The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
June 21, 2009
Vol. 12 no. 24

Everything But...
Father’s Day deserves a good rough and ready story, and how many better ones are there than David and Goliath? This famous tale has been retold and used as a metaphor of the infinitesimally small defeating the infinitely big. We prefer the underdog, except when we are fortunate to be the top dog.

However, listen to the story carefully this time if you can stomach it - it is not a nice Sunday School morality tale. The holy name of God may have been floated around rather liberally, but what happened was just plain brutality and war. No respect for the dead on either side either. To defeat the enemy or be defeated was to be fed to the birds and wild beasts and have your head cut off. The only “genteel” aspect of the story is the simple way David felled the giant Goliath, with a single smooth stone slingshot to the forehead. That didn’t kill Goliath by the way, just knocked him out with a gigantic concussion, only then to have David pull out Goliath’s sword and finish the task. That happens in the verses after the Lectionary reading ends. A little too gory for Sunday School lessons or for worship.

Can violence ever be sacred? Certainly, the Old Testament is full of episodes where it is assumed that prophets, even regular foot soldiers, are killing the enemies of God with God’s blessing. There are more than a few people who believe that righteous violence is the holy way, a holy war, although the Gospel turns a decidedly pacifist cheek towards violence.

Is there a lesson here? When we face ruthless Goliaths today, what shape does our holiness take on and what do we place in our slingshots? We are never really angels and the world is never really perfect, but somehow, like David, we must be holy in the midst of the unholy.