Innocence in God’s World
The movie “Life is Beautiful” is a gem. It’s the story of a Italian Jew who tries to save his son from death in a Nazi camp. He re-translates the horrors of the work camp into a game of hide and go seek where the small boy hopes to follow “the rules” in order to win a tank. Here is one of the best scenes of the movie where the father “translates” the rules of the German guard to set his boy up to survive the horror.
The book of Samuel works on many levels to play its part in relating to us the story of God reconciling the world to himself. While the book of Judges explores our religious rebellion the book of Samuel explores our political and personal corruption. David has just been introduced to us as God’s instrument to rescue his project once again, but God is also not quite done using Saul.
We see a picture of young, innocent, believing, juvenile David in chapters 16-19. He’s gifted and blessed but the lines in his developmental mind between good and evil are still bright and clear. He’s about to get a lesson in evil, and how to and not to respond to it that will be vitally important for him to become the king God needs him to be. We are beginning to get a sense of God’s plan for Saul, even if it’s a negative plan.
The Lord’s Affliction of Saul
Contemporary Bible translations try to make the Bible intelligible to its readers, but they also often try to make it theologically safe. I sometimes recommend to people to pick up older translations like the KJV and the AV to read these passages. There are a variety of technical issues that the new editions correct but I like some of the problems that the old versions raise for people, mostly because these are found in the texts themselves.
Part of what troubles us repeatedly about the Saul story is the character of God. We want our God to be more like the God of Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism whose prime directive is to make sure that your stay on earth is happy, comfortable and filled with poignant but not too painful meaning. Yhwh seems to not be down with this program.
Lots of questions arise from the story. Continue reading
