Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done. He expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land and got rid of all the idols his ancestors had made.” — 1 Kings 15:11-12 (NIV)
Asa inherited a kingdom soaked in idolatry. Not the kind that crept in gradually during his watch, but the kind that had been normalized over generations, embedded in the culture, protected by powerful interests, and, most uncomfortably of all, installed by his own grandmother Maakah, who had made a repulsive Asherah pole and held the position of queen mother. This was not a situation Asa created. It was a situation he woke up to. And the first question his leadership had to answer was whether he would challenge what his family had allowed.
He did. He removed the high places. He expelled the shrine prostitutes. He destroyed the idols his ancestors had made. And then he did the most personally costly thing of all: he removed his grandmother Maakah from her position as queen mother because of the idol she had made. In a culture where honour of elders was paramount and the queen mother held enormous social influence, this was an act of extraordinary moral courage. He chose obedience over family loyalty, and righteousness over comfort.
This is the kind of reform that costs something. Not the easy adjustments, the policy tweaks, the cosmetic changes that make a leader look progressive without requiring anything truly difficult. But the confrontation of something that has power, that has history, that has relationships attached to it, and that will not be removed without someone being upset. The leaders who change things are always the ones willing to pay that price. The leaders who maintain the status quo are always the ones who decided the cost was too high.
I think of a manager I know who was brought into a department with a longstanding culture of cutting corners on quality control. It had been that way for years, the previous manager had allowed it, and several senior team members had built their reputations on the efficiencies the shortcuts produced. Within three months of arriving, he had removed the shortcuts, had difficult conversations with the senior team members, and had one person exit the team entirely. The results took a year to show in the numbers, but they showed. He reformed the throne he was given, even when it was uncomfortable.
Asa’s story carries a warning embedded in its commendation. Scripture notes that he removed most of the high places, but not all of them. The people still offered sacrifices and burned incense on the remaining high places. Even the most courageous reform can have residual blind spots: the areas we address partially because full address feels like too much, or because we have convinced ourselves that some things are not worth the conflict. Those partial reforms tend to become the seeds of future problems.
Today, look honestly at your sphere of governance. Is there something that has been normalised in your space that you know should not be there? A culture, a practice, a relationship dynamic, a standard that has been allowed to slide? The courage to confront it is available to you. The question is whether you are willing to pay what reform costs.
Prayer
Father, give me Asa’s courage. The kind that confronts what is wrong even when it is close to home, even when it is inconvenient, even when it costs me relationally. I do not want to preside over a sphere I was too timid to reform. In Jesus’ name, amen.
