The Real Saul: Introduction

A few days ago, I finished blogging through the book of Second Corinthians, and in the next few days, I'm going to start a new project and conversation.  I'm going to do a character study of Saul from the book of 1 Samuel.  Recently I've thought alot about Saul.  Saul was the first anointed king of Israel, he was the predecessor to David, and a tragic figure in the history of Israel.  He lost his throne to David and spent much of his life as a blood-thirsty villain.  I'd always been taught in seminary that Saul's problem was his extreme hubris (the seminary-ish word for pride), and THAT was the root of Saul's downfall.  He was just too darn proud.

But the last time I read through 1 Samuel, I don't know if it was because of what was happening in my life at the time or because I was looking at the text with fresh eyes, but I started to see Saul differently. 

It was easy to make Saul into a villain and write him off as a prideful tyrant, but I couldn't do that anymore.  For the first time, I saw a guy who was a lot more like me than I wanted him to be.  Saul's problem wasn't that he was an egomaniac, or that he was too arrogant.  His problem was the opposite.   It was that he was incredibly insecure.  Sometimes insecurities can look like pride on the outside, but on the inside it feels different.  To be sure we're all on the same page, this is what I mean by an insecurity: an insecurity is a false, negative belief about what and who you are despite the fact that God has told you you are something and somebody different.  

Most Christians have at least a cerebral understanding that God thinks highly of us.  God considers us his children, his beloved, his kingdom of priests.  These are all theological realities many of us have learned in Sunday School songs since we were in diapers.  But insecurities always challenge the things we understand to be true cerebrally by planting seeds of doubt concerning ourselves deep within our souls.  Sometimes we don't even realize that particular insecurity is there.  Sometimes we know it's there, but we've bought into it's lie.  Sometimes, we know it's there, we don't want to believe it, we know we shouldn't believe it, but that same false belief creeps into our lives over and over and over again.  I wonder how many of the negative emotions and behaviors I've experienced in my life were directly motivated by some kind of insecurity I wrestle with. 

And that is the foundation, I believe, of Saul's story.  He was a person who wrestled with one significant insecurity throughout his life.  It was that little voice that tormented him, that little doubt that defied all logic and theological grounding: God told Saul he was king, but Saul could never bring himself to fully believe it or embrace it.  I think this insecurity was the root of Saul's tragic life.  So, as I said, I'm going to spend the next few weeks (months?) looking at Saul, his life and why I believe the biggest lessons we can learn from him are about our own insecurities.