Naaman - The Renewal of the Mind Part One

One of the earliest memories I have of Bible stories is the story of Naaman, the syrian general. My mom and dad bought me an Arch book with a record, (yes, I'm old enough to be in on the tail end of the record phase) of the story of Naaman when I was five years old and we lived in North Carolina. The story of Naaman is about a general who thinks hes got life all figured out, but his life is turned upside down and in the end he discovers that there is a God in Israel who can do things that his local gods apparently couldn't do. His discovery points to the discovery waiting for all who follow Jesus: this journey following Jesus will require a complete renewal of the mind.

Perhaps you remember the story, which occurs in 2 Kings 5. The great general Naaman was suffering from an incurable skin disease known as leprosy. He was told that Elisha, the prophet in Israel could heal him. He hoped for royal treatement: Elisha, this prophet of a vanquished nation would certainly come out and deal with him as one would deal with a great man. Instead, he was treated rather unceremoniously by Elisha who only sent a messenger out to talk to him and told him to go wash seven times in the Jordan River. Initially, Naaman lost his temper, but his servants talked him into it, and he left his pride behind on the banks of the Jordan River, washed seven times and was healed.

And it was at that point where Naaman realized that he now had a new problem. A new reality had entered his life, and we see him struggling to come to grips with it, to put together the parts of his old life in a new way so they will make sense around a new belief he has in a new God. You see, up until now, he had worshipped his local Syrian god, Rimmon. But Naaman has discovered something new about Rimmon: he may look great sitting up there in his shrine, but he's not much good when it comes to leprosy. And the bad news is that his enemies to the south, the people of Israel, worship a god who doesn't have a statue sitting in a shrine, but who beats Rimmon hands down in the healing business. And this god has reached out and touched HIM!

He comes back to Elisha and declares, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel." He offers Elisha a gift which is refused and then he does two things to show that he is trying to get his mind around what has happened to him, trying to reorder his life around his new belief in the one true God.

The first is kind of unusual. He asks for two loads of soil from Israel? Now why does he do this? It's because he's still thinking about gods the way he's always thought about them. In ancient times, people believed each region had its own god. He's discovered that the god in Israel is the only one who has power, so he wants the dirt so that he can worship this new found god on His own turf. He hasn't worked out the truth yet that if the God of Israel is the one true God then he is just as present in Syria as he is in Israel. So he asks for a load of dirt.

The next, I find fascinating. He says to Elisha basically, "Look, when I get back home, my master, the King of Syria, will expect me to go with him as usual to the house of Rimmon. He's an old man; he leans on my arm; when he bows, I bow. What else can I do? I know it's wrong, but I've still got to do it. And I'm sorry.

Naaman finds his life compromised. He is caught between the vision of a living, loving, and healing God and the reality of his compromised life hemmed in by lifeless and useless idols. You see, when you start to get your thinking about God straight, the old familiar lines of your life get all mixed up and you see them from an entirely different angle. Those who meet the living Jesus and are trying to follow him will run into the same sorts of questions.

But was Naaman a compromiser? Shouldn't he have been ready to say, "to heck with Rimmon, to heck with the king of Syria, I'm going to worship Israel's God and I don't care who knows it!"? Shouldn't he have been like Daniel, opening his window towards Jerusalem to pray to Israel's God even when he was in Babylon?

Well, maybe. But it takes a while to learn to be a Daniel. You've got to start somewhere, and Naaman starts with the most important thing of all: to recognize the truth that you are in a broken and confused situation, to ask forgiveness where you seem to be compromising, and to take it one step at a time from there. Naaman is moving in the right direction. If Daniel had shrunk back and worshipped the king of Babylon, he would have been moving the wrong direction, but more about that in a little bit.