ABUSE OF POWER

By John Stallings


Why did the writers have to put this story in the Bible?


It would have been so easy to leave it out. This is such an evil & appalling episode in a man’s life it could easily have been swept under the rug. Why tell everything?

Some writers & painters throughout history have reconstructed the scenes in this story to make the women a seductress, deliberately displaying her charms in front of the poor hapless man -making him a victim. They would have us believe the man in the story was lured into the relationship.

But the Bible makes it clear. The woman in this story wasn’t responsible for what happened to her. She was simply going through the ritual of taking a bath.

I’ve been sickened at times hearing preachers [few, thankfully] depict this woman preening, styling & profiling & trying to get the man’s eye. That never happened. The Bible says not one word, not one suggestion, nary even a hint that this woman has any agenda of her own nor any part to play- beyond being the object of a powerful man’s lust & greed. Sad to say the woman was “collateral damage.”

Women who live in countries where God is honored & the gospel is preached, should get down on their knees in praise & honor to a Savior that has raised their gender above the level of beasts of burden. One only has to fly mere minutes by jet from the United States to see that multitudes of women in our world are still treated as nothing more than chattel. Where the gospel goes, women are released & elevated.

WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS A ROYAL POWER-TRIP

Of course I speak of King David & Bathsheba. David was anointed king behind Saul’s back, even while Saul was still king. David was brave, strong, clever & handsome. The kind of guy legends are based on. He made Israel a nation to be reckoned with, a secure land in which to live. David was a king anointed by a prophet of God. I thought about it & I can’t think of a man alive today or for that matter- a man I’ve read about in recent history that, considering all his gifts could stand in David’s shadow. However, if David were alive today we might raise our eyebrow at his warlike tendencies & we’d definitely raise them at the story we’re considering now.

Having risen from his siesta one afternoon, David noticed Bathsheba, the wife of one of his most devoted men, Uriah. He called for her & seduced her. On discovering that she was pregnant he made arrangements to get the husband brought home on leave so it would look as if he was the father.

But it didn’t work & David ended up having Uriah murdered, bringing Bathsheba into his harem, as if he didn’t have enough wives already. Power had finally gotten to David’s head. He had come to see himself as someone who could use power to get whatever he wanted. One brave soul, the prophet Nathan dared to criticize him & to his credit David accepted the criticism & repented.

But the consequences of David’s abuse of power were horrific for all concerned. Bathsheba lost not only her husband but also her child & was obliged to marry the killer of her husband & her seducer. All she could do was bow to David’s power, the oppressor & the oppressed inexorably bound together.

In this one act, an act that more than qualifies as a terrible sin plus a hideous crime, David sets himself up as a paradigm of the abuse of power. If there ever was a power grab this was it & Bathsheba fell victim to it. It all happened very quickly. There is nothing I can find in the story that says David is interested in anything more than a one night, or afternoon stand with Bathsheba. No love or affection is mentioned & no lasting relationship is desired. David is done with her until she sends him the message, “I’m pregnant.” That changes everything. This thing isn’t over.

Just a few words about sexual sins; in today’s culture, people seem to think sexual sins are just about like all the others. We even say-in the eyes of God; sexual sin is a sin alright but so is lying & stealing. However, we’d do well not to be so blasé on this subject. Sexual sin has many consequences other sins don’t have, such as feelings of guilt, self-condemnation, anxiety, damaged self-esteem, hypocrisy, emptiness, anger, depression, dishonesty, wasted time, diminished effectiveness, regret, abortion, crime, punishment, disease & death. Sexual sin harms our testimony & our usefulness to God.

But, there’s good news. We have a God who will forgive us of every sin & remove it from us as far as the east is from the west. However, it’s always good to keep the aforementioned things in mind less like David; we are tricked into thinking that our actions won’t have any negative repercussions. As we’ve shown, all sin is sin but sexual sins have a different stigma & the long term effect can certainly be more devastating.

It seems to be difficult if not impossible, outside the grace of God for a human being with power to maintain their integrity. If we look closely at Abuse of Power it takes on the attributes of a plague, a rampant- infectious disease. It takes extraordinary integrity, insight, & strength of character to have power & not abuse it.

People in power somehow have always felt above the law. Social mores & legal codes that the rest of us follow to maintain order in our society don’t apply to them. They assume that respecting others & their rights no longer applies. They feel that to show their power, maintain it & accomplish their agendas they can break all the rules, thinking that the end justifies the means.

Here’s something interesting.

In 2 Samuel 11, we are given the details of David’s sin with Bathsheba. Earlier in this piece when I questioned why the writers of the Bible would include David’s awful sin, maybe you thought, “Stallings, the writers didn’t have any choice. God saw to it that this sin was to be exposed.”

