God Violence
Opening Prayer
Heavenly Father, I need to be able to read these old stories afresh, through eyes more spiritually mature, more able to understand and apply them in my life.
Read 1 SAMUEL 17:28–54
28 When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, “Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”
29 “Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” 30 He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before. 31 What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him.
32 David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”
33 Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”
34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. 40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 42 He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. 43 He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”
45 David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
48 As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. 49 Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.
50 So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.
51 David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword.
When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran. 52 Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath and to the gates of Ekron. Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road to Gath and Ekron. 53 When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they plundered their camp.
54 David took the Philistine’s head and brought it to Jerusalem; he put the Philistine’s weapons in his own tent.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
How has the definition of “hero” differed over time? How has its meaning remained the same?
The imagery of this famous Bible story has been appropriated by artists, musicians, poets and even TV sports commentators. For the author of 1 Samuel, the David and Goliath narrative portrayed David not just as a folk hero but as the man fit to be God’s king. He believes in the one true God, not the nameless god of the Philistines. In contrast to Israel and Saul, he is a man of faith.
David was my boyhood hero, swinging his sling in my Illustrated Children’s Bible and then raising the severed head of Goliath. We sang of him in Sunday School: “Only a boy called David.” He was presented as a life model, like Daniel, Joshua and Gideon; we had to be brave like them. Herein lies a problem for my older Sunday-School- attending generation: I grew up a Christian, but I meet people whose Christian experience ended with Sunday School. They took into adult life only the memories of the God of dramatic Old Testament stories. They think the church believes only in the violence-condoning God of Noah, David, Daniel and the tumbling walls of Jericho, the God of violent events which stuck in young minds better than the deeper understanding of God revealed in Jesus.
Today’s generation is generally biblically illiterate. Sunday Schools, though smaller, still exist. There are children of Christian families and outreach opportunities for Christian education in the community (VBS and SU programs such as SuperKids® and PrimeTime®). The difficult question still remains: how to teach the Bible’s difficult sections to children. In a world of increasing religious violence, some question whether much biblical violence is a suitable subject for children at all. Mature Christians only negotiate with difficulty the God of the Old Testament, seeming to call his people to kill in his name. How can we expect children to deal with it?
Apply
What is your response to the comments made by today’s note writer? What lessons do you think there are for today’s church?
Closing prayer
Loving Father, grant to all those called to children’s ministry the gift of portraying You as You are, the God of love, calling us to peace and promising an end to oppression.
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