When I was back at Asbury a few weeks ago I went out for a run one afternoon and somehow wound up in the town cemetery. I’ve always had an interest in cemeteries, which I guess comes from being a historian. When Jennifer and I were dating, whenever we’d pass a cemetery in Western PA I wanted to stop and look for Civil War or Revolutionary War veterans. Somehow, she married me anyway.
I slowed down there in the cemetery when I came across the grave stone for one of my beloved professors who had taught my pastoral care classes back in the early 90s. It was from this professor, whose name was David, that I got my foundational education in pastoral ministry—how to work with people in crisis, how to help couples move toward healing in their relationships. I recorded every lecture and still have all the tapes. He had been a missionary to India, was the author of many books, was highly respected in the United Methodist denomination. Every class was a form of healing for all of us there. Jennifer and I also went on a Marriage Encounter weekend that was led by this professor and his wife. It was extremely helpful to us and to many of the other student couples that were there. David was one of my biggest influences during those seminary years.
A couple of years ago, however, it came to light that while he was teaching us about the sanctity of marriage and how to work with people dealing with the brokenness of extramarital affairs, he himself had been harboring a secret—that he had had an affair with a member of his congregation over the course of many years just before he became a professor at the seminary. When the story broke, David, now in his early 80s, had to confess that it was true. It was a devastating admission. He died a year or so later.
Seeing his grave that afternoon really got me thinking about all of that, the disappointment, the shock, but also about something else we had been talking about in one of my doctoral classes. The question we were wrestling with was this—how does a person “finish well?” Over and over again we hear stories about people whose public life was one of success, admiration, and a golden reputation…only to learn later that, in private, their lives were broken. Often, that brokenness finds its way outward in a risky or sinful behavior that, when discovered and brought to light, can destroy not only that person’s reputation but shake the faith of those who put their trust in him or her. We’ve seen plenty of high profile cases like this: think of Ted Haggard, the megachurch minister, who was caught doing the very thing he was preaching against; or John Edwards, the presidential candidate, who wrecked his career by having an affair with another women while his wife was dealing with cancer.
We may look on and be appalled, maybe even wag our fingers or get angry, but the truth is that all of us, and I do mean all of us, are susceptible to this kind of life-shattering behavior. I heard a quote this week that I thought was very powerful: Character is what you are. Reputation is what others think you are. When one’s character and reputation aren’t compatible, it will eventually lead to disaster.
The story of the biblical David represents this truth for us in a very powerful and convicting way. If you are reading along with us through the Bible you covered a lot of his story over the past couple of weeks and time doesn’t permit me to retell it all (there’s a whole sermon series there in itself). Yet, even if you aren’t too familiar with the whole story, you know at least part of it. You know how David, as a young shepherd boy, slays the Philistine giant Goliath with just a sling and a stone. David is anointed king in place of Saul, who we profiled last Sunday. Saul is fiercely jealous of David and wants him dead, so David flees into the wilderness and puts together his own band of warriors. But instead of exacting revenge on Saul, David bides his time and continues to serve God by cunningly manipulating and raiding the enemies of Israel. Even when David has an opportunity to kill Saul and end his exile, David refuses to do so. He is fully committed to serving God and, as a result, achieves great success. When Saul dies on the battlefield, David is formally made king and leads Israel into a period of great prosperity and peace. He is offered a covenant by God, that God will build his “house,” his lineage, and establish it forever. The writer of 1 Samuel characterizes David as “a man after God’s own heart.” Biblically speaking, it’s hard to imagine a finer thing to say about someone.
But success is a dangerous thing. Success can breed a sense of invulnerability and a desire to keep up appearances at all costs. When you’re at the top of the heap, you can’t show any weakness, any struggles. And so you begin to compromise your character and, perhaps even more dangerously, you begin to see others as less important than yourself. Worse, you begin to see them as less than people.
I read a great book this week that’s been on my shelf for awhile. Someone left it in my mailbox a couple of years ago, anonymously, but as I was looking over my library for help with this week’s text I came across it again. It’s a book entitled, Leadership and Self-Deception and, when I started looking it over, it hooked me so much that I read it in an afternoon.
