David, Goliath and the USA

If we overlook the patriotic gore, to use Edmund Wilson’s phrase, the story of David and Goliath has to be one of the worlds most satisfying sagas. Former Dodgers manager Leo Durocher, that great theologian, once said, “Nice guys finish last.” And he was right. But every now and then a baddie or a biggie falls toppled by one of the nice little guys, whom God must love, because he made so many of us. David takes on Goliath—Nader takes on General Motors—Gandhi the British Empire—Luther the Roman Empire—Moses the Egyptians. And, if we go back to pre-history, the analogous biological competition for these historical ones I imagine would be the competition between the tiny soft-furred mammal and the massive armored reptile.

But in our satisfaction, we fail to realize that the Goliaths of this world are really fall guys, that is they fall easily. In fact, they probably defeat themselves more than they are defeated. The Goliaths of this world are those individuals, organizations, and nations that share the same to fixed ideas that characterize the original giant. So convinced are they of the invincibility of their armaments that have won them so many victories they cannot conceive of using other armaments. Secondly, it never occurs to them they might be challenged on terms other than their own. So, the Goliaths never think about the slings. They never even see them until it’s too late. Goliaths don’t say: “I wonder what the kid’s got in that little bag?” So, these smug individuals, these complacent organizations, these proud nation’s stalk pompously forward to their own doom.

Pride does go before the fall. There is rough justice in the world. The empires that lasted the longest where the least unjust. The British and Roman empires held on far longer than did the Assyrians. Hitler lasted all of 13 years. All of which is not to slight David, who may represent another historic truth that some of the greatest things in this world or done by people too stupid to know they can’t be done. Think of all the events in history that are only plausible in retrospect: The State of Israel, the Chinese Revolution, and our beloved Christian Church, itself. I read somewhere that the Goths always went over their battle plans twice: once sober to make sure they were well thought out and again when drunk to make sure they did not lack daring. But, David doesn’t need drink or drugs or for that matter much thought. David has none of the crippling curiosity of the intellectual, which makes him think of himself as a problem instead of feeling himself as a person. David has lots of self-confidence, and of course a very simple certainty that he is about to do battle in the name of the living Lord of hosts.

How he contrasts with Saul, who should have been fighting this battle. For once again, Saul has broken under pressure. Poor Saul struggling with a task that is beyond him and with a destiny above him. He can’t make it as a King in the Kingdom of Israel, and he knows it. Saul is torn apart by unreconciled polarities. He is hopelessly ambivalent. Torn between what his abilities say he can do and what his job says he must do.

Not David. There are no splits in his nature—spirit and flesh—individual mind and collective consciousness all integrated into one clear, clean and decisive person. Without a qualm, he goes out to topple the giant who dares to defy the will of God. A few seconds into the first round and it’s all over. Goliath is down, dead, amid all the bright armor that was his own.

Then comes the more interesting confrontation. After slaying Goliath, David you remember is set over many men of war, and proves himself to be an able commander. One day he and Saul are returning triumphantly together. The women come out to meet them singing, “Saul has slain his thousands, but David is tens of thousands.” Immediately, Saul is racked with envy. It is proof-perfect of his perversity and our perversity. When you stop to think about it, of all the seven deadly sins, as opposed to gluttony and lust, envy has no gratification whatsoever. Yet, which of us has not envied.

We read that on the morrow, while David is playing his lyre, Saul twice seeks to pin him to the wall with his spear. What does David do? This glorious warrior, this yearning nation’s brown-eyed pride, ducks twice and runs away. What’s the matter with him? Why can’t he confront Saul the way he did Goliath? Why can’t he get angry? Whys can’t he say, “What are you doing, you almost killed me?” Or, even if David had the intuition to know that whatever is worthy of censure is also worthy of compassion—anxiety has always been the precondition to sin—why can’t he stretch out the healing hands to the wounded leader? Instead he flees.

Well, how many of us have successfully confronted our parents or bosses, when they have try to nail us to the wall? Maybe David was afraid of Saul’s anger. Something most of us could understand, if only because middle-class Christians seem to have a positive allergy to anger. The so-called “permissiveness of parents” so falsely ascribed to poor Dr. Spock, is only an inhibition of anger. Instead of seeking conflict, as a thunderstorm to clear the air, we generally view it as something negative, to be subdued, not resolved. Actually, in the story, Saul acts out his anger and David represses his. As we know, acting out and repressing are but two sides of the same coin, evasion

Maybe David was afraid of Saul’s love, which was real. That to we could understand. For the root fear in all humans is the fear of love. For love can be a wounding as well as a wonderful experience. Love has arrows and in order that they may fall short we keep our psychic distance. So, in fleeing, David may have been acting out the psychic distance he felt necessary for his protection. In any case, it’s probably safe to say that David is confused and frightened by Saul’s complexity, he been such a stranger to these complexities in himself. Good against Goliath, David was a flop against Saul. For how can he understand in Saul what he had recognized in himself? Actually, young David and Goliath seem much alike. They were both self-sufficient, self-enclosed, and full of the intensity of their own being. Hence, David is unable to expand or grow, because he is totally unaware of his own insufficiency. “In my weakness, is my strength,” said St. Paul.

