That’s funny, Governor, comparing yourself to King David

June 27, 3:15 PMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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Credit goes to him, in a circuitous sort of way, for speaking up this weekend anyway—when the media and the national family are distracted in our grief and dismay over Michael Jackson as well as the under-remembered Farrah Fawcett.  But the self-comparison to David the King is gratuitous and self-serving, as well as being highly limited in accuracy.  It’s funny, particularly as it draws attention to the only possible type of comparison between the governor and the biblical monarch: lust.

David:  Lord, how majestic is your presence in all the earth!  You have stamped your glory upon the heavens!  When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers; the moon and the stars that you have made—I ask, What are we, that you are mindful of us?  What are we mortals, that you care for us?

Yet you have made us a little bit less than the angels. (Psalm 8)

Mark Sanford:  "Believe it or not, I've been a person of faith all my life.” (Press Conference)

David:  He makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads besides the still waters. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because you are with me; your rod and your staff comfort me.”  (Psalm 23)

Mark Sanford:  “There are moral absolutes, and God's law is indeed there to protect you from yourself, and there are consequences if you breach that.”  (Press Conference)

Come on, Governor.  As a kid, David had to dodge both the bloody animosity and the javelin of King Saul.  He was thrown into the national spotlight by single-handedly slaying a Philistine giant.  The capital city of Columbia, SC was not just waiting for him.  David built Jerusalem on a hill and it has endured as a religious capital city for 3000 years, still known as the City of David.  Columbia will not be the City of Mark by next Friday.

David’s nymphomaniac romances were notorious, vengeful, but he was never so disingenuous as to corrupt anybody’s theology by assuming forgiveness in exchange for political theater.    Nor did David “pick up the pieces and build from there.”   David died a dismal old man, pathetic, humiliated, estranged from family members, still in need of sexual comfort.  The Bible indicates, without mincing words, that he lay “old and stricken,” and “could get no heat.”  So his servants got him a young virgin “so that my Lord may get heat.”

I’m not so sure you want to take all those Bible classes, Governor.  The King’s way ahead of you in a number of categories—including straight talk.

Photo: Fox News

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