The basic premise is this: that all of us have a problem and that problem is that we each have a tendency to believe that other peoples’ needs and desires are not as important as our own. The book calls that state of thinking “self deception” or, more graphically, being “in the box.” When we’re “in the box” we are focused on self and others are seen as problems or as objects to be manipulated for our own purposes. From our boxes, we find it easy to blame others or we begin to believe that we deserve certain things that others just aren’t giving us.
How do we get in the box? Well, it happens when we choose not to do the things we know we should do. Here’s a simple example: I come home from work and notice that the dishwasher is full and ready to be emptied. Now I’m confronted with a choice: I can simply empty the dishwasher, which is what I know deep down I can do and should do. Or, I can choose to leave it full. Now, why would I do that? Well, maybe it’s because I did it last time. Or maybe it’s because my spouse was home all day and “should have” done it. After all, what else did she have to do? Or that my kids are too lazy and maybe they should do it. Suddenly, I’m no longer thinking of the other people in my house as people with their own plans and agendas, their own busy lives. I’ve suddenly made it all about me. I’ve put myself firmly in the box. And when I’m in the box, my biggest problem is that I don’t realize that I’m the problem. I blame others, but I’m really betraying myself. And the worst part of it all? I chose to be in that box without even realizing it.
See, when I’m in the box I can wind up inflating others’ faults, inflating my own virtue, and inflating the value of the things that justify my self-betrayal. In other words, I’ll make a bigger deal out of my “busyness” or the need to teach the others a lesson. Lastly, I’ll blame them for the whole situation in the first place. Now, that seems like a lot of work…probably more than emptying the dishwasher, eh?
Now, I read this book at the same time I was preparing this week’s sermon and two things occurred to me. One, whoever gave me this book did so for a reason and now I get it! As a leader, I’ve sometimes had a tendency to put myself in the box—to think of the church more as an organization than a collection of people with their own hopes and dreams and feelings and their own boxes. As a leader, I’m prone to wanting to take credit for all the success but blame the failure on others. It’s a classic pitfall of leadership. So, to whoever gave me this book I want to say a big thanks! Message received!
But the second thing I learned is that the real secret to finishing well has a lot to do with staying out of the box. My theory is this: the more one is concerned about one’s reputation over and above one’s character, the deeper they go into the box and the more likely they are to fail.
Look at what happens to David in 2 Samuel. He is the King. He has all the success in the world. But look closely at the first verse of chapter 11: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army…But David remained in Jerusalem.” Here is David, whom God had made successful and who was always out in front with his troops, leading them by example, now making a different choice. He knows that’s where he’s supposed to be, but he chooses to stay back. Why should he go out and risk his neck? It’s somebody else’s turn. I do and do for these people and now it’s time for a break.
So there he is, lounging on his couch, strolling around the roof when from his high perch he sees a beautiful woman bathing on her own roof. Here again is another choice. David knows this woman is off limits to him, but he’s in the box. So, he thinks to himself, “Wait a minute…I’m the king. I can have whatever I want! I deserve it, nobody else knows the strain I’m under. My other wives give me grief all the time, blah, blah, blah. In the box, David sees only himself. Bathsheba, the woman on the roof, is simply an object to him that he wants for his own self-gratification. He knows she can’t refuse him, he’s in a position of power over her, so he sends for her and he has a sexual affair with her.
But then she’s pregnant. He’s in his box and that’s a threat to his reputation, so he starts manipulating people like pawns. He tries to get her husband, Uriah, a loyal soldier, to come home from battle and sleep with her so that everyone will think the baby is his. But Uriah isn’t in the box. Look at his response in v. 11: “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!”
Notice the contrast. Uriah’s only concern is his fellow soldiers still in the field. Unlike David, he chose to do what was right, what a good soldier would do. David tries a second time to get him to go in to his wife by getting him drunk, but even then Uriah is loyal.
So, David, now needing to scramble for a cover-up, decides to have Uriah killed. To demonstrate the extent to which David was deep in the box, look at verse 14-15. David orders the army commander to put Uriah in the front of the fiercest fighting so that he’ll be killed, but get this—he has Uriah be the one to deliver the order!
