The Sinner

The Sinner

Oct 13, 2022 | Culture

Despite what you think, this post isn’t about me, although the title might imply that. It’s about a Netflix series called The Sinner which my wife and I have recently been watching. We just finished season 3, and I learned season 4 is coming to Netflix this week. The show stars Bull Pullman as Detective Harry Ambrose, an emotionally scarred detective, thus the title, and he has the perfect vibe for the character. He does what typical detectives do, but his emotional baggage allows him to connect in a unique way with the also emotionally scarred people he’s investigating. He kind of reminds me of another detective those of my generation would be familiar with, Columbo, but with a lot of problems. His issues, coming from his dysfunctional upbringing, help him to relate in some way to those he’s investigating, which in turn helps him deal with his own demons.

Dealing with terribly broken people, the show has themes of redemption and forgiveness, and the ongoing effects of sin. It reminds me of what Moses wrote in Numbers 14:18:

‘The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’

At first reading we might consider this is unfair. Why should children suffer for their parents’ sins? When we think about it for a minute, though, how could it be any other way. He isn’t saying the Lord visits punishment arbitrarily down through the generations, but that the sins of parents have implications in the lives of their children, and their children’s children and so on. It’s an obvious fact of life, and one portrayed skillfully in The Sinner. Sin always has consequences, even generational consequences.

What is not in the show, however, is God, not even a hint, except in the third season which is an interesting exploration into the nihilistic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. So God, in effect, becomes a character by his absence. I couldn’t help thinking of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and his character Raskolnikov who took his God-less view of the universe to what he thought was its logical conclusion. I appreciate that a TV series in 2022 would tackle something like that. You wonder if Bill Pullman’s character in response might see God as an answer to his emotional pain and confusion, but he doesn’t, or at least he hasn’t so far.

While the title implies something religious, The Sinner is a typical secular modern drama, a broken and messed up man trying to figure things out as he interacts with other broken and messed up people. God obviously isn’t relevant to that process. That’s how secularism on a cultural level perpetuates itself. God isn’t denounced a la the angry atheist, he’s just irrelevant. That is powerful cultural messaging, even though the writers don’t intend it to be. They’re just secular people writing secular drama for other secular people who would never think to ask, a la Where’s Waldo, where’s God? As Christians, we think leaving out God is as dumb as making a Where’s Waldo picture with no Waldo! He’s gotta be in there somewhere, right? Nope.

The writers and directors of secular entertainment don’t intend to program secularism into those who watch, but it happens at a subconscious level, nonetheless. As I’ve written here before, that’s how plausibility structures are built in the modern human mind. Unless someone gets a consistent dose of counter programming, secularism is what seems real to them. Watching The Sinner, they would never think to ask, why isn’t God part of this drama. Like most people outside the church in the Western world, they are seeped in the secular stew all their lives, so God is an afterthought at best.

Almost everyone in the West “believes in God” because they know intuitively that atheistic materialism (matter is all there is) is absurd. They can’t believe everything came from nothing, but whoever or whatever God is, he’s just not relevant to their lives. This is inconceivable to we Christians because life without the constant presence of God in our thinking isn’t life. But as Christians, we need to be aware of the secular programming of the culture because it affects us, and we too are immersed in that stew; there’s no escaping it.

A rich vein of examples of such programing could be mined in our lives, but The Sinner offers one up with no digging required. The message we would take from the show is that the problems in our lives are not inside of us, not in our sinful human inclinations and rebellion against our Creator God but are outside of us, and primarily caused by others. If not by others, then by circumstances beyond our control. We are, to put it another way, victims. Thus, Detective Ambrose is consistently looking back at his upbringing, his psychologically disturbed mother and absent father, and the memories haunt him. But there being no Jesus, no mercy, no grace, no unconditional love of God in Christ, no divine rationale for forgiveness, he grapples as best he can. Season 3 ends with him weeping uncontrollably over the death of a nihilistic murderer, and we’re left to wonder why exactly he would do that.

As Christians we realize the answer Detective Ambrose is looking for is the gospel, which is the good news that can give him the only answer to all the emotional pain life has dealt him.

Last Sunday our pastor in the sermon said something that gets to the heart of that answer. He said, our problem isn’t others sinning against us, or us sinning against others, but our sinning against a holy God. Once we are reconciled to our Creator God in Christ, we’ll be able to see that it is not the effects of sin that is our problem, or the people or circumstances that cause those problems, but that we’re the problem. King David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed to try to cover it up penned Psalm 51. In it he wrote these amazing words that indicate he understood the essence of our sin, that it is primarily an offense against God:

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.