Far from growing, David seems stuck in the next few years in a fight or flight syndrome. He fights Philistines and he flees Saul, and he feels sorry for himself. After a tragic episode in which Saul seems for a moment again to be his old warrior self—Saul is killed. David becomes king. He settles down to his family, his job, which he does well. He is a capable administrator, a moderate and a true diplomat. But then, the unrecognized and unintended seeds of his dissolution sprout. In his old age, David falls apart. He grows slack in prosperity. He is unable or unwilling to control his appetites. He becomes unfit to govern his household, then his kingdom. The intrigues in his nature and in his kingdom creep out of the shadows in which they had long been confined, and begin to raise havoc. David begins to fall apart because he never really was put together. Because he didn’t evolve and grow, he eroded. What was repressed, eroded what was conscious.

I talk to David today, because I think there is a certain parallel us now. The United States of America was once a young David and is now old. There was something young, vigorous, heroic and biblical about those pilgrims, women and men, who craved no other recreation than that of carving out of an unyielding wilderness towns with the name of Canaan, Dan, Goshen, and Sharon. The same is true of our revolutionary forbearers. But, one can hardly say the same of their descendants, who have grown slack in prosperity, have repressed nations abroad and minorities at home, who plunder hideously and casually the Earth’s landscape, and cannot deal decisively with two grave crises the have crept out of the shadows and the now stand before everyone’s sight in broad daylight—the climate crisis which will soon prove murderous to the poor and the arms race that is both homicidal and suicidal for us.

Yet, the trouble may in part stem from our forbearers. For like young David, there was something about our pilgrim and revolutionary ancestors, spiritually speaking, that had a certain presumptuousness about their own innocence. A certain unearthly arrogance not easily matched in the history of other countries, with the exception of Israel or Rome. Many were guilty of what psychiatrist call and a very nice phrase “premature closure”. They were zealous, all right, but with more zeal than knowledge. There were idealists yes, but they didn’t restrict their idealism to what was ideal. Eager to fulfill themselves, they repress the ambiguities, complexities, and the dark and troublesome side of personal and corporate life.

Because they were repressed, they themselves became repressive. The land of the free and the home of the brave—yes they created such a country—but also a nation founded in the blood of 10 million Indians and developed with the sweat of 40 million slaves. And their descendants have continued to show the intimate relationship between inner repression at outer suppression. Any man who represses his feminine nature will perforce be a male chauvinist. Anyone who represses the darker aspects of their nature, will perforce show more respect for law and order than reverence for life, when it comes to lives of those in Attica or San Quentin and our own penitentiary. And dear fellow Christians, you know as well as I do that the Christian church throughout the land is full of such people. The faithful have always sought the infidel in order to confirm them in their fidelity.

But if today, we Americans are going to mature as a nation, be reconciled as a people and survive in our world, one world or no world, we must see that our God-given task, yes blessed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is not to vindicate ourselves against the Goliaths of the Philistines. Rather, we need to liberate ourselves from the enemies within us that let us make Philistines out of the other human beings. In short, it is time for the United States not to confront Goliath, but to confront Saul, which is to say to confront ourselves. It is time to become, by design, what Saul was by default. We must choose to split open our tightly closed souls to grapple with realities and all our complexities. Faith is not a substitute for thought, it’s a substitute for anxiety. And therefore, we must consider what makes good thinking possible, and especially hard thinking about the things in our personal and corporate life we prefer not to think.

An integrated nation, an integrated world, can only be created by integrated people. Christians recognize that the words whole and holy have the same roots. Christians are spiritual paralytics who have been make whole. Christians are people whose faith in God’s love is so great that if it has liberated them from the fear of their own darkness, so that we are now free to help others to find their rightful places in the sun.

I have always liked the story of the three Wise men, who in order to find the son of God had to avoid the daylight moving only by night. They were wise because they had a cat-like ability to see in the dark. If we are to be the wise people today we must too—be able to see through the darkness of the armament race and the despair of our separations to the new day of wholeness—and holiness as one world to which God has called us.

Strangely I am beginning to prefer Saul to David. True, Saul was a desperate man, but desperation and truth are ofttimes related. You can generally trust the confessions of a desperate person. Our task is to see his truth without his despair. Our task is to see in religious language that the way down is the way up. For, it is in the depths of Hell that Heaven is found and life is sanctified. When we are at our wits end—says the Psalmist—then we are in the place for God can take over and act out his plan for us and for our history.