A Pilgrim’s Digression

I rise at 4:30 in the morning to get ready for work; typically, I read a chapter from my Bible before leaving the house to go to the bus stop.

This morning, I read 1st Samuel chapter 8. The Israelites ask the prophet, or seer, Samuel for a king to rule over them “such as all the other nations have.” Samuel is displeased. The Israelites are not supposed to be like “all the other nations.” Up until now, Jehovah alone has been their king.

So Samuel prays to God, and God tells him to give them what they want, but warn them about the consequences.

10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

The Israelites refuse to listen to Samuel, saying “No! We want a king to rule over us.” Samuel gives them Saul, “a man without equal,” who eventually becomes mad with power and paranoia and leads Israel into a dark time.

As an instructive story, this tale has several morals. The moral of the story is “be careful what you wish for because you may just get it.” The moral of the story is also that as Christians we should not desire to be like everyone else, but should stand apart. Maybe there is even a warning here for those of a religious temperament not to become too involved with politics. There also seems to be some lesson here about erecting human institutions that either on purpose or unintentionally replace God as our King.

Medieval folk, not heeding this lesson, believed that the human King was God’s representative on Earth and was due unswerving obedience. The Great Chain of Being that stretched from the lowest creature to God included a link in the chain for the Monarch, who stood next only to God.

However, the story of Saul is not only a warning against monarchy, which would be of no relevance to modern Americans, but it is also a warning about the tendency of all governments towards corruption. Note that Samuel’s choice of Saul is almost democratic in nature. In modern parlance, he is responding to “the will of the people.” Thus every bit as much as dictators, leaders in supposedly “free” countries convince our sons and daughters to fight their wars; leaders in Democratic societies tax us to support themselves, their acolytes, and the limitless bureaucracy that thrives like a pod of leaches on the skin of a nation; in short, our leaders enslave us to their selfish causes, and like the Israelites we still say “We want a king to rule over us!” Why? Why? I ask this question every time I read another sad story about the death or maiming of a soldier.

Yesterday, I read that the President now justifies the war in Iraq by saying that the “mission” in Iraq must go forward to honor the sacrifice of those who have given their lives for it, i.e. Americans must continue dying so that those who have alread died did not die in vain (boy, the Vietnam parallels just keep mounting, don’t they?). Why? Why must death follow upon death in such a vicious circle?

I think we want a king because we are afraid of the alternative, which is freedom. Freedom means living in a state of persistant insecurity regarding our mortality. Freedom means living with the fact that we cannot prevent our own death, whether by an act of terrorism or by an ordinary crime or by natural causes. For some reason, this insecurity is unbearable for some people. I understand why it is unbearable for politicians—another terrorist attack will end careers, thus ending the gravy train.

But why is the possibility of dying so unbearable for common people? I live in a city where it’s not only possible that I’ll experience a terrorist attack, but (so I am told again and again by our leaders) I live in a city where another attack is extremely likely. Even barring a terrorist attack, I live in a region of high crime. I drive my car. I don’t exercise enough. Death is literally at my door from the moment I rise in the morning, and considering that a large number of people die in their sleep, maybe I don’t even have to get out of bed in order to face death.

And yet people cannot face death. Thus they cannot face freedom. Give us a king to rule over us so we do not have to consider the arbitrary, all-too-fleeting nature of our lives. A king will help us beat back death. A king will give us a tangible enemy, a physical representation of death, whom we can fight and slay. We’ve taken Donne’s poem “Death, be not proud” and turned it on its head. We put our hope for an end to death not in Jesus Christ, but in a politician who promises eternal war against the forces of Death.

Therefore fighting death, we die; and the King tells us more deaths are required to stop death. When we’ve finally had enough and cry out for relief, will the Lord answer?