David in 田上正教

I’ve always understood that David was an archetypical figure, even before I knew what that word meant. David was a type, a type that others were measured against, and who informed us of what things were and ought to be. He was an ideal subject, an ideal friend, an ideal warrior, an ideal believer, and an ideal king.
When we think about David, we imagine in his life a series of unlikely victories. The smallest of the brothers is the one chosen by God. The defenseless boy fights the armored giant. The musician drowning out demons with his harp. The bandit foiling his enemies time and time again. The insurgent defying a dynasty. The petty king who builds an empire.
These unlikely victories are ended by the most likely of defeats. In the end, he succumbs to his lust for a woman, and connives to have his friend and companion murdered by a man he neither loved nor trusted. His victories are the victories of a great man. His defeat, is the defeat of the everyman. Because we are all of us, men. Doomed to fail. Doomed to fall.
I have dreamed that I was trapped below the waves, and water began to flow through cracks. It could flow in, but I could not flow out, and I was pulled deeper and deeper into a bottomless abyss. In these dreams, all I can hope for is that the pressure will shatter me before I slowly drown. I think that we can view sin in a similar way. No matter how we fortify, no matter how we prepare, we are immersed in a solvent which will gradually wear away at our defenses and will find the weakest point. And, for so many of us, the weak points are in very similar places.
I had never really thought about David in this way until I read his story in depth. The humiliations in the later days of his life are almost unbearable. He seems pathetic. Utterly pathetic. And one wonders what else he could be. His children turned on each other, and then him. And without his moral fortitude, who was he to bring his offspring to heel? We can see the unravelling from one act. Nathan declares that God has willed it, and yet I wonder: Even were there no God, could things have been any different?
Yet, we see in David, a man who, at the end of his life, having undone so much of what he had done, having become a shattered shell of who he used to be, still had the wherewithal to endure. To survive the coup. To ensure Solomon’s rise. As he lay impotent and freezing, next to a young woman who must have filled him with anger, frustration, desire, and pity, he still did what, in the end, he had to do.
When we consider our falls and our failings, it’s easy to say that they are small. And I had never understood the notion that sin is sin. Yet the errors which are small often remain only so small as the people committing them.
It is a frightful thing to take up responsibility and to say, “Knowing that I will fail, knowing that I will fall, knowing that I shall be publicly shamed and humiliated, knowing that I shall be mortified, and brought low, I still swear: I will continue to proceed in The Way.” I think that it has become the custom of westerners to declare great moral significance in avoiding doing difficult things. I hear people, and I was one of them, bragging that I had the sense not to bring children into this world with the baggage that I’d give them. What have I done but to refuse responsibility for this world’s problems, or my own? I have said, “I wish no one to judge me for my inaction, and with no judge, I cannot be convicted of my failings!” And for many, perhaps a great deal many, this is the case. But some will have another judge, one whose verdict they cannot avoid, constantly whispering to them the truth behind what they did.
I stopped reading the Bible when I was 18 because I could not endure the hypocrisy of reading The Bible after what I’d just been doing in my bed. I ran from my judge, but the judgement remained. I could not endure what weighed on my conscience, and I ran from my conscience. But I had no rest or respite.
How pleasant must Bathsheba have been? To seduce a friend’s wife, to order an enemy to have a friend killed, to deceive and lie to one who trusted you with their life. I have to wonder, what joy did she bring him? Because surely, without joy, he never could have been coerced into his actions after the initial throes of passion ended. Amnon had no joy once he had finished with Tamar, yet David returned for more and more. What does this say of the nature of their sins, the sinners, and their victims? I cannot think on it tonight. But what glory must David have felt in the arms of a woman he was willing to give up everything for?
I once felt that way about a woman. I am thankful, to this day, that I was never in a chance to give up for her anything more than my dignity. And that while I was humbled and humiliated, I don’t think that any harm ever went to another.
Feelings are distinct from passions. Yet when we indulge in our passions, we become the vehicles though which these constant forces act upon the broader world. A feeling is unique to the recipient. A passion is senseless of the details, it exists for its own sake and to continue its own existence.
Some of us, myself especially, may fear that a life without passion may be dull. I don’t think so. At least, it won’t necessarily be good. Rather, when we have something, we will know that what we have is the thing itself and not an illusion. And when we lose something, we will have lost something irreplaceable. Feeling is the acknowledgement that everything is meaningful. And the statement that everything has meaning is one of the most terrifying statements that we, as humans, can make.
Yet to avoid saying that is to be less than ourselves.
We must fight the good fight, we must bear our burdens, and strengthened by them, we must seek out new ones. When our burdens are too heavy, we learn to love by sharing them, and when we have shared, we take on more from others. The collective action of those on The Way who have learned Its nature is something beautiful to behold, even in glimpses. Through a mirror dimly.
Let us remember that even if we never reached such great heights, we are able to fall down into an abyss beyond reckoning. And that the truisms which, in the moment, often seem as though they were written for anyone besides you, here and now, at this moment, apply to you, here and now, at this moment, more than ever.
And yet, as I write this, I know that I, too, am staring on the roof.