As you are fully aware, we are in political election season. While we probably immediately think about the presidential election, let’s remember that the elections cover state and national congressional and senate races also. Perhaps the campaigning makes you mad. Perhaps it makes you anxious about the future. I don’t know of anyone who is happy about it all, so I won’t include, “Perhaps it makes you happy.” Or perhaps you don’t care at all. Although if you don’t care, then I remind you that it is your duty as a citizen of a democracy to care!
Regardless of how you feel about the elections, I invite you to take what is perhaps an eccentric critical view. As you see ads and hear debates pay attention to how the candidates vie to claim the moral high ground for themselves. Perhaps it has to do with: sexual ethics, or race issues, or gender issues, or environment, or labor, or finances, or international issues, or whatever it may be; all of it is rooted in some sort of maneuver to claim the moral high ground over an opponent. No candidate ever says, “I am the scum of the earth and so is my ideology. Therefore you should vote for me!” No, they try to claim some sort of fundamental moral superiority.
This should not surprise us. No one wants to vote for someone immoral. And if a candidate does have qualities considered to be immoral, they either try to hide them or excuse them.
This desire for the moral high ground goes for more than just politics. Everyone does it. When you feel you have successfully taken the high ground for yourself you can look down upon others in righteous judgment. It’s a good feeling. The reverse is horrible. You certainly don’t like it when someone tries to say that you, or your perspective, on things is fundamentally immoral. It is far easier to be the one on the high ground and righteously forgiving people, rather than be in the position of admitting that you are wrong and bad, and that you need to beg for forgiveness and change.
Writings like Psalm 51 do not find any place in our political landscape today – or really any part of our society. Yet it is of great importance.
Psalm 51 presents itself as King David’s response to the prophet Nathan when Nathan pointed out David’s sins with Bathsheba. I have never understood why David is raised up as a great king. Or why the bloodline of David is considered essential for Jewish kings. David was not a nice guy. The Bible describes him as: deceitful, cunning, arrogant, and overall highly immoral. He breaks five of the Ten Commandments. With the Bathsheba episode alone he overtly breaks three, and subtly breaks more. He is two-faced and even somewhat treasonous. 2 Samuel 7 even describes God’s displeasure with David. David decides he wants to build a temple to God – this is after first building a palace for himself. God says no way. No way is a killer like David going to build a house for God. If we turn to 1 Chronicles 22:6 God says to David, “You shall not build a house to my name because you have shed so much blood before me upon the earth.”
David did have moral guides in his life. The prophet Nathan was one of them. His first wife, Michel also gave him lots of great moral and political advice. All of which he ignored.
David could never claim any moral high ground for himself. There seem to be two things that made him the model king. First, he did tend to turn to God. He was faithful in that regard, even as he basically ignored God’s morality. Second, and I think this one is actually the key, he knew he was a sinner. And he was not an accidental sinner, he knew what he did was often flagrantly wrong.
We cannot excuse David’s bad morality, but if Psalm 51 is any indication of his soul, his awareness of his sinfulness played a significant role in his leadership. Perhaps that awareness was regularly with him. That is a very significant thing.
A. Whitney Brown has pointed out, “Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It’s very embarrassing.” (The Big Picture: An American Commentary, New York: Harper Perennial, 1991, pg. 12) In the New Interpreter’s Bible theologian, J. Clinton McCann Jr. says that the Exodus story is one of embarrassing mistakes. “David’s story and the history of the subsequent monarchy are indeed very embarrassing. So is the psalmist’s story in Psalm 51. So is the behavior of the disciples in the Gospels. So is the situation of the early church, revealed in the letters of Paul.”
The Bible is many things. I suppose among them is that it is the embarrassing story of human faith.
McCann goes on, “[Also embarrassing] is the history of the Christian church throughout the centuries. So are the denominational and congregational lives of the contemporary church. So are the details of our life stories, if we are honest enough to admit it. In short, Psalm 51 is not just about Israel or David or some unknown ancient psalmist; it is also about us! It is about who we are and how we are as individuals, families, churches – sin pervades our lives. It’s very embarrassing.” (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IV, Pg. 888)
You want the Bible to speak truth in a clear, undeniable, absolute way? Turn to Psalm 51!
We have this craving to claim the moral high ground for ourselves. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think we’ve achieved it.
Psalm 51 says, “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.” That is linking sex to sin. Many people have done that over the centuries. But that is a misinterpretation. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of the inevitability of human failing.
Somehow, for some reason, we humans do not believe that God really and truly made us complete and good. We insist that we can improve ourselves, or that fulfillment is to be found on our own terms and not God’s. It’s very embarrassing. It’s history. Ultimately there is no such thing as the “moral high ground”. The quest for the moral high ground is a sin in and of itself. The fact that we want the moral high ground is, ironically, proof of our sinful nature.
History is not in our favor. And if history is any indication, things are not going to ever truly improve. That doesn’t do well in a political campaign though. But here is the good news.
Perhaps the Bible is a very lengthy and highly embarrassing account of humanity. We mess up. We mess everything up!
God is with us. God has been with us. God will always be with us. We need to keep trying, we need to work hard not to be immoral, but we have to admit to ourselves that we’ll never succeed. And that even so we’ll never succeed we have to keep trying.
St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” That is not some renewed and more clever attempt at perfection, for that is just more of the ways of the world. It is the admission of the need for grace. And then, that recognition is what God can authentically work with.
There is never space for judgment and high morality when you know you are a sinner who will do embarrassing things. But God makes a new creation of those who know they need grace. Psalm 51 names our deep desires for self-rightness and points us directly to our need for God.
It is a blessed thing to live in God’s grace. It is a blessed relief to give up the quest for the moral high ground, and instead be free to live as God’s people.
Take a deep breath. God has this. God holds you. God holds our nation. What is certain is that we will continue to mess up. And what is certain is that God will continue to be faithful to us.
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