Bryan Richardson

Neutral

Re:Verse passage – Exodus 20:4-6 (day three)

“You shall not make for yourself an idol.”

There are some things, like the second commandment, that are not self-evident, and therefore warrant an explanatory passage—hence Moses’s presentation to Israel of God’s reason for the injuction against graven images. Idolatry is not a neutral phenomenon. Its effect is a closing of the mind and of the will to the unseen side of reality, the spiritual realm. It will never be the case that where idols exist they will not overtake the thinking and the affections of the human person. In a matter of three or four generations, one’s descendants aren’t just uninterested in God, but outright hostile to all things divine. These verses encapsulate the history of Egypt in a few words. In the land of idols, Pharaoh set himself up as an enemy of the Almighty. A destitute people resulted.

Actual

Re:Verse passage –Exodus 20:3 (day three)

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Whole lotta gods out there—you know, those concepts or people or things that you’ve organized your life around, made concessions to, or given up dreams for so that they could make your life secure. We’ve all been there over and over. Those gods will claim to shield you from suffering, be it pain or hardship or loss or sickness or famine. The actual God will shield you from no such thing. Instead, the actual God will teach you to live the kind of life that suffering will not destroy. If your god has convinced you that it can separate you from suffering, your god has not prepared you for reality. Only the God who actually is will lead you to know how to live in the universe that actually is.

Life

Re:Verse passage – Exodus 20:1-17 (day three)

“And God spoke all these words.”

John Ortberg relates an incident from the life of philosopher Dallas Willard: Someone once asked Willard, “What is reality?” He responded, “Reality is what you can count on.” The questioner followed up with, “What is pain?” Willard answered, “Pain is what happens when you bump into reality.” These words God spoke in Exodus 20—they’re not rules. Neither are they laws in the way we are often accustomed to thinking of laws. That is, they do not exist in order to make life run a certain way. These words of God exist in order to make life possible in the first place. They are laws in the sense that gravity is a law, or that the speed of light is a law. Reality: It’s the way the universe works.

Will

Re:Verse passage – 2 Samuel 24 (day three)

“Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”

We recognize David least when he is behaving most like a clichéd tyrant—employing his power to bend the world to his will. The writer of 2 Samuel makes apparent that God has established and nurtured the nation for his own purposes. David now behaves as if he has outgrown those purposes, and he moves Israel to a war footing to expand his geopolitical influence in the region. David had determined to take action, and the Lord said, in effect, “Okay, your will be done.” When human beings speak that phrase to God, the final result is good, always. When God speaks that phrase to human beings, things will not end well.

Golden

Re:Verse passage – 2 Samuel 20 (day three)

“We have no share in David.”

For every instance of soldiers’ and priests’ loyalty to the crown, murder and treachery from the top down poisoned the monarchy. For every battle won in the field, a skirmish on the home front caused paroxysms of family suffering. For every season of righteous ruling, rebels hostile to Judah threatened to fracture the kingdom. That’s some golden age. Turns out hindsight does not guarantee clear vision. We want to celebrate David as the ideal king. The real King David is far less worthy of laud and honor. What we’re left with as a legacy worth pursuing is not his exploits, but his question arising from the tattered remains of every disaster in his lifetime: Where is God?

Invitation

Re:Verse passage – 2 Samuel 18 (day three)

“Be gentle with the young man Absalom for my sake.”

Absalom has committed an act of sedition and now leads a coup against the throne. David, though, speaks as if his son has committed a social faux pas: “You know these kids today.” David loved the idea of Absalom. That’s a problem, because the actual Absalom could barely even get an audience with the king. And now the actual Absalom was poised to kill them all. To say that’s David’s fault is to ignore the complexities of human families in a corrupted world. But can we all please learn to invite a little more clear-eyed and courageous realism into our lives?

Back

Re:Verse passage – 2 Samuel 16 (day three)

“It may be that the Lord will see my distress and repay me with good.”

David cut his teeth on the outlaw kind of life. Then he became king—ruling with righteousness and justice, fashioning Israel into a formidable presence on the world stage, giving shape and direction to their national spiritual life. He also became different, and not always in a good way. Now here he is, once again leading a band on the run. Remarkably, he may be more recognizable to us in this mode than he was at the height of his power. Back again are the familiar characteristics—headlong flight, loyal men, intel that may or may not be reliable, and most of all, that poignant, simple, ragged humility that yearns for some word from God. That’s how we first knew David. And that’s his lasting legacy.

Fleeting

Re:Verse passage – 2 Samuel 15 (day three)

“Absalom provided himself with a chariot and horses and with fifty men to run ahead of him.”

No, this is not a report chronicling yet another person announcing a candidacy in the run-up to primary season. But seriously, folks, how does someone become famous? How does someone become an odds-on favorite in politics or entertainment or in any kind of contested public endeavor? If you want to be the winner, you put yourself out there. You bootstrap it. You do the PR. You rent the billboard, you build the website. You shake the hands and kiss the babies. You give the people what they want, and they’ll give you what you want. And then, just like that, you’ll be swept away by the next big thing.

Woe

Re:Verse passage – 2 Samuel 13:1-33 (day three)

“Jonadab was a very shrewd man.”

Mercenary, opportunist, chameleon: Meet Jonadab, advisor to cads, keeper of scuttlebutt, guardian of plausible deniability. One day he’s advising Amnon on exactly how to trap and rape Tamar, another day he’s filling the role of king-whisperer as the only one who has the straight story to calm an increasingly panicked David amid an onslaught of fake news in the wake of events provoked by the trapping and raping of Tamar. Jonadab was there at the hatching of the sexual assault plan; he was there to soothe souls in the aftermath of sexual assault revenge. He sprang into action whenever he saw that he could be useful. Amnon liked having him around, wouldn’t you think? David probably did, too. Everybody spoke well of him. It seems Jesus had something to say about that kind of thing.

Doors

Re: Verse reading—2 Samuel 12:1-23 (day three)

“By doing this you have made the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt.”

The enemies of Israel—who were also the enemies of the Lord as he worked in, and in behalf of, the nation—already held Israel in disdain. There was also always a possibility, though, that these enemies would come to see and fear and obey God. The larger vision of the Old Testament often gives voice to this hope. Now with David’s actions, the future just got that much less hopeful. Of all people, David stood in position to open doors, but he could just as easily shut them. He did exactly that, and this grieved God, much like it grieved Jesus centuries later to witness the Pharisees’ continual shutting of the door of the kingdom in men’s faces. Slamming doors rouse God’s anger.