The Game of Thrones

And in that day you will cry out because of your king, 

whom you have chosen for yourselves;

But the Lord will not answer you in that day.

But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel;

They said, "NO! but we are determined to have a king over us,

So that we may be like other nations,

And that our king may govern us and go out before us

And fight our battles.

1 Samuel 8: 18 - 20

For their sin of rejecting God's just rule, The Lord gave the people of Israel precisely what they asked for.  I will be honest with you, this narrative from 1 Samuel haunts me about as much as any text from Scripture.  I say haunts because it is so painfully accurate concerning human nature, and because it so accurately describes our current idolatry of power as much as it describes a situation from ancient history.

Life at the end of the era of the Judges had some serious flaws, the Book of Judges ends with the ominous line: "In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes." That assessment comes after one of the most brutal stories in the Bible, about the Levite's concubine (not one you teach the Sunday School kids), and a period of inter-tribal strife.  The era where Judges like Deborah and Sampson and Samuel had been the voice of God and the arbiters of justice was failing.  The Tribes had a hard time getting together about anything and so each of the groups that comprised the nation of Israel had a constant feeling of dread and insecurity.  They couldn't trust each other completely and they definitely couldn't trust all the jackals snarling at them from the wilderness.

The answer was clear in their minds: they needed a king, they needed a strong man who could raise up the armies and who could force the fractious leaders of the 12 Tribes to work together, who could elevate their people from a loose confederation to a mighty nation.  Does this sound familiar at all? Maybe if I phrase it this way: "Make Israel Great Again!"  How about now?

The conversation that God has with Samuel in this narrative is heartbreaking.  Samuel prays to the Lord, feeling like he has somehow failed at his task, and God says, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.  Just as they have done to me from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other Gods, so also they are doing unto you."  He goes on to tell Samuel to warn them about all the things the king will take from them and what life will be like under the rule of a mere human.

But God sounds sort of fed up in the end, and so they get what they want: their very first mad strongman.  In stories like Game of Thrones it often takes generations of inbreeding and grasping at power until you produce the Mad King Aerys Targaryen. But in ancient Israel, they got lucky right off the bat, a guy who was the perfect strongman, a powerful military leader, who was also a profoundly insecure narcissist and ended up being a paranoid delusional personality.

Good times.

Honestly though, David, the first "good" king was also capable of being less than a nice guy, ask Uriah the Hittite.  Solomon, for all his wisdom, gets himself serious wrapped up in some serious idolatry in order to smooth out one of his most important marriages, and that is really at the core of what the problem is: power is one of the most brutal idols that there is.  The saying goes, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Observation tells me that power is actually an even more idolatrous trap that even money, and it's not just for the one in power, but also for the ones who give the "king" his throne.  The people of Israel were willing to give up all the freedom that Samuel warned them would be taken, and pay the price that Samuel warned them would be required.  For what? For security, for the feeling of power in the face of "the nations." For the idea of Israel being a player on the world stage.

But they never were, not really, because that was not God's plan for them. That was not why God brought them up out of Egypt, in fact it was precisely the opposite idea.  God wanted them to a blessing to the nations, not a scourge of them.  God made that promise to Abraham so that grace could unfold in the world, no so that Abraham's descendants could become divinely sanctioned tyrants.

George Martin tell us that "When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die." That is truth.  God knows that is the truth, that's why God tries so very hard to give us another option on how to live in this world, by trusting in God, all the time.