If this was your thought, I would then direct you to 1 Chronicles 20 where the same story is again told but told a little differently. Chronologically this passage of scripture speaks of the exact time in David’s life but the entire disastrous episode with Bathsheba & Uriah is left out. The whole catastrophic story in David’s life & career is glossed over. Thankfully in 2 Samuel 11the story is preserved in detail. In this passage we get a complete picture of David as a human being.

In the interest of full disclosure, it very well might be the writer of first Chronicles felt it best not to commit overkill on the subject of David’s sin with Bathsheba. It’s possible that leaving it out in this passage was saying-we already know that part so why obsess over it? Anyway, the point remains that all this could have been hushed-up but God saw fit to let the world know about it.

Keep in mind this is David we’re talking about. David the anointed one, -whose linage will produce the Messiah. In getting a full & complete picture of David’s life we are allowed the chance to find ourselves in him. We’re allowed to see what it means to fail, what the consequences are & how God relates to us in the midst of our failings, working to redeem us & the damage we’ve done.

Again, women in David’s time were considered property, first of their fathers, & later their husbands. Which may explain why the narrative says nothing about Bathsheba’s reaction to any of this, or why she goes so calmly to David afterward to tell him she’s pregnant, or why after the mourning for her husband is over, following his death in battle, there’s no mention of resistance on her part to becoming a part of David’s harem.

A CLOSER LOOK AT POWER

Have you ever considered how much frustration & anger manifests because we feel powerless in a situation? Power is a dynamic in every relationship. Power exists in national & international relationships as well as on a smaller scale of relationships within our families, our colleagues or employees & our friends. In each of these relationships we are faced with a choice between using that power to serve our own needs & wants & using it to meet the needs of others. We can empower each other or try to overpower each other.

YOU AND I MAY NOT BE COMPLETELY INNOCENT HERE

We’ll get back to David but we may need to do a “mirror check” right about now. We all have power of some sort. Maybe it’s parental power, the power of a caregiver, pastoral power, chairman of a committee or company, a therapist’s power or the power of an attorney or banker. We all have power of some kind & none of us are immune to the temptations to abuse it.

Maybe that’s the reason the Bible writers preserved this horrendous chapter of David’s life. God, ever the great storyteller, must have felt this true story would be a warning to us all.

Fear of losing power is scary to many people because there’s a myth that somehow there isn’t enough power to go around, so you & I both can’t have it. This is crazy on its face. If I have power that doesn’t mean you can’t have it. Like oxygen, there’s enough power to go around. The real issue is how we’ll use that power.

The Bible trumpets & teaches us emphatically that the abuse of power is almost as common as breathing in the human family. In that respect --“all have sinned & come short of the glory of God.”

NABOTH’S VINEYARD

In the book of 1 Kings there’s the story of a little guy named Naboth. It’s not a pleasant story. It’s a story of the abuse of power. King Ahab wants Naboth’s little vineyard because it’s so close to his palace. Ahab’s wife Jezebel schemes to get it for him by having Naboth falsely accused & killed. Once Naboth is dead, Ahab takes possession of the little plot of land but soon Elijah finds out about it & pronounces God’s judgment on him for it.

Naboth refused to sell his land because he got it as a result of an inheritance. As a matter of fact, he tells Ahab, “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” There are many places to “hang our theological hats” in this story.

We have here a henpecked husband & a conniving, manipulative wife. Although Ahab repented, & acknowledged his sin he still didn’t’ escape the consequences of his deeds. Elijah told Jezebel that soon dogs would lick her blood from the street & that indeed was the case in short order. This is just another example of God looking with disdain on the powerful throwing their weight around & it will always culminate in judgment.

SARAH, ABRAHAM AND HAGAR

What can these three teach us about abuse of power? The story is in Genesis 16. Our matriarch feels powerless to bear children so she suggests her husband & Hagar, their servant girl produce a child. Isn’t this the most harebrained idea that ever came down the pike?

This is never going to work. When Hagar has the child Sarah feels she’s been lowered in Hagar’s eyes. After all, Hagar is pregnant with Abraham’s seed. She becomes furious & asked her husband to intercede & old Abe doesn’t use his power right. As a matter of fact he gives his power away to his wife -& Sarah, in her pitiful jealous rage deals harshly with the servant girl.

Now on the Lam, Hagar runs into the desert & she is soon sitting & crying because her son is near death. God intervenes for Hagar & sends an angel to save them. God is the only one in this story who uses His power for good.

IMHO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ABUSES  POWER

Some things about the president haven’t shocked me. I knew he’d never so much as ran a candy store .

However, I’ll have to admit that even I have been shocked by president Obama’s clueless ness about the mood of Americans & what they want. The man who smashed the Clinton machine, almost from the time he walked into the Oval office has been disjointed & alienated from the people who put him there.

