Uncovering

Do not say, "Why were the former days better than these?"

For it is not from Wisdom that you ask this.

-Ecclesiastes 7: 10

Are you surprised by Harvey Weinstein? Kevin Spacey? Louis C.K? Bill Cosby? Roy Moore? Or any of the high profile men that are accused of using their power to gain some sort of sexual advantage over young women (or in Spacey's case young men).  It seems that the floodgates of accusation have opened recently, but the behavior that is being splattered across the headlines is certainly not new, nor particularly rare.  In Weinstein's case it seems as though his sexually predatory behavior was almost comically (not in the ha ha sort of way) well known.  People made jokes about how he would assault and abuse people and everyone knew about "Harvey being Harvey."

Now that our collective outrage has turned on this sort of behavior, we are perhaps ready to deal with something that has been an all too common reality for women, for a very long time.  The reality is that those with power (wealth and celebrity being the two sorts of power most visible recently) have always had a way of taking advantage of those less powerful than themselves.  Whether it is pedophile priests, Jerry Sandusky or Bill Clinton, people with status seem to believe that they can get away with abusing people under them and having the system defend them.

The reality is that the system does often defend them, which is why many of these allegations take years if not decades to percolate out into the light of day, and even when they come to light, there is no shortage of apologists who will tell you "surely this can't be true."

Since, over the weekend, several evangelical types have used the Bible to justify Roy Moore's behavior towards teenagers, I would like to take the challenge so to speak, because the Bible is sort of my thing.  One justification was that Mary was pretty young when Joseph married her and the theory is that he was an older man, perhaps a widower or someone who could be trusted to care for a young girl who was pregnant under suspicious circumstances.  The Gospels that deal with Jesus birth explain it pretty much this way, that Joseph was not a lecher, he was an honorable man who, far from taking advantage of a a vulnerable young girl, actually went out of his way to protect her from shame  and dishonor (which is a big thing even today in Middle Eastern society, but don't get me started on honor killings, I could go on all freaking day, because that stuff pushes all my anger buttons).

That, however, is nothing like the scenario surrounding Mr. Moore, or Mr. Weinstein, or any of them.  That scenario is pretty much the exact opposite of what is being alleged.  Even trying to bring that in as a comparison is foul and villainous, but it wasn't the only Bible based rationalization.

Someone mentioned David, as in King David, son of Jesse, a man after God's own heart, singer of psalms and slayer of giants, also, consequently, adulterer, murderer, a man who couldn't even prosecute the rape of one of his own daughters, and finally a decidedly dirty old man.  We can honor David for a lot of good things, but the Bible is also pretty unapologetic about his flaws.  For those of you who are not avid readers of the books of Samuel and Kings, let me fill you in on the high points.  When David had established his kingdom, he started to get a little complacent in his power, so one year, when he should have been out defending the realm and fighting off the Ammonites or something, he stayed around the palace and ended up getting into an affair with a woman named Bathsheba, who was married to Uriah the Hittite.  David had a bunch of wives already, but in typical man-fashion he always wanted a little more.  Bathsheba gets pregnant and David is not able to scheme his way out of that, so he ends up compounding the error by having Joab make sure that Uriah bites the dust in battle.  So now David is free to move in and actually take Bathsheba as his wife, but the baby dies as a punishment for David's sin, so now David has adultery, murder and the life of an innocent child on his hands.  You should not be looking at David as a model for how to live your life at this point, nor venerating him as some sort of hero, that Goliath incident is long ago and far away.

But wait, as they say, there's more.  When David is older, he has a lot of kids by various wives. He has a daughter named Tamar (never name your daughter Tamar, please, just never do it) who is the sister of his son Absalom (also probably not high on the list of baby names).  Another one of his sons from another mother is Amnon and Amnon gets the idea that Tamar is super pretty and he wants to get some of that, so he rapes her, because Harvey Weinstein did not invent this sort of horror, he just kept it rolling.  David finds out about this, but because Amnon is his son, he sort of shrugs it off, which of course Absalom is not having one little bit.  Absalom kills Amnon and a bunch of other sons of David, because Absalom is a bit of a hot-head (think Joe Pesci in Goodfellas), he goes into open revolt and for a while actually drives David out of Jerusalem and usurps the throne.  David doesn't have the heart or the will to deal with Absalom any more than he did with Amnon.  He does not do justice, as the King should, and eventually it again falls on Joab (the same dude that handles all of David's dirty work) to eventually defeat and kill Absalom.

The story of David's moral failure is not done yet, because we still have to talk about Abishag the Shunamite, who was a young, pretty slave girl whose job it was to keep David warm in bed.  After various rapes, murders and revolutions this seems like small potatoes, but it caps off the reality that you probably shouldn't be using David to justify the way you treat women, he was not a good role model.

This sort of behavior is always a danger to the Kingdom, it always needs to be challenged, it always needs to be named.  We are in the process of the most recent round of challenges.  What we should repent of is the reality that we let it get this far and stink this bad.  It's shaping up to be that this can't be a one sided repentance either.  Left and right both have their share of abusers.  We need to work on this thing really seriously, but please save me your shock and surprise, it's not like it's new.