair, but