Getting things right from the bottom up!

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, Hannah presenting Samuel to Eli

I've been reading the first book of Samuel in the Old Testament. What a gripping historical narrative beginning with Samuel's mother, Hannah, and her longing for a child. God grants her desire and she offers her son, Samuel, to the temple priests as God's servant. 

The prophet Samuel is one of the most important figures in Jewish history. He anointed the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David, after warning the people how displeasing their demand for a king is to God. Samuel gives a staunch example of obedience and fidelity to God.

The book sets before us a cast of fascinating characters witnessing to virtue and vice, good and evil. Samuel proves to be God's special friend, one who has heard Him speak since the time he was a little boy. Samuel's fidelity, virtue, and wisdom shine through all the chapters of the book. He urges the people to follow God's laws and grieves when they choose to disobey. But he is obedient to God's instruction to grant the people's demand for a king.

And who becomes the first king? Saul, who began well, but through his own character flaws and sins loses God's favor. He disobeys and rebels and God allows an evil spirit to torment him. That brings David into the picture who plays on his harp and soothes the king by driving away the evil spirit.

David, a man after God's own heart, is named king to replace the disobedient and rebellious Saul. David's defeat of Goliath and his victories on the battlefield earn him the praise and renown of the people, but the envy and hatred of Saul who once loved him like a son. Despite David's fidelity to him, Saul is determined on murder.

David with the head of Goliath, Caravaggio

Then there is Jonathan, Saul's son and David's close friend. His loyalty to David extends to angering his father and warning David about Saul's murderous plans.

These characters all came to mind because of a recent conversation with a friend who commented that, "We're all one." In a sense that's true, since we are all created by God and are called to "be one as the Father and I are one." But the context of the comment did not have that meaning, and it made me stop and think. Is that true? If someone thanks me for something I did for someone else; is the ungrateful person thanking me as well? If someone slanders a mutual friend, am I also guilty of that slander? 

I don't think so. 

That brought to mind another book, Sartre's novel Nausea, which is nothing like the book of Samuel. I read it in college so my memory of the content is dim, but my overriding impression at this distance is that Sartre's disillusioned and alienated protagonist saw all being melting into a blob of disgusting, pulsating, meaningless nausea. I may be confusing this with his book Being and Nothingness which I also read in a course on metaphysics. Funny, I don't remember reading St. Thomas Aquinas or any of the Fathers of the Church. But my Catholic college was already losing its Catholic identity and the nun teaching the class wasn't much interested in instilling true Catholicism in her students.

But I digress.

The statement of my friend comes across to me in the same sense. What makes the world interesting, beautiful, and sublime isn't it's oneness, but it's uniqueness. Everything in the world is unique. A field of daisies may look all the same, but every flower is different. No snowflake in a blizzard is like any other. Every bee in my apiary is unique. And when we speak of people our uniqueness is even more pointed.

Are Saul and David one? Can Saul's envy, arrogance and rebellion against God be attributed to David who is humble, always respects the king, and never consults soothsayers or worships idols? Are David and Goliath one? Did David die when his stone embedded itself in Goliath's brain?

The idea that everything is one, that everything is part of God, is pantheism. Ideas have consequences and to think that all is one seems to me to deny the individual which also makes it easy to deny individual responsibility. If I'm part of a universal oneness, how can I be individually responsible for anything. And if I can't be responsible for anything, then there is no such thing as sin. If there is no such thing as sin, how can there be a judgment or a punishment?

Yes, the smallest wrong ideas can have major consequences. If a foundation isn't laid well, the entire structure on top is precarious and likely to collapse. The same with wrong ideas. We need to get things right from the bottom up!