Innocence

The correspondence you have just read was between my grandson and me. It is important (to me at least) because it suggested a solution to a problem I have struggled with for many years.
The story of Saul and David seems to suggest that God is fickle and a tyrant. Saul was abandoned by God for not committing genocide as God had commanded him to do. David was chosen because he was obedient and presumably would have committed the genocide. On the surface, the story seems similar to the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his beloved son because he presumably loved God more than he loved his son, and God was so jealous that it was necessary to prove Abraham’s exclusive allegiance to Him by killing that which he held most dear. Neither story reflects well on God if these stories are literally interpreted.
Those who take the scriptures literally (superficially) are forced either to admit that they are willing to kill the innocent if they are so inclined by religious enthusiasm, or to deny that they would do such a thing only because God would not demand such obedience any longer, but had good reason to do so in Abraham’s day, or to excuse the intent of God since His command to kill the innocent was not carried out.
The following quote from Guy's letter suggested a solution to my dilemma: “I like to think that there is someone watching my back and helping me through life in everything that I do. Even if it’s just my subconscious that I'm talking to, it still gives me a good peace of mind believing that there is someone that is always listening when I have something to say. This however is as far as my belief goes.”
Such a statement suggests an evolution (with just a touch of the existential) solution to my dilemma. Too many of those seeking God appear to be chasing after Him, He being eternally elusive. This suggests a predator/prey relationship and, as such, would appeal to our hunter instincts at a very deep level (God is to be hunted down and devoured). There is even a “gotcha” moment of ecstasy that overwhelms us as we bite into God in that final moment. God has become a part of us. Such a situation seems inconsistent with our idea of God, however. He is the Master in our theology, not the slave, certainly not the prey of our avarice.
An opposing view would be God chasing after us. We become the prey. This also is in the background of our theology. God seeks us out. In this pursuit and capture there is also a slightly different “gotcha” moment as God takes His first bite into our flesh. It is a moment of awe, of being overwhelmed, and it too is a kind of ecstasy. We have become a part of God.
These two views together or apart would probably appeal to a more barbaric populace, but we are civilized. We are spoiled, not so independent, relying on others to make our lives more comfortable, even sustainable. We need a more comforting relationship.
That is the solution my grandson, Guy, was instrumental in forcing into my perspective. Rather than Master, rather than Servant (even Slave), God is a Partner, a Friend, perhaps a Mentor, but not pushy or demanding, simply a Compatriot, Companion, Advisor, available to even the most despicable among us; simply someone watching our back, sharing our experiences, always available but not always demanding our attention.
From a logical point of view, this type of relationship is simply unacceptable. God is so superior to us that even the word superior doesn’t really bridge the chasm between us and Him. It is logically necessary to accept the fact that He is our Master, and it is our lot to do His bidding without question, knowing that He is always right and, even if He were not (a ridiculous suggestion, but necessary to the following point), He created us and consequently has an absolute right, by any moral code involving propriety and/or property, to our unquestioning obedience even unto death.
Only a mythological portrayal can satisfactorily explain a relationship that transcends the constraints of rational thought and makes a friendly relationship with God available to us. In an attempt to create this mythological moment, I will use the predator/prey analogy, and suggest that God not only pursues but is pursued by us at the same moment. The relationship is analogous to a wrestling match between a father and son. It is exhilarating. Both are the predator and both are the prey. The father, of course, can always win, but probably does not. The son must always lose, but does not. The purpose of the sport is not the winning or losing; it is the interaction, the active as opposed to the passive relationship of affection. Standing outside the mythology, one might say the father is training the son for adversity, as indeed he is, but the moment is not an adversarial one. It is a sharing moment. It would not exist if the child were not permitted to challenge his father’s authority. It is the challenging that gives him an opportunity to learn.
A problem inevitably develops when the son flexes his muscles, and the challenge becomes serious when the son tries to defeat his father, even injure him. This is a part of growing up. It is the sudden welling up of the predator instinct in us all. The wrestling match then does not end well. The father, if defeated or seeing a future of defeat, ends the wrestling relationship forever, or the son walks away feeling defeated and with resentment against (even hatred for) his father for humiliating him (perhaps even with some small injury for his presumption of superiority). The humiliation, of course, is only fostered by the son’s unrealistic expectations, and he maintains a distant, even resentful, relationship with his father.
At the risk of seeming sexist, I will suggest another mythological scenario for women since most women, I assume (and some men), might not relate to wrestling with their father, just as some women (and most men) might not relate to wrestling with their mother. Instead of wrestling with their father, women might prefer to dance. As long as the dance is a shared predator/prey relationship (the feeling of control through dominance, and the feeling of control in submission) it is enjoyable, but there is eventually and inevitably the necessity of proving oneself worthy, the pulling away to perform rather than share the dance. We distance ourselves from God. He becomes the observer and we become performers.
Returning to Saul and David, mythologically Saul excuses his promise to exterminate the populace aligned against him by proclaiming that God told him to do so, and then excuses the failures that followed by portraying himself as morally superior to God by choosing not to perform such a horrendous act and being punished for his presumption. I am not claiming he did this deliberately. I would suggest that, mythologically, he firmly believed God ordered him to kill every man, woman, and child of that adversarial tribe, and that in not doing it he had offended God. In other words, he pursued God and actually, in his mind, caught Him and extracted what he needed to encourage his troops on to victory.
There is also the sense that Saul felt pursued by God. God was watching his back in a different sense from that which my grandson suggested. God was evaluating him, haunting him, forcing him on, judging him, rewarding and punishing him, watching his every move with predatory eyes.
David differed in the sense that he actually seemed to consider God as a valued friend, possibly mentor, and he enjoyed an affectionate relationship and was truly repentant when he offended God, just as he would be with any other close companion. He did not expect God to give him anything; he did not feel an obligation to repay God for favors rendered. He simply enjoyed His companionship, and God enjoyed his; an innocent relationship.