What probably amounts to Evangelical Heresy.

Among Evangelical Christians, King David is seen as a pillar of the Christian faith, one whose love for the Lord was unparalleled and whose actions were (almost) perfect.  From his anointing as a young boy, to his defeat of Goliath, to his flight from Saul, to his dancing before the ark through to the end of his life, David is perceived to be a penitent man of forward-moving faith for the Lord, who is blessed with an eternal dynasty by God in return.  This tends to lead to theologies that emphasize ‘faith’ as a quantitative factor within blessings from God.

This probably comes from within Evangelical circles through historically faulty readings of the books of Samuel, most notably 2 Samuel, that emphasize a need for Israelite kings (despite Samuel’s warnings in 1 Samuel 8 ) a need for a centralized temple within Israel (despite having a centralized Tabernacle), and a belief in the saving faith of the believer (Sinner’s Prayer anyone?).

What if, persay, the blessing bestowed onto David was not based on the faith of David, but on the faithfulness of the God of Israel?

We hear that David was a man after God’s own heart, and we infer that to mean that David was all about doing God’s work, with the exception of flubbing up with the whole Bathsheba debacle. What is implicit (and sometimes explicit) in the text however, is that David also had people murdered, lied, stole wives, had many wives, horses, silvers, and golds (breaking specific laws for kings in Deuteronomy). Basically the only thing David didn’t do was commit idolatry – good for him. So David was not a nice dude. So what do we do about this whole ‘man after God’s own heart’ stuff?

How about this: ‘man after God’s own heart’ doesn’t have to do with the man following God, but God following the man ‘after his own heart’?

This would mean that no matter what evil stuff David did, God was always with him, through thick and thin, and for his descendents too. David’s faith had nothing to do with his blessing by God.

I think this is an important thing to drive home, because prosperity doctrines and their ilk are running rampant in our churches and, I think, have seeped into our daily prayer lives, subliminally.  God will do what he will, when he will, how he will – you can’t stop him. And God’s will is that none shall perish and creation will be made new. We serve a mighty God, and we have no need to pray, ‘with more faith.” Faith in a loving God is good enough.

WK

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This entry was written by Will, posted on October 25, 2008 at 12:22 am, filed under Christianity, Church and tagged Bible, Christianity, David, Prayer. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.