The Gileadites had defeated the Ephraimites....and the latter then tried to escape across the river. The former....the Gileadites....devised a way to tell if anyone crossing the river was an Ephraimite trying to escape. The dialects were a little different....and the Gileadites demanded that the person crossing the river pronounce the word....shibboleth....for the Ephraimites could not pronounce the H...so it came out....siboleth. The Gileadites would then slay the identified enemy.
I remember watching a World War II film....oh sixty years ago at least....(even though I may not remember where I laid my keys down.) It was in the Pacific. The American guard demanded that the person approaching his guard post tell him who was the greatest home run hitter in Baseball. If the approaching soldier did not know Babe Ruth....then he could not possibly be an American.
There are so many shibboleths like this in history. Today we at times look at a shibboleth as someone who attests to some common belief or phrase....they may just be words....with no real belief behind them.....but words that identify someone that is part of our group. I wonder at times if the phrases....pro-life and pro-choice are just shibboleths....phrases that we have to use to be a part of a greater group? If this were the case then many in the Left do not really care about women's rights...and many on the right do not care about the value of human life. We can see this in the left in that many do not really care at all that women athletes are cheated out of their accomplishments by stronger transgender athletes....and many of us on the right proved the same thing during the pandemic....where we really did not care how many people would die.....for we had a political agenda that had to be bolstered.
The words liberty and freedom can be shibboleths....to identify us on the right....and in this case even the left attempts to use the same words to identify with....although it always comes out sounding absurd! The Christian Nationalists....who are unfortunately increasing within evangelicalsim today....indentify as Christians who are patriots...and this has subsumed the gospel of Jesus Christ....subordinating it to the greater....faith and freedom mantra....no longer law and gospel....nor grace and gratitude....nor...."love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind"....and...."love your neighbor as yourself".....where today if we adhere to the required shibboleths....as we relegate the gospel to a less noticeable place....we are Christians....we are patriots....and God is therefore for us. Oh what a surprise we may have in store for us!
