It's a little bit like I'm reading Beowulf or Tolkien when I come to the passage about David's Mighty Men, the Chiefs and the revered and mysterious Three. Their military exploits and prowess at killing is recorded with simple honesty. In some ways it's a disturbing mix of machismo, medieval lore and Marvel comic book. We'd like to overlay our modern sensibilities to biblical times. But you really can't. It was a different time and, in many ways, God winks more at our ignorance, insensitivity and violence today than He did in David's day. It's just nowadays when He winks we call it grace.
It's hard for me to reconcile the David of Psalms with David the conqueror of the Moabites, whom he measured out with a length of chord to determine who would live and who would die. What are we suppose to take from that? It seems so random and such a disregard for life. And we prize life so highly, don't we?
Well, at least, we prize our lives.
I speak in general, but wouldn't we kill someone to live unencumbered and free? Kill so we can be free of responsibility, even write laws so that we avoid guilt. But some guilt even the law can't absolve us of. You say, "No, we wouldn't kill so indiscriminately." This is a country the imprisons Michael Vick for killing dogs (and well we should) but frees a woman wife who shot her minister husband in the back and killed him. A country that mourns the loss of every American soldier that dies in Iraq and keeps a public record of that number in the newspapers (and well we should) but I'm still looking for the place we keep a running tally of the unborn who die each day.
Sorry, if you know me, you know why that's an issue for me. Lord knows.
My post last year on this date.
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