Deborah

In the time before Israel had a king (sometime between 1380 and 1050 BC), God brought forth a series of exceptional individuals, referred to as judges, to help steer the Israelites when they began to stray from their faith. One of these judges was Deborah. She was a prophetess and leader of a band of Israelites. She's interesting to me because she managed to bring together several tribes to fight and win against a more advanced Canaanite army.

So here's the situation: The Canaanites army consists of about 900 armoured chariot archers, basically the M1 Abrams of the day. They are led by a man named Sisera.

Meanwhile, the Israelites are a scattering of disparate tribal groups. Deborah managed to bring together enough groups for a 10,000-strong army of light infantry. This may sound like a large number, but they had little armour, and the chariot archers could easily out-maneuver and chew them up. That was probably the Canaanite plan, anyway. Deborah expected this and put together a strategy to counter it.

It went something like this. Her commander, Barak, would have one chunk of the army stationed on a mountaintop to lure out Sisera's force. Deborah's army would come from behind to pinch Sisera in a marshy riverbed, where his chariot archers would be mired.

Barak balked, and insisted that Deborah fight with his soldiers on the mountain. She agreed, but reminded him that in this situation, the victory would belong to her, a woman. No, really! The Bible quotes her saying, "I will go with you. But because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will hand Sisera over to a woman." (Judges 4:9)

The battle played out as predicted, with an added bonus. A thunderstorm, ostensibly sent by God, caused flooding in the river valley, further impeding the Canaanite chariots. Deborah's forces fell upon them and crushed them.

As an aside, Sisera actually managed to escape from this battle. He tried to hide in the tent of a woman named Jael. After feeling safe and dozing off, Jael proceeded to drive a tent stake into his head with a hammer. That was probably for the best. Imagine what his life would be like if everyone found out he was defeated by a girl!

With the opposing army and its leader dead, Deborah led the Israelites to overthrow the Canaanite king. The peace afterwards lasted for about another forty years, before the Israelites again did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

Sources:
The Bible (New International Version)
"4000 Years of Uppity Women" - Vicki León
"Battles of the Bible" - Chaim Herzog, Mordechai Gichon

Luther's Christianity

Around the time of the Renaissance, the Catholic Church believed that a man was saved based on how he acts while alive. Salvation is a justified reward for earthly actions that were considered good.

Martin Luther came to feel that this was the wrong way of seeing things. It was selfish. He thought it was wrong for a person to behave properly for the sole purpose of securing a place in Heaven. To put it in the author’s words, "it is God who saves us, not we who save ourselves."

Luther felt that it should be the other way around. God had already granted us salvation. As long as people have faith in this salvation, they'll be okay. Luther believed that if people truly believed in this salvation, they would willingly live a morally good life. They would accept this gracious gift from God, and try to do right by God purely out of goodwill. It is in the true believer's nature.

As one can imagine, this kind of thinking would raise serious eyebrows when it came to church indulgences. If a person was already saved, why would he need to pay the church more money to be more saved?

(Full disclaimer: The Reformation is a very deep subject. This was just one thing that stuck with me and marked a key theological difference between the Catholic Church and Martin Luther's worldview.)

Sources:
"The Reformation" - Patrick Collinson