To Encourage You

2 Samuel 12:7 “Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!’”

So, on May 26, 2021 there was a mass shooting. This time in San Jose.  As a result, 10 more people died from such violence. I read one news account that there had been 14 mass murders (defined as four or more people dead) in 2021,  up to that time.  Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, had this to say about all this the next day: “What the h… is going on in the United States of America?  When are we going to come to grips with this? When are we going to put down our arms – literally and figuratively – our politics, stale rhetoric, finger pointing, all the hand wringing, consternation that produces nothing except more fury and frustration… over and over and over again?”  And then the following tweet from President Biden: “Every life taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation.”  

I was reflecting on this after I read the verse above from 2 Samuel 12. It’s from the account of David’s sin with Bathsheba in which he committed adultery with her and then killed her husband Uriah to cover it all up.  As a result, God sent the prophet Nathan to David with a story about a wealthy man who had many flocks and herds and who had a traveler come to his home one day. Rather than fix a meal for the traveler from his own herds, the rich man took the one and only ewe lamb of a poor man. About this lamb Nathan went on to say that the poor man had “brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.” This so incensed David that he said, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”  It was at this very moment that Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”  

You see, leadership carries with it great responsibility.  The sins of a leader can have far-reaching effects on any nation.  But leaders, unfortunately, can see themselves as above the law, i.e., the law of God.  They can act as if they are a rule unto themselves. But God sees right through it all, and sooner or later He knows how to bring that leader to account.  Sometimes it’s in this life. Most certainly it will be in the life to come – that is, unless that leader repents. 

As I heard President Biden’s sobering quote that night, “Every life taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation,” my immediate thought was, “True enough,” but my next thought was this: “What happens to the soul of a nation when it takes the life of a person by some other means, for example, by means of a forceps, vacuum tube, or RU-486 pill?  Isn’t the soul of a nation pierced then?”  As the president at that time pointed to a bullet as the cause of the nation’s pain, how could he have been so blind to these other means of the taking of life – of innocent, vulnerable children in the womb, no less.  It seems to me that the president needed to be told as he pointed to the misdeeds of others, “You are the man!” It is the president who is our leader, but he’s a leader who sees absolutely nothing wrong with one type of murder as he rues the murders committed by someone else.  

It’s important to note that King David didn’t commit the murder of Uriah with his own hands. He did it by means of the Ammonites as he acted to remove the protection of Uriah’s own army from him.  But David was no less guilty.  God told him so with these words: “You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites” (2 Samuel 12:9). Thus, our leaders can’t hide behind the choices and deeds of others, when by their policies, laws, and executive orders they remove any and all protections to the life of the most vulnerable among us.  

So, in the words of Governor Newsom, as we “wonder what the h… is going on in the United States of America,” maybe we need to look no further than to our government leaders who facilitate a culture of death on the one hand as they decry it on the other.  And beyond that, maybe we should look to the ballot box where the whole nation shoulders its blame.  Should we expect no ramifications from such evil?  The greater wonder is how we can be so blind. And one more thing – David’s immediate response when confronted by Nathan was this: “I have sinned against the Lord.” When’s the last time you ever heard any of our leaders say something like that?!