Caricature
Caricature is not to be confused with character. A person’s character is their general disposition and nature. A caricature is an exaggeration of some part of a person’s features to make them look comical or grotesque. A caricature is usually a misrepresentation of the person. It distorts them in a way that all we can see is the flaw that is being emphasized.
Most people’s mental image of Gideon is a caricature. He is seen as timid, almost to the point of being cowardly, a man who God somehow convinces to go to war against the Midianites. All we remember is his “putting out the fleece” to discern the will of God.
While all of that which gets emphasized is true, there is more to Gideon than that as Judges 6 demonstrates. When we first encounter him, Gideon is doing a night assault on his own family’s idols. Yes, he did this at night because he knew this act could result in his death, but he did it.
The next thing that happens is he becomes a leader “clothed” in the Spirit of the Lord. He is sounding the trumpet and the people of Israel are gathering around him and looking at him as their general. It is then that he begins the process of winnowing the ranks of his army down until he is left with 300 men.
It is true that Gideon struggled with his lowly status and didn’t view himself as someone who could lead as a judge over Israel. It is also true that he was included in the “Hall of Faith” of Hebrews 11. By faith, Gideon conquered, delivered his people from idolatry, and saved them from a foreign enemy.
Turning people into caricatures of themselves is easy. We just have to find their most glaring weakness and make that the most important thing about them. We label them things like “doubting Thomas” and think that means we have them figured out. The truth is people are more complex than that. Within the coward might be flashes of courage. The doubter might turn out to be a man of faith. The one who flees from the battle might just regain their courage and turn back to lead the fight.
We should also not forget that it is often those very things we caricature, those weaknesses that stand out, that we emphasize to critique and criticize that God takes pleasure in emphasizing for a completely different reason. God takes the weak things of this world, the things that are despised, and use them for His glory. He does great things with clay pots so it becomes evident to all that it was God who did it, and the clay pot was just the vessel through whom He worked for His glory.