When we too understand this, no secular programing of an irrelevant God will tempt us to see ourselves as victims. That is good news indeed!

Uninvented: Elijah and the Prophets of Baal

Uninvented: Elijah and the Prophets of Baal

Oct 9, 2022 | Uninvented

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is the story of Elijah and the Prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18-19). Even though I’m more than a little familiar with the passage, even having written about it in Uninvented, it continues to amaze me. Because of the supernatural element, this story would be rejected out of hand by those who come to the text with an anti-supernatural bias, but if you don’t come to the text with such a bias, it reads so real. We call that, as you may know, verisimilitude.

What makes it so believable are two things. One is the psychology displayed by all the characters involved, from Elijah himself, to King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, to the prophets of Baal, and the people of Israel who witness and respond to this contest of the spiritual forces of darkness and the living God. It’s also funny, with more than a little sarcasm and mockery that makes it even more realistically compelling.

The other reason it reads real is because of how perfectly it fits in the scope of redemptive history, illustrating in dramatic fashion the entire history of Israel’s struggle with idolatry. This struggle starts from the moment of the Exodus when the people of Israel come out on the other side of the parted Red Sea. As soon as the Israelites get a little impatient with Moses, they pressure Aaron into making a golden calf and say, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” And that was just the beginning.

The Lord through Moses made it clear he was bringing them into the land of promise to rid it of false gods and the wickedness associated with them. Even though Elijah’s encounter with the prophets of Baal was a kind of culmination of hundreds of years of Israel’s rebellion, it didn’t end it. It’s interesting that in the intertestimental period, the 400 or so years from Micah when prophecy stopped, to John the Baptist, there is no indication of the Jews worshiping other gods. I’ve been reading I and II Maccabees (c. 150 BC), and the Jews of the time wouldn’t think of sacrificing to Baal, but consistently called on the Lord, and the same is true of the Pharisaical Judaism of the gospels.

Prior to that, however, the people of Israel looked to heathen idols, and like our modern versions of false gods they can’t deliver. It is the futility of idolatry which makes the narrative so powerful. Baal was one of the most prominent false gods throughout Israel’s history, and one of the nastier. At this period, Israel was ruled by the wicked King Ahab and Queen Jezebel who gave Baal and his worshippers free reign in the country. Basically, Israel was no different than all the heathen nations that surrounded it. Throughout Israel’s history, the odds were always stacked against those faithful to Yahweh, the true Elohim (God) of Israel, and in the days of Elijah it was as stacked as it gets.

Being a prophet in ancient Israel was a tough job because speaking truth to power often resulted in torture or death, while being a false prophet was a good gig because it meant telling those in power what they wanted to hear.

Elijah went to meet Ahab, and his greeting indicates which kind of prophet Elijah was: “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?” Elijah replied it is not he who is the troubler, but Ahab who has “abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the Baals.” That was gutsy, but Elijah decides to put it to the test, to see who the real Elohim of Israel is. The Bible is often sparse in details, so we don’t know how this challenge was put to Ahab, but Elijah said:

19 Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel. And bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.”

And then:

21 Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

But the people said nothing.

We have to fill in the blanks, but I can imagine the people thinking to themselves, Elijah, why rock the boat? Things are going fine, the economy’s doing well, no big wars, why don’t you just leave it alone. A true prophet of God can’t do that, so he explains the challenge to them, and they reply, “What you say is good.” I can also imagine them thinking, Baal has served us well all these years, I’m sure he’ll do fine.

Elijah tells the prophets of Baal to prepare a bull for sacrifice and call on Baal to rain down fire to consume it. If he’s really Elohim, should be a piece of cake. They call on him for hours, “But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.” Then at noon, Elijah started to taunt and mock them. He suggested maybe they should shout louder. It almost verges on comedy when he says, “Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”  After doing this most of the day, they get desperate and slash themselves as they danced “until their blood flowed.” The next sentence is pure sarcasm:

But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.

Oh, how that is the story of all false Gods! Elijah said, ok, it’s my turn. The way that scene is set up is narrative perfection. Needless to say, fire came down from heaven and consumed the offering; God is no false, worthless idol. When the people saw this, in today’s vernacular we might say, they freaked out, fell on their face and cried out, “Yahweh, He is Elohim! Yahweh, He is Elohim!” Maybe Baal ain’t so great after all.

You’ll have to read the rest of the story to see what happens next, but it reads so very uninvented, especially as Elijah flees for his life from the king and queen, goes out into the desert and prays that God would just kill him and get it over with. God doesn’t answer his prayer, and in fact, Elijah is one of only two men in the Bible who doesn’t taste physical death, but maybe that’s a topic for another post.

