The Dangers of Simplistic Religion - Reflections on 1 Kings 8 for Proper 16, Year B

by John Holbert on Tuesday, August 20, 2024

I have long lamented the fact that the stupendously gifted narrator who gave us the astonishing tales of Saul, Samuel, and David in 1 and 2 Samuel did not continue that work when the story of Solomon was written. Only on occasion were the rich and complex stories of Israel’s third king able to overcome the rigid and hide-bound theology of the Deuteronomist, that 7th century ideologue whose simplistic understanding of the divine-human relationships has so negatively influenced much theological conversation through the 2700 years that followed that presentation. 1 Kings 8 and its very long Solomonic prayer at the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem well summarizes the narrow theology that continues to this day to be found in far too many of our churches.

          In 66 verses of increasingly deadening piety, King Solomon prays his dedicatory prayer, saying again and again in monotonous verbiage that the God he has come to celebrate will pay attention only to those of the Davidic line who act in the ways that true piety insists on, namely that because God has fulfilled the promises made to David by allowing David’s son, Solomon, to build the house that David wished to build but was forbidden to do so, worship in the Temple will offer to all the truly pious rich blessings and full forgiveness from that same God. However, behind this language rests a terrible and painful reality: David was far from the exemplar of perfect piety, as any reading of the previous long stories about him make all too clear.

          When Solomon claims with fulsome language, “YHWH, God of Israel, there is no God like you in the sky above nor on the earth beneath, keeping covenant and unbreakable love (chesed) for your servants who walk before you with all their heart, the covenant you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand” (1 Kings 8:23-24), he assumes that his father David was some sort of moral and religious paragon, and that all who would follow YHWH must emulate that David. But what we already know of David calls into the most serious question any idea that he is any sort of paragon, any kind of model for our emulation. “Be like David,” Solomon intones, when the reality is that we are too much like David, and instead of possessing a Davidic piety, we possess lives prone to egregious sins, such as David made plain in 2 Samuel 11.

          Thus, when Solomon employs examples of true pious actions—such as when one sins against a neighbor and comes to the Temple to swear an oath, in order that YHWH may discern the righteous from the guilty, rewarding the former and punishing the latter (1 Kings 8:31-32), or when the whole nation sins so as to be defeated by enemies, they then turn to “confess your name,” thus leading to God’s forgiveness by returning them to the land of promise—the overly simple “do this and receive that” kind of interchange is established, implying a magic tit for tat connection between human actions and divine response. Surely, no serious person imagines that such simple realtionships in reality exist. When there is drought on the land, right prayer leads to rain (1 Kings 8:35-36), and when there is famine, or enemies, or plague, or blight, or mildew, all one need do is take “the good way in which they should walk” (1 Kings 8:36), and all will be made well again.

          Too often in our own time, we have seen desperate people, eager for rain or anxious to save their crops, turn to heartfelt prayer to implore God to give rain or food. Religious people act in these magic ways precisely because Solomon’s 2700 year-old prayer offers to them a talisman they think they may use to bring down divine blessing in response. The power of Deuteronomic simplicity is alive in our time, and I would it was not. I am not opposed to prayer, but prayers that seek to reverse the natural order of things, to bid a cancer disappear, to cause rain from a dry sky, to urge plants to grow where they plainly cannot, is foolishness, a magical way of thinking that we should avoid. We pray to connect ourselves to the ongoing work of God and God’s hopes for the world, not to coerce that God to break the forces of nature for our limited human desires.

          We would do far better to look deeply into our own selves and deeply into the many ways that our human actions have affected the rainfall, from pouring increasing amounts of carbon into our air to over-fertilizing our soil to limit its productivity. Our prayer could be for a decreased carbon footprint for all of us and for an organic way to approach the production of our food. Frankly, I find Solomon’s prayer here vacuous, if not dangerous in its simplistic connections between our actions and the responses of God. Because we are in fact like the sinning David, we need first genuine repentance in order to connect ourselves with the God who wishes for us shalom, for human wholeness.