Saul gets a lot of flack

May 3, 2009

Today's Reading: 1 Samuel 12-13 and Psalm 13-14

In most conversations about Saul, it generally bleeds into a very cautionary tale about how you need to follow the Lord’s orders to the letter, or he will take away your kingdom.

Most of the times, when I hear about Saul being mentioned, it is always in a negative light. This is why I have been enjoying the show Kings on NBC, the modern-day retelling of Saul and David in some alternate timeline. Yeah, I’m sure this is going to date this entry by even mentioning this show, which will probably be forgotten in a few months.

As far as I know, NBC will not renew this show for another year, and I don’t think a lot of people are watching it. Shame, really. It’s sort of refreshing to get some show that is a modern retelling of the Bible. Ever since Touch by an Angel has been canned, there just hasn’t been that presence of God thing going on the tube.

The only reason why I bring this up is because I could use the space taken up here. I also want to bring up that I like the way Ian McShane plays King Silas, the Kings version of Saul. He plays Saul as a politician that is sympathetic, but often makes choices “for the people” that he often doesn’t really agree with.

In other words, they create a Saul who isn’t this complete jerk, always trying to pin David to the wall or such nonsense. No, I begin to feel sorry for this guy, just as I feel sorry for the Saul in the Bible.

You see, Saul wasn’t really a bad king, but he was misguided in many ways. I can imagine that Samuel probably found him to be a hard case. I mean, Saul would constantly do things his own way, think he was doing the right thing, and would really screw up the whole reason of doing things, man.

Still, there is a section describe how Saul and his son Jonathan heroically led an army that was armed with nothing but sharpened plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles. Now that is quite something.

Have you ever noticed that some guy can do a lot of cool stuff, but as soon as you do something stupid, it just negates everything good that you ever do. Man, doesn’t that just suck! I’m guessing that doing one good deed isn’t enough to make up for it either.

Why is it that human nature is like this?