Things were spiraling out of control. Uriah is killed. David gets Bathsheba for himself as a kind of trophy. And he stays in the box. When the prophet Nathan confronts him by telling him a story about a rich man who steals a poor man’s beloved sheep for himself, David is enraged. He says to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die!” He still doesn’t realize that he is the problem! That is, until Nathan utters those convicting words:
“You are the man!”
How many leaders, how many pastors, how many husbands or wives, how many people have gone up like a rocket in success, but have come crashing down like a stick because they became so deep in their boxes that they never realized that they were the problem?
As I stood at look at the grave of the David I had respected so much I couldn’t help but feel a shudder of fear. What would it be like to have worked so hard, to do so much good, to be loved and respected so much, only to be remembered by many, in the end, as a failure? If it could happen to this David, if it could happen to the David who slew Goliath and was a man after God’s own heart, then surely it could happen to me. Or to anyone.
The results of such a fall are long-reaching. For the David of the Bible, the consequences were grim. The child born of his affair died. His other offspring, sons of different mothers, are rivals of each other and one, Amnon, rapes his half sister and then is himself murdered by her brother in retaliation. Eventually, his own son will try to overthrow his Kingdom in a coup. His son Solomon will build God’s Temple in Jerusalem, but will suffer the same temptations as his father and die under a cloud. Solomon’s sons will spark a civil war that rent Israel in two. All because he chose to do the wrong thing.
There are two lessons I draw from these stories. One has to do with finishing well. How do we do that? How do we avoid the pitfalls of success and the blindness of being in our own boxes?
Well, to begin with, I think it has a lot to do with changing our foundational assumptions about the world. We can’t get out of the box unless we first realize that we’re in it! We need a healthy sense of self-evaluation, to recognize when we’re treating others as less than ourselves, to recognize when we have the opportunity to do the right things. Scripture helps us do that by giving us these stories to ponder over and over. A trusted accountability partner can help with that, too. A wise mentor of mine once said that a key to being a person of integrity is having someone in your life who’s not afraid to tell you when you’re full of it—someone with whom you can be brutally honest about your hopes, your fears, your temptations, your frustrations…someone who will help you realize when you’re in the box! The old adage goes, “It’s lonely at the top,” but it’s that loneliness and isolation that so many successful people experience because they set themselves apart that causes them to go deeper into the box.
The other piece, though, is all about practice. Can you recognize the little places in your life where you’re in the box? When you start thinking that guy who cut you off on the highway is an idiot, or when you start seeing your kids as nuisances when you’ve got important things to do or your conversations with your spouse are only about coordinating schedules or arguments about who’s supposed to take out the trash…that’s when you need to stop and realize that you’re getting in the box. If you can start recognizing that in the little decisions you make every day, then it should be easier to catch yourself when those major temptations come along. Treating others as being as important and valuable as yourself is the best ticket out of the box!
But here’s the other lesson. When we do fail, and even if that failure is a big one. We don’t have to see all hope as being lost. Both Davids I’m talking about today repented of their sin, they took responsibility for their actions and accepted the consequences. God forgave them both. Our relationship with God is never irreparable.
I feel sad for both Davids, but I’m also reminded through them of the grace of God. While we can’t avoid the consequences of our sin, we can be assured that God loves us no matter what and that God wants to restore us to spiritual health and wholeness through his saving love. God’s forgiveness helps us to get out of our boxes and to see others as ourselves—as sinners in need of grace.
So, how about you? Are you in a box this morning? Are you keeping a secret that has the potential to wreck your reputation? Have you been treating others as pawns in the game of your life? If so, it’s time to break out. Confession helps us do that—it helps us to name our pain and our failure and when we name it we have power over it or, better, God’s saving power can overcome it. Who do you need to talk to about your box?
And if you’re feeling like none of this applies to you, well, then you especially need to hear it! Remember, the box is most destructive to us when we don’t realize that we’re in it in the first place.
I want us to share in a prayer this morning…actually, a prayer that the biblical David wrote after his sin. As we pray it, may it become your prayer. It’s an out of the box prayer, one that we all need.
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