An Invitation

This week's Old Testament discussion question and my answer:

As you will see/have seen this week, the Bible's portrayal of David, as well as of other heroes, is exceedingly complex and multilayered. What does the portrayal of David's qualities say about the nature of divine election? Why choose someone like David? What does this say about the God portrayed in 1-2 Samuel?

As several people have noted, it is somewhat ironic when people claim to have figured out what it was about David that made God choose him, since the Scripture itself says the Lord doesn’t look at what man looks at. Since in this instance, the man was Samuel, claiming to understand this is claiming to be wiser than Samuel, or to transcend “what man looks at.” Who among us can claim to have done that? Whatever it is, we can’t see it. So God elects whom He chooses, and He doesn’t choose based on things that we humans look at. And God chose David rather than his brothers, whom, ostensibly, any of us would have chosen had it been up to us.

But David’s flawed nature shows us something else. David shows us what a human instantiation of being “after God’s own heart” means. I do think David’s story shows us, as so many have noted, what God can do rather than what a “good” man can do. We do see what God can do in the messiness of human life.

On the other hand, the story does indicate that it is something about David that makes God choose him. God is seeing something in David. This doesn’t fit the Calvinistic picture of God choosing someone completely independent of their who they are and then turning them into something good. God is responding to some good in David. So it isn’t perfection, it isn’t a specific quality we can see or not see, but it is something about the person, not merely God’s initiative. And afterwards the person is still flawed. This is a conundrum.

I suggest the way out is this: the story is in fact inviting us to make David’s story our story. David’s story gives us resources to see how God is already working in our own flawed lives. This is why the Psalms are still to this day useful as prayers. They are interwoven as part of a story is capable of containing and giving hope to our own wherever we happen to be. Finally we are given the resources to see God working in the lives of others and the corporate life of the people of faith.

When things are going well, David’s story tells us to thank God and to be humble, for it is possible to fall from great heights. When things are going terribly, David’s story tells us to cry out to God and believe we are heard, but to trust that God is forming us because such times happen even to God’s chosen. Perhaps the story of how God chooses David is can lead us to the story of how God chooses each one of us.