Uninvented: David God’s Chosen King Counts His Fighting Men, and 70,000 Die!

Uninvented: David God’s Chosen King Counts His Fighting Men, and 70,000 Die!

Oct 5, 2022 | Uninvented

In previous two posts I argued that King David’s life is counter intuitive to typically religious sinners who basically equate “religion” with moralism. Naturally, we think the purpose of religion is to be more moral, do more good than evil, more right than wrong, and that if we do, God will like us. If not, he won’t. God specifically chose David to be king of Israel because he was “a man after his own heart.” We would naturally interpret this through the lens of moralism, that it means, to be this man, David would do more good than evil, more right than wrong. But that is not the man we find in the pages of 2 Samuel, not at all. Therefore, in the title of my book, David had to be Uninvented. Somebody, anybody, making up the life of David would not make up the terribly flawed David that actually existed, the one who God declares is “a man after his own heart.”

I’ll briefly reiterate below the profound theological lesson we learn through David that culminates in the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, but first let’s take a look at what is to me the most disturbing event in David’s very imperfect, sinful life. Most Christians focus on David and Bathsheba, as I did in my first post, and that’s bad enough. In my second post I focused on David as a pathetic father and leader, how he mishandled his son Amnon’s rape of his half-sister Tamar, and his son Absalom’s attempt to overthrow his father’s kingdom. All of this is merely prologue for what I consider the greatest sin of David’s life, something that caused the death of 70,000 of David’s innocent subjects. I’ll also briefly deal with the theology inherent in these disturbing events.

We read about it in 2 Samuel 24 (and a parallel account in I Chronicles 21). Because I want to focus on the theology, I’ll only briefly explain what happened, but here is an excellent short explanation from the Senior Minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia (where my wife and I attended when we were in seminary). David gave a command to “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah” so he could “enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.” Joab, the commander of David’s army begged him not to do it, but the king overruled him. Bad idea.

As I was reading this story yet again, I found it distressing. It took nine months and twenty days (I love the specificity, which is an indication of the story’s veracity) of counting, and the whole time David was oblivious to his sin and the coming judgment of God for it. That’s a long time in which David had to reconsider what he was doing, but he never did. Hubris will do that to a man, which indicates the great sin David committed: he did not trust God, Yahweh, who created Israel, and promised to sustain her.

After Joab returns with the results, then David gets it, too late:

10 David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”

The bastard knew all along what he was doing was wrong! That makes me angry because he doesn’t seem to have cared if it was. But we see in his immediate response why he was “a man after God’s own heart.” Unlike King Saul who he replaced, when David was confronted by his sin, he repented. While he didn’t trust God in the most obvious of ways, he did trust God in the most important, to take away his sin. In this, he points us forward to the gospel. We cannot attain acceptance with God by obedience to the law; nothing we can do or not do will ever make us any more acceptable to him than we are in Christ, who is our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

Unfortunately, though, there are consequences for sin, and as we’ve already seen in his messy life, there are here as well.

The Lord says as punishment he will give David three options: three years of famine, three months of fleeing from his enemies while they pursue him, or three days of plague in the land. David responds in a way that again reflects his trust in God:

14 David said to Gad, “I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”

The plague came, and 70,000 people died, not just one because of his sin with Bathsheba. That’s why to me David counting his fighting men is the far worse sin, yet most Christians don’t know about it while everyone, including many non-Christians, know the story of David and Bathsheba.

I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this story because it seems so blatantly unjust. David sinned, yet 70,000 innocent people died and not him? As I come across things like this in Scripture, I always go back to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy 32:3, 4:

3 I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
Oh, praise the greatness of our God!

 

4 He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.

 

A faithful God who does no wrong,
upright and just is he.

I don’t get to determine what is just or unjust because of the way it seems to me from my limited, finite perspective. If the Lord does it or allows it, it is just, or if he allows injustice, it is for a greater good, or something we can’t conceive.

Many reject the of God of Scripture because they think they have the right to judge what they read in the Old Testament (seldom do they argue against the New, except to reject miracles). No God, they assume, would act that way, or cause a people to act that way. Really? How would they know? Based on what standard? Whose standard? Is there even a standard? The only reason we know a line is crooked is because we know what a straight line is. Where does morally straight come from? Well, the God they reject! This idea of condemning God by the standard that comes from God himself is a fascinating study, and beyond the cope of a blog post, obviously. But when I come to things in Scripture that make no sense to me, like David counting his fighting men, and 70,000 people dying as a result, I accept something else Moses said in Deuteronomy 29:

29 The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.

And boy, are there a lot of secret things!

