On television’s long running and excellent program, 60 Minutes, for November 24, 2013, a section of about fifteen minutes was devoted to an interview with a fellow sometimes called a geek, sometimes a genius, sometimes hippie-like in his life. Without much publicity he has become a millionaire in meeting the demand for him to speak and interact with professional persons in conferences. He did not have a normal childhood, but it was lived in an accepting and different combination of factors, including the responses of his parents. He is appealing in that he does not follow just the standard order of things, arguing for ways to be creative. The program began with his analogy of difference as demonstrated in the experience of David and Goliath. Everyone on site would use a sword, which tradition our 60 Minutes’ interviewee did not believe would work, but David did not follow tradition (using a slingshot). Tradition may be challenged.
For some reason the drama of the unprotected David (full grown physically, but rejecting Saul’s armor) going out with a slingshot against a hulking giant, an undefeated man of wars dressed in fully protective regalia – the stuff of heroic stories. As long as they lived the hundreds of soldiers who saw the event told it, perhaps with truth embellished, to their grandchildren. We even keep the story alive. It appeals to us, but I have never heard in secular public print or sound media the whole story about solutions. One reason we do not is that we have so many factors in any one story that we isolate points in the physical facts to interpret what we want to convey. Using the event as analogy in arguing for thinking outside the box does not represent the meaning of the event or David’s meaning in the death of a national enemy. From here he proceeds, without a slingshot, to military heroism: Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thousands. (I Samuel 29:5) It is likely he owed his military success to the sword – after Goliath’s death.
David’s exploit is not unlike other unusual acts of bravery reported in history, but we would not permit these unusual events, signifying a sense of creativity in the heroic action to become implication (analogy) for meeting problems in the future. The Israelites apparently followed standard procedures in the clash that followed the David/Goliath event. David was likely joined to the soldiers, who continued on with the war and a celebrity soldier. Likely Saul gave David one of his swords. David’s brothers may not have sulked with a kid brother celebrity. Benaiah is reported as having done many heroic acts, even slaying a lion in a pit on a snowy day. (I Chronicles 11:22-25) Apparently his most significant heroic act was to wrestle a spear from a giant, and slaying him with his own spear. All this seems to out-David David, but Benaiah rates only four verses. He ends a leader but not with highest rank. He may have rated a medal.
We may forget that every generation is given some persons specially gifted for this or that purpose. They need to be sought, supported and assisted to serve their generation, and that related to a better future for some life context. Joseph in Egypt, Moses in Egypt and the Wilderness, David in leadership to form a state; Esther to bear the burden of guidance in a pagan environment; Daniel to serve God in serving a pagan king; Jesus and the Apostles given of God for the spiritual welfare of nations; prophets, priests, ministers, and others, pagan or Christian who served purposes in the economy of God. We are greatly aided by the specialists of God and man, but life does not run on those rails. They gain attention, speed up or slow down movements, create new directions to be made into the traditions of general society, but we do well to prepare ourselves to meet the massive context of everyday lives in a manner we have become used to, needing refinement and cooperation as we go along. We rightly admire the work of the genius, but genius will not save us. We work out our daily lives in planning, in holding objective values that serve not only God but the creation of God – so are credited by God as serving him. That service is to be normal for all persons, but has greatest benefit if in context with him. There is redemptive meaning to it, only if God accepts it as such. We are, in due course, doing the true, beautiful, and needed because that is what we were created to do. The righteous (right) life is to be the everyday norm. Christ validates the pattern. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020