May 16, 2016 Bible Study — So That No Preference Would Be Shown

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 24-26.

    I noticed in this passage that it repeatedly stressed that no preference was shown in assigning the duties to the priests and Levites. We should follow this model in selecting people to accomplish the necessary tasks in the Church. I am not suggesting that we should use lots for the purpose (although that might be a good idea for some of them). The important part is that we do not show preference. Not only was no preference shown, but significant effort was made to ensure that everyone could see that no preference was shown. The selection was process was open so that everyone knew how and why a certain person was selected for a particular task. The passage tells us that no regard was given to age or experience. However, it does point out that all of those selected for the various musical duties were accomplished musicians. Elsewhere it talks about there being many qualified officials among the descendants of Levi and Aaron. This implies to me that while the various tasks were divided up without preference, those tasks were divided up among those who were known to be qualified. I am a firm believer that in the Church we should assign tasks according to whether people are capable of performing them, not based on how well we like the people, or their age and experience. The only criteria should be: are they qualified? In addition, we need to make sure that our procedure for selecting people for jobs in the Church is open so that everyone knows how people were chosen and that favoritism was not shown to one individual over another in the process.