After meandering through Job and Isaiah and whatnot, I landed in I Samuel 17, site of the famous David and Goliath story. I've probably heard that story, or references to it, at least 100 times in my life. I remember images from Sunday school that depicted David's brothers and the army of Israel as sniveling cowards. I remember countless references during upsets by small schools in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
What I don't remember is the new angle to the story that I discovered this morning: The triumph of the natural man over civilization. What? Let me start the explanation with the idea that much of the Bible and the rules contained therein evolved out of practical knowledge. What is keeping kosher but eating healthy, really? We've all been taught that David was some mystical boy who blindly trusted God to help him kill someone who was obviously physically superior and who should have, by all rights, destroyed him. We are taught to trust God no matter how big the challenge is. On the side, we are told about David's shepherding adventures, where he learned to kill things with a slingshot. Let's read that part of the text again:
Then Saul said to David, "You are not able to go against the Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth."
But David said to him Saul, "Your servant was tending his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I went out after him and attacked him, and rescued it from his mouth; and when he rose up against me, I seized him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has taunted the armies of the living God."
(I Samuel 17:33-36)
David was not a mystic. He was an example of the natural man. He had fended for himself in the wilderness for many years, not blinking when he was faced with a lethal animal. He had gained confidence through his experience with the natural world as God made it, and was able to see the giant as just another created thing that he could dispose of the same way.
I spent a little time in nature on my travels across the country. While experiencing the world in its original and godly setting, I could see that most of human history is a series of events demonstrating that civilized man just doesn't get it. All these men of the wars of civilization were camped out against one another, trying to devise a strategy on how best to kill one another. David just walked right into it, as nothing more than a boy, with more knowledge and experience at taking care of business on the natural plain, civilization removed, than the entire army put together. The first thing they wanted to do with him was to drape him in bronze armor. Civilized man thought you had to have the latest and greatest in military technology: armor, helmets, swords, shields, and the like - whether they were the best thing all the time or not. He tried it on and thought it ridiculous. So there went David, skills greater than any warrior with that dinky little leather slingshot and a couple of rocks, and took down a 9.5-footer. The triumph of the natural man, who saw the world as God made it and pragmatically used the best things at his disposal, with a clear head unencumbered by the latest in war fads.
Look at our culture. How much do we really know about how to interact with our world? How often are we restricted in our thinking by the latest ideas of civilized men, rather than basking in the freedom of an unfiltered God speaking to our clear and open minds? How often do we buy the "latest and greatest" crap, only to see it break or be trumped in 6 months by something even newer?
Just try standing outside for a few minutes. Where do you find the peace of God? In the sky, the trees, the birds, the grass...Where do you find that peace interrupted? Most likely, it is through the efforts of civilized man.
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