Passing On The Baton

Passing On The Baton

The Bible is not a well-behaved book. It's a relay race, and it is absolutely not the story of clean handoffs. Every baton in scripture gets passed by someone flawed, to someone flawed, in a moment usually soaked in resentment, jealousy, or outright murder. If you were hoping for a smooth transfer of power anywhere in here, you picked the wrong book.

It starts badly and never really recovers. Cain didn't get passed the baton, so he killed the brother who did. Noah got handed an entire fresh start because the previous generation wasn't worth keeping around. Abraham ran his leg mostly blind, then got asked to sacrifice the only heir he had — which is either the strangest request in scripture or the first hint that God was always going to do the same thing to his own son later.

Jacob stole his brother's baton with a bowl of stew and some world-class manipulation, and God let it stand anyway, then spent decades sanding down his character before letting him run. Which tells you something uncomfortable: God clearly doesn't wait for you to deserve the baton before he hands it to you. He just hands it over and starts working on you mid-race.

Joseph is the cruelest twist in the whole thing. A man who got mercy as the overlooked younger son grew up, forgot the lesson completely, and nearly fumbled the blessing when it was his turn to bless a younger son of his own. Getting the baton humbly does not automatically teach you how to hand it off humbly. Apparently that's a separate skill entirely, and a lot of otherwise godly men never learn it.

Moses ran his leg like the Egyptian soldier he still was underneath the burning bush experience — brilliant, furious, allergic to sharing power, and eventually disqualified by his own temper. He hit a rock he was told to talk to. That's the whole story of every leader who runs out the back half of their race on reflexes instead of instruction. Joshua, meanwhile, grew up literally sitting at the door of the tent where Moses met with God — a kid who inherited the presence without inheriting the baggage. Every generation produces at least one Joshua: someone who watched the previous generation's mess closely enough to actually learn from it instead of just repeating it.

Then there's Saul and David, which might be the most honest account of institutional jealousy ever written. Saul didn't lose his throne because he was evil. He lost it because he loved the position more than the purpose, and the second he sensed the anointing shifting toward somebody younger, he spent the rest of his life trying to kill the future instead of blessing it. David, for his part, didn't build his army out of Saul's polished veterans. He built it out of the bedraggled and the disqualified, because apparently that's who God likes running with. Jonathan saw exactly which way the wind was blowing and still couldn't fully let go of the old thing to run with the new one. He's in the Bible as a warning, not just a friend.

Compare all that mess to Elijah and Elisha, which is the one handoff in the entire Bible that goes almost embarrassingly well — a whirlwind, a double portion, no funeral, no power struggle. It's such a relief to read that you almost forget it's the exception, not the rule.

Here's the part nobody wants printed on a church bulletin: the baton has never once been intercepted by an outside enemy. Every single fumble in this book was an inside job. Cain killed his own brother. Saul turned on his own son-in-law. Joseph almost blessed the wrong grandson. The dragon in Revelation didn't have to do much work — generation after generation was already perfectly capable of sabotaging its own succession without any help.

Which should terrify anyone currently holding a baton, and comfort everyone waiting for one. The requirement was never a spotless record. It was a willingness to run your leg, then actually let go.

Malcolm du Plessis

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