In Dialogue | A Question About King David

King David also establishes a big city, Jerusalem. He is really the first one to build up Jerusalem. He does all of these amazing things. A portion of his legacy is that he gathers everything needed, because he has a revelation for the Temple. He gathers it all for Solomon to build.

I have a series I’m developing with Mateo on spiritual warfare. He used what I will share in a Christian university project. He probably used some of our dialogue that I won’t share as well. If I develop this series further, these are actual questions he came up with.

Mateo has noticed something about King David in the Psalms. He seems to battle with his interior life.

Question: So in what ways could we see that he is possibly affected mentally through that?

Well, there are many different ways to view it. I choose to believe that David is an artistic type. We have all these diagnoses now. I use those as I need to, but really we have some terms that we’ve forgotten and artistic temperament is one of them.

It’s like a person who is a Machiavellian Man or a Renaissance Man. David can do it all, if you think about it.

He is a highly trained musician.

He is a fierce warrior from a young age.

David is a shepherd, so he knows the country.

King David also establishes a big city, Jerusalem. He is really the first one to build up Jerusalem.[1]

He does all of these amazing things.

A portion of his legacy is that he gathers everything needed, because he has a revelation for the Temple. He gathers it all for Solomon to build.

He is talented in so many different areas

Usually we find with people like King David, who are highly artistic (artistic not autistic if you want to spell that out – artistic) that they have fluctuations in emotion. They are moved to do certain things.[2]

I think that we see the grief and the passion of David throughout the Psalms and I think it is beautiful. The Lord gives me the confidence to believe that what He is making me a witness to in the Psalms is not a mental health issue.

I choose to believe that David is saying what’s on all of our hearts when we go to bed at night and we’re really quiet, and the day weighs on us, weighs heavily on us. He’s saying the things that we want to say…

notes:

[1] There was a preceding city of Salem tracing back to Abraham, possibly near there. I don’t know what it was, but I know it wasn’t a real city in the sense that Jerusalem becomes.
[2] We might naturally go there, to the one thing King David is moved to do that gets him in a lot of trouble, his sin with Bathsheba. We often harp on him (no pun intended) as if he’s the only one who commits adultery. Let me ask some questions. What is Bathsheba doing bathing somehow openly within view of a portion of the palace? When we’re in the nude, don’t we usually know whether or not we’re in the line of vision of our neighbors?! What is she doing potentially exposing herself while her faithful husband is in battle protecting the kingdom and her? My questions are merely conjecture…

still I often am bewildered by the fact that we usually focus so much on one person during this terrible season of King David’s life. I can’t understand. I don’t know why.

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