Hurricane Ian: Why?

Hurricane Ian: Why?

Oct 2, 2022 | Theology

During church yesterday, I got a lot of food for thought about the recent hurricane that hit southwest Florida, and as hurricanes are wont to do, caused so much damage and loss of life. I often think when suffering comes upon the world in some catastrophic way, how prone we are to lament it’s happening, and rightly so. The Bible never embraces suffering as a positive moral good. Nor are we to respond in Stoic indifference, and just grin and bear it, but rather always look at it in light of the Creator God of the universe.

When it was apparent Hurricane Ian was heading our way, I thanked God (I Thess. 5:18), and prayed for those who were going to be impacted by it in big and small ways. I often think of the story of the tower of Siloam in Luke 13. Jesus uses these stories of apparently senseless suffering and death to tell us why such things happen. Some Galileans had been killed by Pilate in one, and in the other a tower fell on eighteen unfortunate people and they died. He asks if these people were worse sinners than those who did not die, and then says:

5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

 

6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

 

8 “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it.

 

Nothing happens by accident. As Christians, we believe in God’s providence, as David says in I Chronicles 29, that he is “the ruler of all things.” The Hebrew can be translated as to have dominion, or to reign. That includes weather events such as hurricanes.

We’ve been so indoctrinated by secularism and the word “nature,” that we are tempted to see creation as somehow “natural” and that it runs on its own. We’re even tempted to see hurricanes as merely weather events. You know, this high and that low, warm water and air, positive and negatives electrons, it all moves around, and you have a hurricane! Well, yeah, but that’s not the whole story. Jesus stilled a storm by his mere words (and freaked the disciples out!), and he is still sovereign ruler over all of his creation now, including hurricanes like Ian.

Early Tuesday morning I turned on my computer and looked at the hurricane tracker, it was heading directly at Tampa (we leave around 20 miles northeast), which was a bit disturbing. However, as the day wore on that tracker moved consistently south and east, and I thought maybe we’ll get off easy. That, of course means other people would not, and it landed about 100 miles south of Tampa, wreaking the havoc we’ve all seen on our screens. My prayer was and is for all those affected that they might take Jesus’ words to heart, and repent, realize life is terribly short, and there are far more important things than avoiding suffering, pain, and loss in this life. I hate suffering, pain, and loss as much as anyone, but God allows these things in our lives not to define us, but to refine us.

Paul in 2 Corinthian 4 (the text for today’s sermon) gives us the proper perspective when life throws its worst at us:

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light momentary affliction are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

English cannot do justice to Paul’s description of this eternal glory. He uses the Greek word from which we get hyperbole back-to-back to, so hyperbolēn eis hyperbolēn, and this very emphatic term means superlatively, beyond measure. And it’s ironic when you see the phrase “light momentary affliction,” and realize the extent of Paul’s suffering. You can find his horrific list of these in 2 Corinthians 11:16-33, and he wasn’t using hyperbole!

So, as in all things in life, the reason for hurricanes is to teach us how to trust God and proclaim his sovereign rule over all things for our good and his glory (Rom. 8:28). This is the reason we can give thanks in all circumstances as Paul commands, even when it’s very, very hard. We sing hymns in our church, which I love because that means we sing theology, which means they are about God and not me. We sang “God moves in a mysterious way” by William Cowper, and when life doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s a good hymn to mediate upon to keep our focus where it needs to be, upon Him:

    God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.
    He plants his footsteps on the sea, And rides upon the storm.

     

    Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds you so much dread,
    Are big with mercy, and shall break, With blessings on your head.

     

    Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace.
    Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.

     

    His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour.
    The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.

     

    Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan His work in vain.
    God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.

    Uninvented: The Messy Life of David, God’s Chosen King, Continued

    Uninvented: The Messy Life of David, God’s Chosen King, Continued

    Sep 30, 2022 | Uninvented

    In my last post I looked at how it makes little sense to sinful “religious” people God that would chose such a flawed man as David and declare him, “A man after his own heart.” David’s adulterous encounter with Bathsheba and having her husband killed was only the beginning of the dysfunction in his life. Because of what he’d done, through Nathan the prophet, the Lord declared:

    10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.

    David repented, and the Lord took away his sin, but the child born of adultery died. Bathsheba conceived again, and gave birth to Solomon, who would become David’s heir to the throne. After Solomon’s peaceful reign, Nathan’s prophecy would eventually lead to civil war and destruction, and Israel’s exile by the Assyrians (the ten northern tribes, Israel), and the Babylonians (the two southern tribes, Judah).

