There She Goes Again: Andree and Me

A Woman and Her Bible: 

Part Deux or Part Trois?

Dare To Be a David?

I have on two previous occasions addressed Faith and Inspiration  columns written by Andree Seu Peterson for World magazine. 

I disagreed when she asserted that Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 Steps are shamelessly cribbed from Scripture. We often hear this kind of thing in Christian circles, and some evangelicals have tried to appropriate the 12 Steps to help those who engage in addictive behaviors. But the 12 Steps do not come from the Bible, and in my view they cannot be Christianized by casting them with Christian words supported by a Biblical “proof texts.” 

I disagreed with her also when she explained her approach to Biblical interpretation which makes the individual conscience supreme. No doubt this is the majority approach to Scripture by evangelicals. What can be said for it is that it does recognize the authority of the Bible, but it is also representative of American Protestant individualism and anti-authority-ism. It’s “just me, and my Bible, and the Holy Spirit.”

Before I go any further, let me say two things: On the one hand, I am not a big fan of Mrs. Peterson’s “over a nice cup of tea my mother and I talked meaningfully and had a good cry” style of writing. On the other hand, as a gatherer of materials for an online magazine, I read most of her columns and from time to time recommend them to the editors for republication.  

I find myself again disagreeing with one of Mrs. Peterson’s columns, Don’t Waste Your Sufferings. I have no disagreement with the exhortation the title gives. However, I do disagree with some of the substance of her piece.

For one thing she takes a shot at the redemptive-historical approach to interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures.

Some people chide that we must not mine the Old Testament for role models, but not God. It is His big idea:

“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). 

“As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord” (James 5:10).

“… Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7).

It is worth noting that the Hebrews 13 text  to which Mrs. Peterson refers does not point us to Old Testament examples of faith but to contemporary church leaders (compare 13:7 with 13:17) some of whom may have died.  But we do not disagree that there is an exemplary use that can be made of the lives of Old Testament men and women of faith. What we disagree with is the rather cavalier dismissal of the warnings that practitioners of the redemptive-historical approach give regarding the exemplary use of Old Testament biography.

I learned primarily from Dr. O. Palmer Robertson the approach that I believe enabled me to keep my eye on the ball when interpreting the Old Testament. It’s primary principles are: (1) God’s revelation is progressive, an ever more unfolding of himself in a succession of covenants that build upon one another. (2) God is not only progressively revealing himself in the Old Testament but is also progressively unfolding his plan of redemption that was conceived in eternity, announced after the fall, and worked out in the course of history. (3) The climax of revelation and of redemption is Jesus Christ, the Son made flesh to make God fully known and to accomplish finally the plan of redemption. (4) The Old Testament must always be understood in light of the finality of the  revelation given in Christ and the completion of revelation given through the Apostles in New Testament. (5) The Old Testament characters to whom God gave his revelation and through whom he accomplished his redemption must be understood in relation to Christ, and the Old Testament form of the people of God, the nation of Israel, to which he entrusted his revelation and for which he worked his redemption, must be understood in relation to the New Testament form of the people of God, the Church.

This approach does not rule out a cautious and conservative exemplary use of Old Testament biography. The New Testament writers do this in numerous places (eg. Romans 4: 16-21; 1 Corinthians 10: 1-13; Hebrews 11). But it does keep us from getting distracted away from God’s purpose in history and most importantly from Christ who is the focus of it all. It helps to guard us from speculative use of the Old Testament characters.  And, it keeps us from the kind of moralism which ends up as “don’t be bad and do bad (like Saul) but be good and do good (like David)” which is contrary to grace, faith, redemption, and Christ.

Let’s look at the particular exemplary use of the Old Testament that Mrs. Peterson chooses to make her point:

I have chosen  one vignette to convey how David’s example of suffering in a godly way inspires me upon every remembrance of it, and especially when I am also in a dark place: It happened during the days when David was young and constantly on the run from a jealous King Saul. Having few options, he ran to Philistia and pretended to align himself with them, while actually making secret military forays with his band of loyal fighting men against random Israelite enemies. On a single day, tragedy befell him: The Philistines suddenly turned mistrustful of him, and a surprise attack on his camp by the Amalekites bereft him and his men of all their wives and children. There was talk of stoning him.

I cannot think of a lower point in David’s life up to this time. Rejection was total. He was not welcome in Israel, he was not welcome in Philistia, and his closest friends had had it with him. It is not even clear to me whether this trial was a case of no-fault suffering or at-fault suffering, or whether David was filled with self-recrimination and felt he had made big mistakes in judgment by coming to Philistia in the first place. He sat alone in a scorched field from which his family and goods had been carried away, and if you can top that scene in your own life for sheer misery and helplessness, you are truly a person acquainted with grief.

In our age of weakened manhood, this would be an occasion when many would check out of trusting God for a while, and give themselves permission to sink into abject self-pity, doubt, and anger at God until it passed. But David was an uncommon man. All he had was God, and he could see that this demonic all-out attack on him was far bigger than he was, and that only God could get him out. Furthermore, he believed that He would. And so we are told:

“… But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God” (1 Samuel 30:6).

 This brief summary is as far as we are admitted into that private communion between David and God, and what words passed between them. But I feel quite certain that if you read the Psalms you will get a Tvery good idea of what transpired. It suffices to know that out of that intense and muscular seeking of David emerged new energies and strategy and hope from God to turn around his fortunes.

