I was riding shotgun in a tiny, purple, Honda Civic on a cold, icy, and wintery evening. I was 17 years old, and my girlfriend was driving us to her house. It was a brand new car. Very shiny. She had even custom designed her mudflaps with a picture of the Tasmanian Devil on them for some asinine reason. She loved her shiny purple Civic. And that's why she drove white-knuckled that evening, gripping her wheel extra tight. Even though we were in Texas, we had been hit with a snow and ice-storm that turned all of our roads into . . . well . . . ice. It was slippery. It was the kind of evening where you give yourself a few extra minutes to get where you need to go, and you still end up late. Every nudge in the steering wheel threatened to send your vehicle into a freak tailspin. Partly because I was an adrenaline junky, and partly because I enjoyed the look of sheer panic on her face, I decided to play a joke on her. We were in a residential neighborhood with low traffic. So as she gingerly tried to roll her steering wheel to turn a corner on those icy roads, I reached down with my left hand and pulled up the emergency brake. . .
I tell this story because I think there is something very interesting about control, the fear of losing control and it's relationship to insecurities. I'm attmpting to re-enter my little blogging project "The Real Saul," looking at Saul's life from 1 Samuel, and looking at life lessons we can draw from his battle with deep insecurities. Here's the passage for today: 1 Sam. 14:24-48. This is a strange passsage. I think it's the first time that you really start to see Saul's leadership disintegrate from lazy and sloppy to downright ridiculous. Why did he become such a poor leader? I think it has to do with the insecurities he let creep back into his life.
Here's what happened: Saul and his troops were trying to finish off those pesky Philistines by chasing them through the Hill Country of Ephraim. But as they pursued their enemy, he made his soldiers swear an oathe that they would not eat anything the whole day. If they ate anything, they'd be put to death. Unfortunately, his own son, Jonathan, didn't get the memo, so as they walked through the woods, Jonathan saw some honey and ate it without a second thought. The rest of the soldiers were so famished by the end of their battle that they took all of their enemy's livestock and ripped into them like a pack of wild wolves . . . eating the meat uncooked and rare, which is a big Jewish "no-no." Again, Saul tried to control the situation by making atonement offerings to God. But all Hell broke loose when Saul found out that his son, Jonathan, had unknowingly broken the oathe. Jonathan partook of the forbidden honey. So Saul said, "May God deal with me every-so severely if you do not die, Jonathan" (not exactly "father-of-the-year" material). Luckily, Saul's soldiers were significantly more level-headed than their king, and they rescued Jonathan from infanticide
So the first question we have to ask is, "Why in the world would an army general be so stupid that he would deprive his soldiers of food prior to battle?" If I was about to go to battle, I think I'd pump my soldiers full of Spaghetti and Red Bull. . . get some carbs goin'. Not Saul. Oh no. Saul starved his troops. Nothing like swinging a sword on an empty stomach. Now, everyone seemed to recognize how boneheaded Saul was being. Even his own son, Jonathan, said, "How much better it would have been if the men had eaten today." So why did he do it? Here's my theory: I THINK IT WAS ALL ABOUT CONTROL.
Up until this point we have seen a man who had been given as much power and influence as God had given any man. He was the first ever king of Israel. It was difficult for Saul to believe he was worthy to be king, but God told him he was. And for awhile he seemed to embrace that calling, and act with the clarity, power, and faith that God's spirit instilled within him. But soon, his confidence slipped, and with it, he became sloppy, and Saul's deepest fears that he was never fit to be king started to affect his actions. That's a frightening place to be emotionally. And I think what happens to many people when they become plagued by their insecurities is they tend to over-compenate in that area with absolute, unilateral control. Saul was insecure about his capability as king. He was afraid he might be replaced. So he tried to compensate for that insecurity with a ridiculous aray of authoritarian measures-- including forcing all of his soldiers to go without food prior to battle.
Just think about it. If you want to have control over a group of people and let them know you have control of them, what better way to do so than by controlling their eating habits. Remember "You're going to bed with no supper!"? It's the ultimate technique in control and discipline. Consider people with eating disorders. Most counselors will tell you that eating disorders such as bulemia and anorexia aren't caused by of a person's incessant need to live up to the images of super-models. Rather, eating disorders are all about control. Many women feel an incredible lack of control over their lives, and they develop eating disorders to cope with that fear because their caloric intake is perhaps the only thing over which they have absolute authority. They starve themselves so they can have something to control.
See, I think the areas where we tend to become crazy control-freaks are actually the areas of our greatest weakness and insecurity. If you excessively exercise, that's a means of control over some kind of image insecurity . . . and not only an image insecurity about weight. I think alot of people who excercise excessively (like hours and hours a day) are people who have below average height or some other image issue that's unrelated to excerice. You can control excercise. You can't control height. Consider the person who tends to be the overly-controlling partner in a relationship. What are they compensating for? Probably some sort of insecurity about intimacy and love. Or the employer who governs his employees with a dictatorial iron fist: I think those very bosses often use unhealthy control tactics as a way of masking deep insecurities concerning their leadership ability and sense of influence. The thing is, as our insecurities take root in our hearts and begin to mushroom, I think we often feel the compulsion to tighten our grip over the things we can control. The problem is, like a tiny, purple, Honda Civic, spinning in circles on an icy road, the tightness of our grip has little to do with the traction under our feet.
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