Hypoxemia

Hypoxemia

As your spiritual teacher I give this piece of advice to each one of you. Don’t cherish exaggerated ideas of yourself or your importance, but try to have a sane estimate of your capabilities by the light of the faith that God has given to you all. For just as you have many members in one physical body and those members differ in their functions, so we, though many in number, compose one body in Christ and are all members of one another. Through the grace of God we have different gifts. If our gift is preaching, let us preach to the limit of our vision. If it is serving others let us concentrate on our service; if it is teaching let us give all we have to our teaching; and if our gift be the stimulating of the faith of others let us set ourselves to it. Let the man who is called to give, give freely; let the man who wields authority think of his responsibility; and let the man who feels sympathy for his fellows act cheerfully. (Romans 12:3-8)

Sometimes you can climb too high for your own good. It’s possible to ascend too far, stand too tall, and elevate too much. Linger too long at high altitudes and at least two of your senses will likely suffer from hypoxemia – insufficient oxygenation of the blood. Your hearing dulls. It’s hard to hear people when you’re higher than they are. Voices grow distant. Sentences seem muffled. And when you’re up there, your eyesight dims, too. It’s hard to focus on people when you are so far above them. They appear so small. Little figures with no faces. You can hardly distinguish one from the other. They all look alike. You don’t hear them. You don’t see them. You are above them. Which is exactly where David is.

He’s never been higher. The wave of his success crests at age fifty. Israel’s expanding. The country’s prospering. In two decades on the throne, he’s distinguished himself as a warrior, musician, statesman and king. His cabinet is strong, and his boundaries stretch for 60,000 square miles. No defeats on the battlefield. No blemishes on his administration. Loved by the people. Served by the soldiers. Followed by the crowds. David’s at an all-time high. Quite a contrast to how we first found him in the Valley of Elah: kneeling at the brook, searching for five smooth stones. Everybody else stood then. The soldiers stood. Goliath stood. His brothers stood. The others were high; David was low. Never lower, in fact. But never stronger.

Three decades later his situation is reversed. Never higher, yet never weaker. David stands at the highest point of his life, in the highest position in the kingdom, at the highest place in the city — on the balcony of his castle overlooking Jerusalem. He should be with his men at battle. But he isn’t. He’s home.  In the spring, when the kings normally went out to war, David sent out his general, Joab, his servants, and all the Israelites. They destroyed the Ammonites and attacked the city of Rabbah. But David stayed in Jerusalem. (2 Sam. 11:1)

It’s springtime in Israel. The nights are warm, and the air is sweet. David has time on his hands, love on his mind, and people at his disposal. His eyes fall upon a woman as she bathes. We wonder if Bathsheba was bathing in a place where she shouldn’t bathe, hoping David would look where he shouldn’t look. We’ll never know. But we know that he looks and likes what he sees. So he inquires about her. A servant returns with the following information: “That woman is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam. She is the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” (2 Sam. 11:3)

The servant laces his information with a warning. He gives not only the woman’s name, but her marital status and the name of her husband. Why tell David she’s married if wasn’t to caution him? And why give the husband’s name unless David wasn’t familiar with it? Odds are, David knew Uriah. But even if he didn’t know Uriah, David knew Eliam’s dad, Ahithophel, because Ahithophel was David’s closet cabinet advisor – which, of course, would make Bathsheba his counselor’s grandaughter. See? The servant hopes to respectfully dissuade the king. But David misses the hint. The next verse describes his first step down a slippery slope. “So David sent messengers to bring Bathsheba to him. When she came to him, he had sexual relations with her.” (11:4)

David “sends” a lot in this story. He sends Joab to battle. (v. 1) He sends the servant to inquire about Bathsheba. (v. 3) He sends for Bathsheba to have her come to him. (v. 4) When David learns of her pregnancy, he sends word to Joab (v. 6) to send Uriah back to Jerusalem. David sends him to Bathsheba to rest, but Uriah is too noble. David opts to send Uriah back to a place in the battle where he is sure to be killed. Thinking his cover-up is complete, David sends for Bathsheba and marries her. (v. 27) That’s a lot of sending.