The recent"shellacking" handed to president Obama, by giving the Senate to his opponents, IMHO, was such a shock to his system that he immediately confirmed the old saying that  "Denial is more than a river in Egypt."

To me it seems like he doesn’t care that huge chunks of the country have given up on him. When a large percentage of the country are saying they don’t want ObamaCare, nor do they approve of the way He's bypassing Congress in the illegal alien situation , can we categorize Obama’s uncaring attitude to what the country wants as anything other than abuse of power, when he persists in ramming things down the throats of the people-all in the name of, “I don’t give up?”

What do you call it when voters by a large margin have said for months they don’t want his brand of healthcare so he pushes it even harder? I call it abuse of power. People thought he & his Chicago buddies would deliver bipartisanship bur he insists on giving his hard-left allies the keys to the kingdom.

Obama supporters worry about terrorism so he wants to close Gitmo & move the worst of the worst to the homeland. His approval ratings drop like a rock & over 60% say the country is on the wrong track & he responds by giving himself a “good solid B-plus” for his first years. Each & every day new voices in his own party are saying-“he just doesn’t get it.”

The story we’re considering about ancient king David is obviously a story from the distant past. But when you look at some of its salient points & compare them with our current president, it seems shockingly similar, especially as regards abuse of power. To be fair, I must say Obama isn't the first to do this & probably won't be the last.

When something goes wrong, it’s not Obama’s fault. - “greedy” insurance companies, doctors who cut off limbs just for the money, special interests, the media—have all taken their turns being blamed for what he hasn’t fixed. One thing for sure—the buck doesn’t stop at Obama’s desk.

BACK TO DAVID

It seems that being God’s anointed isn’t enough to save David from his own nature. When David hears Bathsheba is pregnant, he must now go into damage-control mode. He sends word to Joab his general & asks him to send Uriah back from the battlefield for consultations with the king.

You have to admit David has come up with a rather simple plan to take care of his problem.


THINGS GET OUT OF CONTROL

Up to now David has been in control of his life, but watch how that control slips away from him. Now everything is basically in the hands of others.

Understand that I don’t take a super-spiritual attitude about sexual temptations. I’ve always been as red-blooded as other normal men & certainly know what temptation is. But I’ve never really understood how a preacher could commit adultery & think he’s going to walk away from it as if it never happened. Doesn’t he know anything about human nature? Better yet, doesn’t he understand women any better than that?

I’ve often said, “If I ever, God forbid, commit adultery, I hope I’d have a better excuse than—“I thought she’d keep the secret, I thought she wouldn’t tell.” What does an individual whose committed adultery do when the phone rings late at night or a mysterious knock comes at their door? There are many warnings given in God’s word about sexual sins, but if that wasn’t the case, if the Bible was silent about it, to me one of the reasons not to do it, other than concerns about your own character, & your love for your spouse, would be-you have to put your life & reputation in another person’s hands, & like David, your life isn’t your own anymore.

Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband came back from battle & David did everything he could to get the boy to go home but noooooo—he wasn’t going home. He turns out to have more integrity than the king. He’s a straight-up kind of guy. Since he couldn’t get Uriah to go home, David’s cover story starts to fall apart. His scheme didn’t work. Isn’t this about as repulsive a story as you’ve ever heard?

DAVID’S FINAL, UGLY ACT OF POWER ABUSE

David orders Uriah into one of the sharpest areas of battle & gets him killed. David has solved his problem or so he thinks. At last he can breathe freely again. His neck is out of the noose. Or is it? God is still going to face him with his sin by sending Nathan. The sword will never depart from David’s house.

So the last word hasn’t been spoken yet in David’s tangled web. David feels a relief but a relief that won’t last.

That human beings will abuse power seems to be a given. A fact of life. Let’s be honest... David’s actions were appalling but hardly stand out from what the leaders of our day do routinely.

Though we pray we’ll never do anything on the scale of what David did, we can find ourselves in this story; coveting what isn’t rightly ours; forgetting who we are & whose we are, hurting or stepping on others to get what we want; taking great measures to cover up what we’ve done; using others who seem nameless & inconsequential like Bathsheba for our own gain.

How we or anyone uses their power is a choice we make. The choice can only be truly made by staying in touch with the real power through prayer & communion with God.

David & his family paid a heavy price for his abusive moment of self-indulgence but God wasn't finished with him just as He isn't finished with us. He's in this project called humanity for the long haul. I think it no accident that hundreds of years after David passed; Matthew began his gospel with a list of ancestors of Jesus. He did something rarely if ever done in Jewish genealogies; he named a number of women among Jesus’ ancestors & one of them is Bathsheba.

Matthew understood that no abuse can ever thwart God’s power to redeem & create new beginnings.

That should give us hope that even the destructive consequences of our own abuses of power may be forgiven & redeemed as well.


Blessings,


John