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The biggest failure in the Bible
Let's hear it for King Saul
It's a competitive field, but in the end I picked King Saul as the biggest failure in the Bible. This is my final extract from my forthcoming book 'The Sandwich', about living sandwiched between God's promises and the ambiguities, conflicts and disappointments of Planet Earth. Like the other chapters, as you may know by now, it started life as an article for a Singaporean magazine, and was written for the many new Christians in that growing Christian community.
To be the biggest failure in the Bible you have to have a shot at being one of its greatest successes. This rules out a lot of people, such as Trophimus the Ephesian. In just three verses, this unheralded character manages to (a) be the reason for the major riot in Jerusalem that put the apostle Paul in prison and (b) to fall sick in Miletus and not to be healed by that same great Apostle.
Trophimus, in other words, is forever getting in the way. But despite his high failure coefficient he is only a minor player in the grand story of redemption, so we strike him off our list. We might rule out Judas Iscariot for similar reasons. No-one in the whole Bible got it more wrong. The frightful verdict on his life, courtesy of Jesus himself, is 'it would be better for him if he had not been born' (Mark 14:21). That's certainly failure enough. May it never be said of us.
But Judas was only one of twelve apostles, and he was quickly replaced. The story went on without him. Let's also give the Old Testament figure Samson the push. Samson was the prototype charismatic-leader-traffic-accident-waiting-to-happen, impressive gifts, unimpressive integrity. His life came literally crashing down but, still, Samson was a single judge, one of many in Israel, in a time when many were mucking things up. A sad example of a malfunctioning leader, yet not the Bible's greatest failure.
Instead let's try someone who could have been one of the leading figures in the whole history of redemption, a major player, who yet fell almost as far as it is possible to go. Our vote goes to Saul, first king of Israel.
'Hapless'
The word 'hapless' could have been invented for Saul. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Hapless thus: 'destitute of or lacking good fortune; unfortunate, unlucky. Hence also in later use: incompetent, clumsy.' There is just something doomed about Saul. It's made all the worse by his undoubted courage, good looks, and earnest efforts. Saul was a trier and had enough talent and potential to crash and burn while others had barely enough qualities to get off the runway.
Part of his haplessness was his capacity for public relations disasters. Saul strides onto the pages of the Bible not like David, fighting Goliath, nor like the Apostle Paul, helping kill the first Christian martyr (which at least demonstrated potential and commitment, albeit needing a little re-direction). No, Saul makes his entrance searching for donkeys, at which it is hard to look good. People who are looking for things are very irritating to people who are not looking for things, especially perhaps when those things are really big and furry and obviously not there.
Does Saul then redeem himself by demonstrating astonishing skills in tracking? He does not. Instead, it's recorded that his dad started to worry about him, which since Saul was a tall and scary grown man, and only perhaps 20 miles from home, is again not a massive vote of confidence.
It's left to Saul's servant to suggest they visit the prophet Samuel whose prophetic gifts may stretch to donkey-location services. Saul agrees, but, predictably, doesn't have any money. Perhaps he left his credit cards at home, another winning trait in a would-be leader of men. The servant stumps up the cash, and, so far, looks a far better man for a crisis than Saul himself.
Saul the hero
Yet despite the inauspicious start, Saul becomes king and does well for a time, against very difficult odds. Israel was overrun with the Philistines, who had a properly organized standing army, unlike Israel. The Philistines had the technological mastery, controlling all the iron manufacture. Coming from the smallest tribe, Saul lacked a power base. Worse, he also had to combat the prophet Samuel who was grumpy about the whole idea of Israel having a king. They had not had one before. Samuel, it seemed, was only allowing it because God had told him to, not because he personally thought it was a good idea.
You didn't mess with Samuel, he could summon earthquakes with prayer, but like many leaders he had a bit of a blind spot when it came to his own family. At the time of Saul's election, Samuel's sons were running the country — badly. So there was a ticklish issue for a new king's in-tray. The old leader's sons aren't up to the job, political reform is needed, but the decrepit old boy in charge can't face the facts.
Yet Saul made a good fist of being king. He rescued the threatened city of Jabesh Gilead by personally calling and leading an army. Aided by his son Jonathan, he inflicted spectacular damage on the Philistines against fierce odds. He fought off other raiders, surrounded himself with good people, declined to be vindictive against his political enemies, and was personally modest in his kingly lifestyle.
Samuel went into retirement and no more was heard of his sons. Saul knew, if he obeyed God, his kingdom could last forever. We have to believe that it was at least conceivable that Saul could have been what David later became– the first king in a glorious, eternal line.
Yet it all fell apart. The honest, modest king morphed into a depressed, paranoid monster. He resorted to using a medium — I think the only godly leader in the whole Bible who has sunk to consulting the spirits of the dead. And then he, his sons and his armourbearer all died in a decisive battle against the resurgent Philistines that set Israel's cause back for a long time.