And we don’t like this sending, demanding David. We prefer the pastoring David, caring for his father’s sheep; the clever and resourceful David, hiding from Saul; the worshiping David, penning psalms. We aren’t prepared for the David who’s lost control of his self-control, who sins as he sends. What’s happened to him? Simple. Hypoxemia. Altitude sickness. He’s been too high too long. The thin air has messed with his senses. He can’t hear like he used to. He can’t hear the warnings of the servant, or the voice of his conscience. He can’t hear his Lord, either. The pinnacle has dulled his ears and blinded his eyes. Did David see Bathsheba? No. He saw Bathsheba bathing. He saw Bathsheba’s body and Bathsheba’s curves. He saw Bathsheba, the conquest. But did he see Bathsheba, the human being? The wife of Uriah? The daughter of Israel? The creation of God? No. David had lost his vision.

Too long at the top will do that to you. Too many hours in the bright sun and thin air can leave you breathless and dizzy. Of course, who among us could ever ascend as high as David? Who among us is a finger snap away from a rendezvous with anyone we choose? Presidents and kings might send people to do their bidding; we’re lucky to send out for pizza. We don’t have that kind of clout. We can understand David’s other struggles. His fear of Saul and long stretches hiding in the wilderness. We’ve been there. But David the high and mighty? David’s balcony is one place we’ve never been. Or have we?

I wasn’t on a balcony, but I was in a restaurant. And I didn’t watch a woman bathe, but I did watch a waitress fumble. She couldn’t do anything right. Order soda, and she’d bring juice. Ask for an appetizer, and she’d bring the entre, if she brought anything at all. And I started to grumble. Not out loud, mind you, but in my thoughts. What’s the matter with service these days? I suppose I was feeling a little smug. I’d just won an argument in court and my client had bought me lunch and proceeded to tell me what a clever advocate I was. I don’t know what was loonier: the fact that he’d said it, or the fact that I had believed it.

So I entered the restaurant that day feeling a little cocky. I probably had to tilt my head to enter the doorway.  Then I asked for the soda, the appetizer . . . . She blew the assignments, and I growled. Do you see what I was doing? Placing myself higher than the waitress. In the pecking order of the restaurant, she was below me. Her job was to serve, and my job was to be served.

Have you ever felt that way? Superior to someone? A parking lot attendant. The clerk at the grocery store. The peanut-seller at the baseball game. The garbage collector. You’ve probably done what I did. And we’ve done what David did. We’ve lost our sight and hearing. When I looked at the waitress, I didn’t see a human being; I saw a server.

So, how’s your hearing these days? Do you hear the servants whom God sends? Do you hear the conscience that God stirs? And what about your vision? Do you still see people? Or do you only see their functions? Do you see people who need you, or do you see people beneath you?

In my opinion, the story of David and Bathsheba is less a story of lust and more a story about power. A story of a man who rose too high for his own good. A man who needed to hear, “Come down before you fall.” David’s son, Solomon, perhaps having heard the story from dad himself, would later pen these words: “First pride, then the crash — the bigger the ego, the harder the fall.” (Prov. 16:18)

This must be why God hates arrogance. He hates to see his children fall. He hates to see his David’s seduce and his Bathsheba’s be victimized. God hates what pride does to his children. He doesn’t merely dislike arrogance. He hates it. Could he state it any clearer than in Proverbs 8:13: “I hate pride and arrogance”? And then a few chapters later: “God can’t stomach arrogance or pretense; believe me, he’ll put those upstarts in their place.” (16:5)

You don’t want God to do that. Just ask David. He never quite recovered from his bout with this particular giant. So, don’t make his mistake. It’s better to descend the mountain than to fall from it. Pursue humility, instead. C.S. Lewis once said, “Humility doesn’t mean you think less of yourself, but that you think of yourself less.” The apostle Paul said two thousand years earlier, “Don’t cherish exaggerated ideas of yourself or your importance, but try to have a sane estimate of your capabilities by the light of the faith that God has given to you.” (Rom. 12:3)

Learn to embrace your poverty. We’re all equally broke and blessed. “People come into this world with nothing, and when they die they leave with nothing.” (Eccles. 5:15) Resist the place of celebrity. “Go sit in a seat that is not important. When the host comes to you, he may say, ‘Friend, move up here to a more important place.’ Then all the other guests will respect you.” (Luke 14:10)

Wouldn’t you rather be invited up than put down? God has a cure for the high and mighty: come down from the mountain. You’ll be amazed what you hear and who you see.

And you’ll breathe a whole lot easier, too.

Grace,

Randy