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The Road to Glory?
Today Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan! In a few days we will begin a new year and continue the hope for peace around the world. How realistic is that hope? I submit that hope for peace is absolutely unrealistic as long as our moral values are derived from books that devalue large segments of the population. For, in devaluing others we devalue ourselves... and the wheel of life goes round and round.
Please permit me to reprint my column which illustrates the skewed logic of blind religious beliefs. It was published in the Beacon, a Transcontinental Newspaper on December 3, 2007.
Thank you and Happy New Year to all my friends on this forum.
Audrey
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The Road to Glory?
by Audrey ManningLast week, Cardinal Marc Ouellet the archbishop of Quebec City issued a widespread apology in which he asked Quebecers to forgive the Church for past errors. The Cardinal's heart may be in the right place but the mea culpa is being met by widespread skepticism. Some believe it is a prelude to a campaign to restore religious instruction in schools.
Around the same time as pundits were discussing the impact of Ouellet's apology, two prominent television evangelists were expounding the virtues of the Old Testament's Kind David. In their view, David is a role model.
Surprisingly, my first encounter with the less than virtuous side of King David was in church. A Sunday school teacher and her students put off a re-enactment of the story of David and Goliath. The teacher used a huge cardboard cutout figure to represent the Philistine giant, Goliath. In church, a young child, playing the role of David, kills Goliath with a slingshot.
True to the Sunday school skit, the Bible says David kills Goliath with his slingshot, beheads him and carries his head back to Jerusalem. David is chosen and anointed by Samuel to replace Saul while Saul is still king. Then David and Saul enter into a competition to see who can kill the most people for God.
When they return from the slaughter, the women meet them singing and dancing saying, "Saul has killed thousands and David tens of thousands." (1 Samuel 18: 6.7). David has won hands down! Thus begins a running battle for supremacy between David and Saul.
David kills 200 Philistines and takes their foreskins to pay Saul for his daughter who becomes David's first of eight wives and numerous concubines. Saul has asked for only one hundred foreskins but was secretly hoping that the Philistines would kill David in battle. Saul obviously does not relish the idea of David's replacing him as king (1 Samuel 18: 25-27).
Believing the Lord has told him to go and smite the Philistines, David smites them with great slaughter (1 Samuel 2-5). Then comes a strange vow� David vows to kill any that pisseth against the wall (1 Samuel 25: 22, 34). As well, David smote the land and left neither man nor woman alive (1 Samuel 27: 8-11).
2 Samuel continues in the same vein. Simple killing, as in 2 Samuel1: 15; David's bestowing the curse of venereal disease, leprosy and starvation on families, as outlined in 2 Samuel 3: 27-29. David has the assassins of Saul's son killed by chopping off their hands and feet and hanging up their bodies for the Lord (2 Samuel 4: 6-7). David has Uriah killed so that he can have Uriah's wife Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12: 14-18).To appease God and end the famine that was caused by his predecessor Saul, David agrees to have seven of Saul's sons killed and hung up "unto the Lord" (2 Samuel 21:6-9) and then there is the phrase, "He teacheth my hands to war." (2 Samuel 22:35). There is more violence in the David story but this may be enough to illustrate that King David's life was composed of war, sex and strife. He was an example of manhood to which macho men aspire. David was courageous in battle and a fearless leader but he was also a prolific womanizer and probably bisexual (2 Samuel 1: 17-27).
People searching for meaning look to the bible for reassurance. They find it in the form of forgiveness of sins no matter how egregious. Individuals who, deep in their hearts, believe that they are rotten to the core, because of original sin, can look to the story of David and see a man who was favored by God in spite of all the victims that he left strewn on the road to glory.
In this story, the victims are merely a footnote in history. Being able to take charge and kill indiscriminately seems to be a necessary characteristic for a king/leader. When Saul chooses not to kill indiscriminately, Samuel replaces him with David, who has proven his mettle.
Church leaders tell us to look to the great killers and philanderers of the Bible as role models. At the same time, we wonder why the church doesn't repent, straying clergy don't seem too stressed, humans devalue sex and youth are confused and violent?
As well as being a man of action, David is credited with writing the Psalms, in particular the 23rd Psalm. In contemplating David's life, it's difficult to image that a man who abuses power so indiscriminately can find the place of deeper well-being, and the joy of which he writes.
Yet, that's exactly what televangelists say of David. His life brought him to a place of deep joy, which is taken to mean that if we act like King David we, too, can find joy. Could they be right? For David's famous Psalm says, "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever". The question: where does this leave all the discarded humans on the glory road?
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About the author: Audrey Manning is a philosopher and community activist who lives in the tiny rural town of Lumsden , Newfoundland , Canada .