Saul's fall
Saul got little credit for the good stuff but instead faced the full wrath of Samuel when he made two judgement calls in extremely pressed circumstances. It is, perhaps, another sign of the hapless: you get your appraisal done when you are having an extremely bad day. First, Samuel had told Saul to go to a mustering ground called Gilgal before a battle with the Philistines and wait seven days until Samuel arrived. Saul had done as asked, watching while the Philistine forces multiplied around them. Saul's own army, just six hundred strong, was starting to desert. The seven days passed. The forthcoming battle looked terrible. Rather than wait any longer for Samuel, Saul himself made sacrifices to God — and then Samuel turned up and condemned him. Samuel didn't apologize. Paraphrasing Tolkien's Gandalf the Grey, Samuel might have said, 'Late? A prophet is never late!'
The second time, Samuel ordered Saul to kill and destroy every living thing among the Amalekites, men, women, children, cattle — a brutal, rare and difficult ask for the king. Saul's army did not seem overly troubled by hacking the heads off babies or slicing open pregnant women (this was a ruthless era, rather like our own), but they did object to seeing all that juicy beef going up in smoke uneaten. Steak won out over submission, and Saul didn't stop his army's ox-roast, and Samuel condemned him again, and removed his blessing.
You can say this is all a bit unfair. Saul was attempting to show leadership in terrible times. Things were going wrong all around him. Bloodshed was not far off. Who, in a war, gets all the decisions right? Desperate days require brave decisions. What would you do if your army was falling apart while you waited for a prophet to show up? How well would you fare when your hungry men wanted a well-earned barbecue and you were the only one blocking the way?
Anyway, didn't other leaders in the Bible commit worse sins than Saul and not get deblessed, as Saul was? Abraham took things into his own hands when he fathered Ishmael rather than wait for Isaac. King David committed both murder and adultery. When in danger of their lives, the apostle Peter denied Jesus three times. Other apostles found they had urgent appointments elsewhere. Saul, by way of refreshing change, hardly ducked a fight in his life.
Saul's problem
So how did he end up as the Bible's biggest failure? First we note that it's in the times of deepest stress that we reveal who we really are. It honestly isn't all that hard to seem to be living a godly life when the seas are calm and the skies are blue. Only stress shows our true colours. So we shouldn't be surprised that it took difficult days to expose Saul's heart.
Second, God is God and he has the right to deal with disobedience in his servants differently. Abraham took matters into his own hands. So did Saul. Different circumstances and capacities were on show, but it was the same sin at its root. So perhaps in a sense the Bible is harsh on Saul, or at least gentle on Abraham. May God be gentle on us too!
Yet, third, Saul's fatal error really was a fatal error, and it set him apart in my view from Abraham and David and the apostles. Running through his life was a tendency, which wasn't a technical mishap, or a minor misjudgement; it was, finally, a misunderstanding of everything important about how God and people relate. Saul's regular mistake was to think God wants us to sort things out for ourselves, cope as best we can. Saul was talented enough to make this work for a time. But that isn't what God wants. God wants us to trust him with our lives.
At Gilgal, the sacrifices honestly didn't matter; trusting God did. So your army's deserting while Samuel shows every sign of being caught in the traffic around Jericho? Trust God anyway. So your hungry army is mutinously eyeing up some fatted calves? Stand in their way. Trust and obey God. See if they'll really kill a king, or, muttering darkly, obey God after all.
Flawed like Saul
Haplessness haunted Saul. Worse, he then let jealousy gnaw at him unchecked and as an older man became paranoid and vindictive. But the truth is we are all like that. That isn't Saul's unique problem. We are all flawed like Saul, fatally flawed, each in our own way. Saul's real problem was not that he was fatally flawed, but that he didn't throw his fatally flawed self on the mercies and adequacies of God.
His real failure was a failure simply to trust and obey: 'Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time."' (1 Sam 13:13) and 'Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord; he did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance, and did not enquire of the Lord. So the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse.' (1 Chron 10:13-14)
I feel for Saul. I think he was a put in a job too difficult for him, and certainly at first he tried his very best to make it work, earnest, brave, modest, sincere. The problem was, that isn't how it works between people and God. We are all in roles too difficult for us. We all have impossible jobs. 'Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did' says the first letter of John (1 John 2:6) How possible is that? It isn't.
The people who please God fall into the arms of the One who justifies the ungodly and the hapless and the useless. Through faith people conquer kingdoms. Through faith they live and die bravely. Through nakedly trusting God they take on armies. Through simple, trusting obedience they cheerfully face down the impossible. Better to die trusting God, they argue, rightly, than live relying on ourselves.
What can we learn from the Bible's biggest failure? Don't have fatal character weaknesses? No–we all do. Trust God with all your heart. Follow his commands rather than your own wisdom. Trust him unto death. Quite a lesson.
Fate and luck
The solution to all our problems
Author glenn.myersPosted on December 5, 2020 September 18, 2020 Categories 'The Sandwich', Hmmm, Long read, Magazine article
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