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Tonight as I headed home on ye public transit, I read through a portion of the book of Joshua. I was struck by the story of Achen, not because I hadn’t heard it before but because I hadn’t thought of it in terms of Federal Headship until now.

Federal Headship (to give a brief definition) is the idea that there are certain people appointed as representatives for others. Thus, the House of Representatives in the US Government as well as the US Senate are all modern political units that derrive from this idea of Federal Headship. In Scripture, the idea is mostly used in connection with Original Sin as we describe why it is that all of mankind was held responsible when Adam fell (and thus we are all born depraved). However, it’s also used by Paul in Romans 5 to demonstrate that our Federal Headship transfers to Christ when we become Christians.

In any case, knowing this structure, when I read the story of Achen I realized that this story also shows Federal Headship. Basically, what happens is that Israel attacked Jericho and God ordered them to destroy everything. Achen stole some of the items that were to be destroyed, and as a result the Israelites lost the next battle at Ai. Joshua then used lots to determine that it was Achen who had caused the problem. With that in mind, here are the key verses regarding the Federal Headship notion.

And he who is taken with the devoted things shall be burned with fire, he and all he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he has done an outrageous thing in Israel. (Joshua 7:15). This is the command of God as to what to do with the one who had taken the devoted things (that is, the items God wanted destroyed). The sentence included not only the one who caused the problem, but also “all he has.”

This is then carried out in the following passage:

And Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver and the cloak and the bar of gold, and his sons and daughters and his oxen and donkeys and sheep and his tent and all that he had. And they brought them up to the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said, “Why did you bring trouble on us? The LORD brings trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him with stones. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones. (Joshua 7:24-25).

For the person who does not believe in Federal Headship, this is a very troubling passage. Indeed, I must confess that at first glance even I find this passage somewhat discomforting. Why was it that God commanded the death not only of Achen, but also his sons and daughters and all his livestock?

There is only one possible answer, and that is the idea of Federal Headship. When Achen sinned, he was not acting alone. He was acting as the representative of his family, and thus his entire family was condemned along with him.

But why would God do that? This is the question that troubles most non-Calvinists (who tend not to believe in Federal Headship). But in reality, this is no different from what God did in the Garden after He cursed Adam (and all his descendants after him). In fact, it illustrates how sins can be imputed to those who are not actually involved in the act itself. This is, in other words, a pre-cursor to the death of Christ. It is a picture (or a type) of the mechanism of how our sins are reckoned unto Christ and His righteousness unto us.

Any other interpretation of this passage must, in my opinion, lead to the idea that God capriciuosly and maliciously decided to act out vengance on innocent people. Only if they were legally declared unrighteous could God have commanded their death specifically for the sin of Achen with impunity. Naturally, God could have condemned them for their own sins without anyone raising a fuss; but the passage is clear that Achen’s sons and daughters were killed due to Achen’s sin. How is that possible with a just and righteous God? The only answer is if Federal Headship is valid.

If there is one thing that depression teaches, it is reliance on prayer. Prayer support is important in any case, but it is even more vitally so when a wave of depression swamps over your head.

One of the problems I have when I have depression is that my thoughts fire too rapidly. This makes it extremely difficult to focus, and as a result it makes prayer disjointed too. Thankfully, I have found a way to get through this.

The trick is to pray out loud or to write prayers out. Doing both of those forces your mind to concentrate enough that you can stay focused, at least for me. And I think I’ve figured out why it works that way.

When I think normally, it’s in complete sentences. Most of the time, I think through what I’m going to say before I say it out loud, or I see something and think, “Wow, that’s cool” or perhaps I taste something and say, “Ooh, I wish I didn’t have to swallow this.” Each of those sentences has a beginning and an end to the sentence.

Let’s take a simple sentence: “I saw the ball.” If someone is playing this out loud for you on a tape recorder and they pause in the middle, you don’t know what the ending is. “I saw the….” Saw the what? We don’t know. But the information is already on the tape. All we’d have to do is get to it.

The sentence is intended to be understood as a whole. That is, no one intends for only the first half of a sentence to be spoken and the rest left unsaid. So the choosing of the first words in the sentence is intentional. The first words are leading you to the last words. Because of that, it is sometimes possible to guess the end of someone’s sentence before they speak it, due to the context of the situation.

When we think, it’s similar to that. Our thoughts are not intended to be incomplete sentence fragments. When we think, “I see the ball” we start with the subject and proceed to the predicate, like in normal English. But here’s the thing. In order for the first part of the sentence to make sense, we have to know what the ending of the sentence is going to be before we actually think to the end of the sentence.

What this means is that your entire thought is known before you express that thought in words. You must already know the subject and the predicate before you even begin the thought. This knowledge isn’t expressible by us until it is translated into language, but it is nonetheless still existant.

And because of that, when your mind is really firing on all cylinders (or at least for me this is what happens), then I actually do not think in complete sentences but only in the first portion of each sentence. So if I’m thinking, “I hope I get to sleep soon” I might consciously only think “I hope I” and then change to the next subject, while leaving the implied “get to sleep soon” unstated mentally, because I already know it in order to begin the sentence.

I think it might actually be possible to think so quickly that your thoughts are never translated into words but you still know what you’re thinking. The only drawback to all this is that it means there is no conscious “filter” that is forcing your thoughts onto one specific point, and because there’s no filter it means that you will be unfocused. So if you try to pray in this manner, you might begin like this: “Lord, I pray that tonight you man I wish that this wasn’t what would happen I can’t believe that stupid call” and suddenly you’re thinking about last night’s hockey game instead of praying.

If instead of that, you force yourself to speak the prayer out loud (or write it down) then your mind is “required” to finish the sentence. You are speaking it out, and you need for your spoken language to make sense too. Thus, your thinking “slows” and you transform it into English with the ability to focus clearly on what you’re praying about.

Perhaps it may be that I am the only person who thinks in this manner, but I would find that unlikely (perhaps you just never realized you think that way because no one pointed it out to you).