Today's
Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 22
Sometimes
morality can be tricky. It doesn't seem like it should be, but it is.
During World War II, morality sometimes seemed to be fluid. At least,
that seemed to be the case for King Leopold III of Belgium. As the
Nazi threat seemed to grow prior to the start of World War II,
Leopold was encouraged to join with France and Britain in their
struggle against Germany. But Leopold was proud of Belgium neutrality
in Europe and he was sure that Germany would also respect that
tradition. He also believed that Belgium was ready to defend herself
against any Nazi aggression. And so Leopold chose to simply not take
sides. As the war raged all around him, Belgium maintained her
position as a neutral nation.
But
all of that changed when the battle for France began to deteriorate.
Emboldened by his victories in Europe, Hitler set his sights on
Belgium. As the threat grew the government increasingly begged their
king to escape to Britain, asking him to maintain a Belgium
government in exile there. But the king was hesitant to leave his
country. His fear was that the people would regard his flight to
Britain as abandoning them. Leopold had taken charge if the Belgium
military, and he insisted that he would stay and share the same
consequences that would be suffered by his troops. On May 27, 1940,
Leopold surrendered to Germany. The political fall-out was immediate.
The king did not possess the constitutional ability to surrender.
That decision was a political one, and not a military one, and so it
belonged only to the sitting government. The Allied powers,
especially their news organizations, began to call him names. He was
the 'Traitor King' or 'King Rat.' Leopold refused to run a puppet
government under Hitler and so the Germans implemented a military
government, reducing Leopold to essentially a prisoner of war.
Following the war, Leopold was exonerated of any charges, but the
damage was already done and his morality was tarnished. In 1950 he
was forced to abdicate in favor of his son. Even though history
seems to record that Leopold acted morally, at the time that morality
was severely questioned, and in the eyes of many Leopold III was just
another traitor.
For
Saul, the reverse was true. Where Leopold had tried to keep the
demands of his personal morality even under questionable
circumstances, Saul had completely lost his moral focus. The command
to kill the priests of Nob was just the latest evidence of the king's
immorality. And the command to kill the priests revealed that lack of
morality and called for an action among the people, specifically his
guard. So as Saul calls for the guard to kill the priests, the guard
is presented with an uncomfortable choice. They could respond to the
king's command – and essentially to a morality that was derived
from the king - and kill the priests, or they could refuse any part
in what was clearly seen as an immoral action against their God.
The
decision of the guards was to refuse to follow the king. In this
action they honored their God more than they honored their king. But
it was more than just simply a fear of God and a breaking of his
morality that kept the guards from killing the priests, it was also a
futile attempt to protect the king from making a mistake from which
he might not be able to recover. We can almost hear the voices of the
guards begging their king not to do this evil thing. But that seemed
to be something that the king was too far gone to recognize. All he
knew was that his orders had to be obeyed, and that the priests must
die.
Tomorrow
Scripture Reading: Psalm 57
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