Projector (Ordinary Time - Day 68)

2 Samuel 12:15-31

We're told in the first part of this passage that God “afflicts the child, causing him to come down with a sickness, and the child dies in seven days.”

I can see the argument right now: “Well, God can do whatever He wants. He's the only one who knows what's just and what's not. It's okay for God to kill babies, but not us humans. Sometimes, God's will can't be understood by our human mind, and we have to accept that whatever He does is right.”

If I'm a literalist, I can comfortably read this passage and say that whatever God's will is is good, even if it looks like killing a baby. Right?

But, I'm not a literalist. I don't believe that God kills anybody. I believe this story is written from a human point of view, and whenever we humans put the pen to the paper, we attribute things we can't explain to a God we don't understand. After all, doesn't it just make sense to create some sort of meaning for the painful things in life? So, the author attributes the child dying to a God who is paying back David for his wrongdoing. In other words, the author is saying that God kills the innocent for the wrongdoing of the guilty.

As a friend of friends who've experienced the heartbreak of losing a child, I just can't come to grips with this sort of thinking. I never heard my friends blame God for the loss of their child. Maybe they did inwardly. Maybe it crossed their minds. Maybe it caused them to look back over their lives and wonder, “What could I possibly have done to deserve this?”

Yet, here we have David, who's just killed a guy for his wife. They have a baby, and the baby doesn't make it. Did David not get the ball rolling himself when it came to creating havoc and pain? Was he not a man whore? Did he not sleep with numerous women? Did he not have a problem playing peeping Tom and going to any length to get what he wanted?

While the child is living, David fasts, weeps, prays, and cries out for God to show mercy on him. No answer. He sleeps on the floor, stays inside, and hopes against hope that the child will live. No answer, at least not the answer he wants.

I'm having trouble seeing David as a “man after God's own heart.” He is a train

wreck. He piles more havoc on top of the present chaos, and decides to conquer the city of Rabbah. The Ammonites and Israelites have been fighting repeatedly, and Joab – David's commanding officer – invites David to take the king's crown. David knows that if he doesn't hurry, the credit won't go to him. So, he takes the king, his crown, and puts the crown on his own head.

Then, he cleans all the Ammonite cities out. He takes the people and forces them into slave labor, using axes, shovels, and picks. Then, we're reminded of a certain story about the ancestors of the Israelites. David sets the people to making bricks.

David is doing to the Ammonites what God rescued the Israelites from – forcing them to make bricks. David is taking his pain, his frustration, his misery, and using it as ammunition for the innocent. He's repeating what he believes his God did to his child – hurting the innocent for the mistakes of the guilty. He's living out his belief that God is full of pent up retaliation, and people are dying for it. People are paying with their lives for his belief system.

One day while I was at work, I was frustrated with one of my coworkers. He's a fifty year old black dude. In my opinion, he seemed very dependent on other people, including myself. The more I heard him talk about how he “deserved” handouts, the more pissed and judgmental I became of him. I kept it all inside, and didn't realize how bad off I really was. I was so engulfed in judgment and stereotypes that I couldn't see any good in him.

This went on for a couple weeks, oblivious to the fact that I was about to explode on him. I painted his as the “typical black person.” I let all those conservative voices talking about how handouts were bad, and how people who relied on handouts were lazy, get into my head and start running the show.

What really was going on was this: I was looking at myself. I think everyone should be taking care of me and looking out for my best intentions. If you're not gonna take care of me, then I'll complain about it and bitch about it until the cows come home or I start thinking differently.

I was using my defects and my flaws to paint a distorted picture of my fellows. And, the result was I did blow up on him. In fact, I said some things that were pretty racist. I told him how he was always looking for handouts, but if he didn't like them he would bitch about them.

Needless to say, I was at my bottom in this particular situation. I knew I was wrong. It was clear as day. As a result of my own defects going unattended, I projected my flaws onto someone else, and made an innocent person pay for my problems.

My point is this: When I am not spiritually right and hard stuff happens, my natural resort is to make the people around me pay for it. I want to blame God. I want to blame the world. I want to blame Satan. I want to blame my upbringing, my childhood, my pastor, my church, and anything can go on this list. As long as I don't have to humble myself and look at how I helped get the ball of misery rolling myself, I can project onto everyone else and make them my scapegoats.

It didn't take me long to realize that I had a completely inaccurate picture of my coworker. I did what I always do when I get resentful and hurt other people – prayed and then worked the tenth step of Alcoholics Anonymous. I confessed what I did to my girlfriend, and had what I needed to make amends with my coworker. The next morning, I apologized for what I told him and asked him if there was anything I could do to make it right. We hugged and the slate was spotless and clean.

We love each other now. We laugh all day and every day. He's really funny and I just couldn't allow myself to see it before. I'm very grateful that when frustration, pain, and resentment come, there is a different solution than what comes naturally. There is a spiritual alternative, and it works!

When I project my problems onto God, I have a God who should be feared. 

But, I believe in a God who is constantly looking for ways to inject restoration into the brokenness of humanity, who is on the lookout for ways to bring joy and peace through messy human beings. If I project my problems onto God and blame God for my distorted creations, God transforms from loving to vengeful, compassionate to wrathful. 

In a nutshell, I believe in a God who doesn't afflict children with deadly diseases. I believe in a God who loves humanity enough to not be a dictator, but at the same time always cares about us. When we want God, we find God; when we don't, we don't.