In our age of weakened manhood, this would be an occasion when many would check out of trusting God for a while, and give themselves permission to sink into abject self-pity, doubt, and anger at God until it passed. But David was an uncommon man. It suffices to know that out of that intense and muscular seeking of David emerged new energies and strategy and hope from God to turn around his fortunes.Let us not waste our sufferings. It has been said that one is always either already in a suffering, coming out of a suffering, or entering into a suffering. If in good times only we speak pious words about God, what is the worth of our faith?

There are several things to note:

(1) Mrs. Peterson does not know what to do with the whole of this part of David’s biography. Was he right or wrong to have left the kingdom of God to look for safety? Was he right or wrong to have sheltered himself among the Lord’s enemies? Was he right or wrong to have deceived the Philistines? Did he bring the suffering upon himself or did others visit the suffering upon him? Similar questions can be asked about David’s earlier decision to seek asylum among the Philistines that led to his saving his neck by pretending to belong in an asylum. Or, what about Abraham’s decision in light of providential circumstances to leave the Land of Promise to find food in Egypt? Was this a wise decision to provide for his household or was it a failure to trust God to provide in the place to which God called him? The point is that no one can know. It requires bringing to bear on the text principles of conduct we believe we find in other texts and then speculating about how to apply them to the particular case at hand. The question one must ask when interpreting a biographical incident or an historical event is, “What are the controls? What keeps me from saying that? What permits me to say this?”

(2) We surely believe that there is an example in David’s strengthening himself in the LORD, his God. But what are we to make of the use Mrs. Peterson makes of this?

In our age of weakened manhood, this would be an occasion when many would check out of trusting God for a while, and give themselves permission to sink into abject self-pity, doubt, and anger at God until it passed. But David was an uncommon man.

Was he? Well, yes and no.

Think about the earlier situation when David had gone to live among the Philistines because of Saul’s threats (1 Samuel 21: 10 - 15). When the King Achish’s men warned him about David, “David was much afraid...So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.” Not David’s (or anyone’s) finest hour. 

But, if we can rely in the inscriptions to the Psalms, two of them (34, 56) came out of this experience. In both Psalms it is God who delivers David from danger, and in both David emphasizes that he (though with a racing heart and trembling hand) trusted in the Lord. He points to God’s faithfulness (which is constant) and to his faith (which was not). Would you write a Psalm about how you were trusting in God while you were scared to death you were going to die when you had the heart attack? Or, when you fell apart and wept uncontrollably when you lost that person you love?

David could write of his life as he did in such Psalms, not because he was an uncommon man, but because God is an uncommon God who will not desert to his foes that soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose. There is so much that is common, even sordid and sorry, about David - e.g. his adultery with Bathsheba, the whole of his dealings with Absalom, his census taking. At the same time there is much to admire. He could rise to great heights. Which is to say, David was an ordinary man who happened to be chosen by God to play an extraordinary role in the history of God’s extraordinary salvation. A big part of the role that David plays is not to point us to himself as a man of triumphant faith and consistent holiness but to point us to the need for Someone truly extraordinary, who would occupy David’s office but be so unlike David, -great David’s greater Son. 

David and every other Old Testament saint (or New Testament saint or any other believer) will disappoint you. But not Jesus, the Christ.

(3) Mrs. Peterson tells us that we are not privy to what transpired between David and the Lord when he strengthened himself in his God, but she feels we can find out if we read the Psalms.

This brief summary is as far as we are admitted into that private communion between David and God, and what words passed between them. But I feel quite certain that if you read the Psalms you will get a very good idea of what transpired.

We do not wish to pick nits, but which Psalms are we to consult? Which ones will enlighten us as to what transpired between David and the Lord at his point in his life? At least with regard to the earlier incident among the Philistines we have the ancient inscriptions to guide us. But not with this incident. There are many places in David’s Psalms where he speaks about his trust in the Lord, including the two we cite above. There are Psalms that give us insight into the dealings between his soul and God in specific situations, most notably Psalms 51 and 32 (to put them in their probable chronological order) both dealing with the aftermath of his sin with Bathsheba. But, to tell us that, if we go to the Psalms, we can can learn what happened within David when he “strengthened himself in the LORD” does not lead us to such a discovery.

Finally, it is necessary to point out that any exemplary use of Old Testament biography cannot be indiscriminate. Of necessity it must be selective.

Do you learn from Abraham and Sarah that, if a couple seem unable to conceive, the wife may recommend a surrogate to the husband? Do you learn from David and Abigail that, if a fool dies and leaves behind a wife, you might be justified in taking her as an additional wife? Do you learn from Samson to be careful about loose women? Do widows learn about how to court eligible men from Ruth?

Or what about Esther? Recently Aimee Byrd, The Housewife Theologian,  has thought about Esther as she read Iain Daguid’s commentary:

But here we see Esther obliging to her uncle’s request to conceal her faith. And she seems to have no qualms with being a contestant in the king’s beauty pageant. Duguid sums up well what Esther cooperatively does for the sake of the empire. “She was willing to be poked and prodded, perfumed and prepared over a period of twelve months for her one night stand in the royal bedroom” (29). “We would hardly coin the slogan ‘Dare to be an Esther at this point in the story” (28).

Indeed. But at any point in any Biblical story you can look at the Redeemer and know that the plan of redemption does not rely on how exemplary is any saint's faith or life. Nor does your salvation depend on how exemplary is your faith. It all depends on the Author and Finisher of our faith.