    The sword Nathan referred to started with David’s own son, Absalom. Because David had a number of wives and concubines, as was the custom for rulers at the time, he had children from different women, not always a recipe for harmony. In 2 Samuel 13 we read a sordid story many wouldn’t expect to find in the Bible. The stories in our Bibles, however, are of real people, fallen sinners who more often than not do what fallen sinners do. In this case, David’s son, Ammon had some serious lust for his stepsister, Tamar:

    2 Amnon was frustrated to the point of making himself sick over his sister Tamar because she was a virgin, but it seemed impossible to do anything to her.

    Eventually he creates a situation where he’s alone with her, and pressures her into having sex with him, but as is the case with lust after forbidden things, it doesn’t turn out well. After he had raped her, we read:

    15 After this, Amnon hated Tamar with such intensity that the hatred he hated her with was greater than the love he had loved her with. “Get out of here!” he said.

    I imagine Freud would have a field day with this, but what makes it even worse than rape in the ancient context is that Tamar was now seen as used goods. No other man would want her, so her life is basically ruined. We read that “Tamar lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman.”

    We also read something revealing about the weakness of David’s character: “When King David heard all this, he was furious.” But guess what he did about it? Absolutely nothing, like it never happened, except of course to ruin Tamar’s life. There were consequences for rape according to the law of Moses, but David ignores that to his shame. And as a king of Israel, he knew God’s law well, so ignorance is no excuse. Even worse, the job of the king is to dispense justice, yet because this crime was committed by his son, he did nothing. It actually makes me angry just thinking about it as I write. Imagine how Absalom felt.

    David’s inexplainable neglect starts a series of events that bring chaos and misery to his life and kingdom. Two years pass, and we can imagine living with his sister, an abandoned woman, Absalom’s anger smoldering all that time. His father, the king, acts like it never happened, so Absalom figured he would take justice into his own hands. However, according to the law, rape is not a capital crime deserving death, but Absalom is not concerned with justice, but revenge. So, he has other brothers, sons of David, kill Amnon, and the bloodshed and misery in David’s life are just beginning, per God’s promise.

    I want to reiterate the uninvented implication of this story. This morally pathetic David was declared by God, “a man after his own heart.” He sure doesn’t seem to act like it! That, as I argued in my last post, is the case if we assume the “religious” perspective on things typical to sinful human beings, i.e., moralism. However, God came in Christ to save sinners, and boy oh boy, was David a sinner. What differentiated him from Saul the failed king was that he knew it! He was quick to repent when confronted with his sin. He knew he could never achieve acceptance before a holy God apart from God’s mercy and grace. His utter dependence on God was what made him a man after God’s own heart, which is why David and his story could not be human invention, merely compelling fiction. As I say repeatedly, fiction didn’t exist in the ancient world.

    Things go downhill from here. Because Absalom killed his brother, he had to flee to safety in another town, where he stayed for three years. Then we read these strange words from 2 Samuel 13:

    37 Absalom fled and went to Talmai son of Ammihud, the king of Geshur. But King David mourned many days for his son.

    Mind you, David isn’t mourning for his murdered son, Amnon, but for Absalom the murderer! Could David be any more morally obtuse! The next verse says David longed to go to Absalom because “he was consoled concerning Amnon’s death.” What about justice!

    It only gets worse for David from here because there was no justice, and Absalom will never forgive his father. So, he conspires against his father by offering the Israelites the justice his father is failing to give them. David who previously had to run for his life from Jealous King Saul, now has to run for his life from his own son. After much blood in war is shed, Absalom is killed, and David’s response again shows his character and judgment as less than stellar. Even though Absalom’s rebellion caused so much suffering and death, and humiliated the king, here is how David responds:

    33 The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!”

    Really, David? This son David weeps for is a treasonous rapist, yet David is blind to that. As his commander rebukes him, remember this is the man of whom the Lord said, “he is a man after my own heart.”

    5 Then Joab went into the house to the king and said, “Today you have humiliated all your men, who have just saved your life and the lives of your sons and daughters and the lives of your wives and concubines. 6 You love those who hate you and hate those who love you. You have made it clear today that the commanders and their men mean nothing to you. I see that you would be pleased if Absalom were alive today and all of us were dead.

    It’s hard to imagine through the whole sordid story of David’s life he could be made to look any worse! Thus we conclude once again, you just can’t make this stuff up!