The Instinct of Reputation: The Story of DavidSample

David Exposed

It was the time of year when kings went out to war. But David remained at home, lounging on his palace roof.

David didn’t need to prove the things he once did. He was unarguably the most powerful man in Israel. He had defeated his enemies, unified Israel, and established a capital city of his own. He had an army and capable men who could lead. The youthful David, driven on to battlefields in the name of God’s glory, gave way to a king more interested in comfort and the accumulation of success.

He no longer seems himself, nor does he act himself. It is in this season of undisputed success that David sees and takes Bathsheba. It is a grave sin, but one which is intensified by the news of her pregnancy. David goes into damage control. Unable to manipulate her husband into a convenient story of explanation, David orchestrates a complex battlefield withdrawal that will leave the man exposed and killed. David plots Uriah’s death as a cover-up for his own sins.

He must have imagined he had gotten away with it. No one seemed to know or dare speak of it. Perhaps David rationalized it as a moment of poor decision, but one in which he had been able to minimize the consequences. That is, until the prophet Nathan appeared.

Under the guise of a case that necessitated David’s judicial opinion, Nathan told of a rich man who had stolen the only lamb from an impoverished neighbor. It’s not hard to recognize what Nathan was doing. He was offering an analogy of what David had just done with Bathsheba, but out of David’s mind, he couldn’t recognize his own life laid out before him.

Ironically and sadly, David demanded the execution of this man. He condemned himself. Nathan responded simply, “You’re him.”

With just those few words, the public image of David’s success collapsed into the truth of his desperately covered-up sins. David was exposed. Even more profoundly, David hadn’t seen it coming. His constant attention to his public image had caused him to lose sight of who he really was and what he had really done.

It is a sober reminder of universal reality. The truth always gets out. Our attempts to ignore it only temporarily blind us to it and leave us vulnerable to even greater surprise. You cannot live by ignoring what is in your life. That lack of integrity will certainly lead you to collapse.

It’s not easy to be honest. It’s not easy to face what is there. But it is there. No amount of ignoring it does away with that. In the end, the greatest strength is not in what we can convince others, but what we are willing to take responsibility for in ourselves.

David had failed and had failed to see it coming. But his story wasn’t over.

How do you avoid paying attention to the truth of your life?