Let us review some of the exploits of Samson:

• In the vineyards of Timnah, he "tore a lion assunder and he had nothing in his hand" (Judges 14:5-6).
• He went down to Ashkelon and killed thirty men because they had learned the answer to a riddle from his wife (14:10-19).
• He caught three hundred foxes, knotted lighted firebrands in their tails, and set them loose in the grain fields of the Philistines (15:1-5).
• He was bound by the Philistines with two new ropes, but the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and released him. He then found "a fresh jawbone of an ass" and slew a thousand men (15:9-17).
• He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for a period of twenty years (15:20).
• At midnight, he carried the doors of the Gaza City gates, two door posts, bars and all, to "the top of the hill that is before Hebron" (16:1-3).
• He was bound with seven fresh bowstrings but snapped them from his body as if they were paper (16:8-9).
• He grasped the two middle pillars which supported the temple of Dagon, and removed them, causing the temple to fall, killing more than three thousand persons (16:29-30).

To Samson, life was apparently one fun-filled, irresponsible frolic after another and, in a word, he tragically "wasted" himself. Delilah, the Philistines, his blindness, and his final feat of strength at the temple of Dagon were all actually footnotes to the larger theme of Samson’s life; he forgot God and wasted himself.

There is suggestive evidence that Samson did not have the monopoly on frivolity and unfulfilled potential: 1. twenty-three million Americans, or one in five adults, lack reading skills and writing abilities to handle minimal demands of daily living; 2. an eighteen-year-old New Yorker named Ben dreads using the subway because he cannot read the names of stations; 3. a top eastern law firm has hired a professional writing instructor to work with newly graduated lawyers because many of them cannot write; 4. two-thirds of our colleges and universities find it necessary to provide remedial reading; 5. in a certain high school English class, eighty-eight percent of the students could not name the four Gospels. One boy said that three of them are named Christianity, Hinduism, and Confusion, but he did not know the name of the other one; 6. at the University of Denver, a student was asked on a test, "Tell what you know about Moses." He answered frankly, "All I know about Moses is that he is dead."

Samson did not have a monopoly on unfulfilled potential and the "wasted" life.