This week in Come Follow Me we read about David's reign as king of united Israel, and his ultimate fall from grace when he commits adultery with Bathsheba and arranged the murder of her husband. I have always hated the fact that Israel's greatest king and the ancestor of Jesus ended his reign in such an unrighteous way. His whole life David tried to be faithful to the Lord, and then at the end he fell to temptation.
This year as I read the story I kept wondering why the writers of the Old Testament included it at all. Yes, Bathsheba was the mother of Solomon, so she was pretty important in Jewish history. For Christians, Jesus was a descendant of this unholy union. I just wondered why they wanted to air their dirty laundry. They could have said, "David married the widow of his general Uriah who was killed in battle," which would have been entirely factually true, even if incomplete. If they had, we would have all felt better about King David.
Then I began to think of other prominent Biblical leaders who were generally revered, but also have one story where they behaved badly. The list is pretty long. It starts with Adam and Eve. They were pretty righteous except for the forbidden fruit thing. Then there was Noah, who made the awesome ark, but then was found drunken in his tent. Abraham was the originator of the covenant, but kept telling people that his wife was his sister. Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright. Moses was kept from entering the promised land because he smote the rock without giving the credit to God, and there are more.
I began to wonder if Jewish writers actually want their religious leaders to appear to be flawed in some way. These stories were passed down as oral traditions for generations before they were written down in the Tanakh. It's hard to believe, after all the retellings, that some of the "warts" would have been rubbed away by time if they hadn't specifically prevented that from happening. But why?
I don't know the answer for sure, but here are a few ideas.
1. Flawed leaders are more relatable. By making their founding patriarchs flawed it shows all the people that they can hope, even in their flaws. You can imagine a elderly Rabi saying, "What you did was not so bad. Look at David, our greatest king. Even he had problems."
2. They believe that there is wisdom to be gained by wrestling with the messiness. If in the stories everything is black and white, with some good people and some evil people, then our understanding of life is superficial. Real life is not like that. There is much that is grey and there is good and evil in everyone. Avoiding that truth is not helpful. It is only by wrestling with the way things are that someone gains insight and wisdom.
3. There is one more idea that isn't as obvious as 1 and 2, but I think there might be something to it. When my husband's parents traveled in the middle east they visited a carpet weaver. They learned from the artisan that whenever they made a carpet, they intentionally introduced a flaw into the pattern. They did this out of respect for God. Only God is perfect and nothing man-made should aspire to be perfect like God. Maybe something like that is going on here. Maybe there is an idea that it would be an affront to a perfect God for the Jews to portray their leaders as perfect. Not only is it not true (for no one is perfect) but it would be blasphemous. Remember when a follower of Jesus said, "Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" and Jesus responded, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God." (Matt 10: 17-18) Even Jesus, who was the only perfect person, did not want to be called "good" out of respect for God. So maybe the writers of the Old Testament purposefully and carefully included at least one story about their revered leaders that showed their imperfections as a way to highlight the perfection of God.
In the Western culture we are raised on fairy tales. In most of them there are clear heroes and villains. In modern times we have stories of superheroes and supervillains. Even when they have complicated personalities and backstories (think Batman) it is always clear who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. Not so in the Old Testament and that makes Western readers uncomfortable. Sometimes we just have to sit in the discomfort and try to see if there is any wisdom to be found there.
No comments:
Post a Comment