“He picked up five smooth stones from a stream and put them into his shepherd’s bag. Then, armed only with his shepherd’s staff and sling, he started across the valley to fight the Philistine…Reaching into his shepherd’s bag and taking out a stone, he hurled it with his sling and hit the Philistine in the forehead. The stone sank in, and Goliath stumbled and fell face down on the ground.”
1 Samuel 17:40-49
A slingshot killed a man…really? Impossible!
How could a boy kill a man with a slingshot? I often wondered about this after hearing the story of David and Goliath in fourth-grade religion class from a very kind, but rather cloistered nun. I wondered to myself at the time if the Bible really got it right? You see, I knew from experience when I got hit by a slingshot in the arm from my crazy neighbor, it felt more like a bee sting than a bullet.
One day my mom bought me my very own slingshot from Avallone’s Pharmacy. It had a plastic “Y” shaped base, with two thick rubber bands attached to a red piece of cloth forming a pocket in the middle. Because of what I was taught by Sister Nancy, I laughingly called my new sling, “The Giant Killer!”
I had to test it.
I went into our backyard where we had an abundance of rocks and varmints to aim at. First I picked up a good-sized round stone, placed it firmly in the small pocket of cloth, pulled back on the bands, and let ‘er rip: “Bloop!” It lofted a soft curving arc that landed barely 20 feet away from where I stood. Not too impressive. So I practiced a few more times before I went after some live targets. Sometimes a real zinger of a shot would fly out, but most of the time the small round missile I sent aloft couldn’t even hurt a flea.
I then tried to hit some chattering squirrels up in the tree (Don’t tell my mom, I promised her I wouldn’t aim at animals or people). Most of my shots released so slow the squirrels could race up and down a branch five times before the rock even reached them. I’m pretty sure a small black squirrel stuck its tongue out, mocking me.
Maybe if I pulled back as far as I could it would give me more power? “Snap!” One of the rubber bands broke – – so much for killing giants.
Candidly, for a small minded boy of 10, this experience began to erode some of my initial trust in scripture. Was it a real story, or pure fairy tale? I believed a man named David once lived, but I was not too sure about the 9-foot giant named Goliath? My faith in scriptural integrity was wobbling. Everyday life experience told me clearly that a slingshot had almost zero capacity to kill. Scripture said David’s slingshot was deadly. Who was right?
Without realizing it, I started to place my worldview over and above what scripture taught.
I really thought I was smarter. If a slingshot could not kill; that means the Bible must be something less than it claimed to be. In my puny mind, I figured if I didn’t see it, or I couldn’t conceive it, it must not be true.
There are many people out there who view God and his word much like my ten-year-old self. Some of scripture can seem rather outlandish to the modern mind and even scientifically naive, so people begin to doubt the veracity of God and his word. We the people are collectively smarter than God’s revelation:
- An earth made in six days, really? Astronomers tell us that the universe is continually expanding and in order for the light to reach us from distant galaxies thousands of light years away, it mathematically had to take billions of years to arrive. So much for a young earth. The astronomer must be smarter than Genesis. Or maybe we are just reading Genesis wrong, taking it too literal?
- God made mankind male and female, really? Sociologists tell us gender is neutral. Even at birth, a child should have the choice to choose to play with Barbie or Ken. Maybe modern psychology is right, it is harmful to designate gender roles and place toxic cultural expectations on people even though Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 1 Timothy does?
- Abortion, homosexuality, cohabitation, drunkenness, pornography, gluttony is all sin, really? What is sin? Some brilliant 20th-century philosophers have determined sin is nothing more than an illusion. A religious device used to elicit feelings of guilt in order to exact the desired behavior on the simple peasantry. Tolerance now teaches us a mature and self-actualized person will accept any lifestyle choice of another. A woman’s body is her own. What happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas. In fact, more and more progressive theologians think the idea of the need for a bloody sacrifice to expiate sin is completely unnecessary.
Don’t you see the problem? When we arrogantly determine that meaning is understood only by using our personal experiences, sensory perception, cultural preferences and scientific theories as the basis of truth, over time we will naturally lose trust in scripture.
Faith asks me to believe God even though I can’t see him or understand his ways. I must trust even when I can’t see his reality with my own eyes. In fact, the Bible says we see most things through the broken lens of a twisted heart (Jeremiah 17:9 & Romans 1:18-22).
Faith’s whole thrust is for me to take God at his word, and when I do it is then and only then when I will truly see.
After meditating on scripture, I knew deep in my soul I was a sinner, and I needed saving. I decided even if I don’t fully understand everything in the Bible, even how a man can be killed by a slingshot, I will still trust God. Trusting God through scripture was my only hope. So I believed. I don’t know how to scientifically prove it, nor can I verify my experiences are true empirically, but God started changing me completely.
A couple of years after I handed my life over to Jesus, my brother brought me into the backyard to show me something. He said, “Chris, I was reading up on David’s slingshot and I found out something very interesting. I learned how to make it and I’ve been practicing with it for the past couple of days. In fact, I am quite good at it. But I must warn you, it is lethal.”
He pulled out two long strings from his pocket with a leather pouch tied to both ends. He picked up a large stone and started swinging it fiercely around his head. “Chris, stand back and look at that tree.” After about ten rotations around his head, he let the rock fly, “Wham!” It slammed into the trunk of a large oak tree putting a giant pockmark an inch deep in the bark.
(For an example of David’s sling, follow this link:
He taught me how to use it properly and you could feel the power building with each rotation of the rock. It was nothing like my silly Avallone Pharmacy slingshot.
I let go of the string and the rock whizzed through the sky scaring away every squirrel in the vicinity. No more mocking from those pesky tree climbers!
I learned something that day – – I didn’t know what I thought I knew. And neither do you. One of the most stunning portions of scripture is when God confronts a man named Job asking him to consider a few questions. Job 38:1-2 opens like this…
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
Tell me Mr. Evolutionist, where were you?
At the end of the book, Job is brought to his knees in abject humility. He is rendered speechless before the wisdom and majesty of God. Faith believes this God actually exists. And if he exists, don’t you think you need to be a little more careful about how much you doubt his wisdom, and proclaim to others what you think you actually know?
God’s word is true, David was real, so was his slingshot, and so was Goliath’s severed head lying in a pool of his own blood.
