Have you taken on any giants lately? Modern day giants seem to be in short supply but our spiritual mettle can still be tested by whatever giants confront us as daunting adversaries.
The classic conflict that castes a small hero against a giant foe springs from the realm of mythology and religion. The boy Luke Skywalker takes on the ominous Darth Vader. Harry Potter confronts the evil Voldemort. And if I go back to childhood TV episodes, Robin Hood is threatened by the Sheriff of Nottingham.
In the expressly religious realm, the youth David fights Goliath to save a small nation (Israel) from a powerful enemy (the Philistines) in 1 Samuel 17. The odds are against David because he is very young and without battlefield training in confronting the giant, Goliath, who wears armour and wields heavy weapons. David uses his shepherd’s sling shot to strike Goliath dead with a fatal stone to the forehead. The biblical writers attribute David’s unlikely victory to his being favoured by God. The teachable moment seems to be that a tiny nation need not fear because the power of God will defeat the power (or the gods) of their mighty enemies. One can imagine the story being retold and amplified around many campfires, when enemies threaten and people are tempted to give up too quickly.
In reality, Israel/Palestine was conquered many times by powerful empires after the time of David and Goliath – Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Rome. The strong frequently prevail over the weak, no matter how just their cause. While the story we remember and lift up is David and Goliath, our lived reality presents a spiritual challenge of another type. What happens when David does not slay Goliath and the giant wins?
The reverse of David and Goliath is something that can happen on several levels. In world events, the Third Reich rolled across Europe crushing all those nations smaller and less powerful. In our own immediate history, the technological and economic power of European colonisers conquered the indigenous peoples of Canada, displacing the inhabitants from their own lands. At a community level, the David and Goliath struggle can be homeless people battling a larger society that has the instruments of government and property owners behind it.
Sometimes we are David and sometimes we are Goliath and it becomes a spiritual challenge to know “whose side” God is on. The struggle can even be within us.
Perhaps our greatest challenge occurs when a David and Goliath battle plays out in how we confront a terminal illness. It is good and necessary to fight the battle but at a certain point, the cancerous tumour or the fatal injury or the natural disaster is a giant that cannot be vanquished.
Often we believe in God because we consider God to be useful in using special power to defeat those giants that would overwhelm us. It follows that if God is not useful, then belief in God has no point. In a self-centred perspective, this is of course true. But a faith perspective invites us to consider that God, Holy Presence, Divine Other is with us even when the giant is not slain.
Poverty and homelessness can be perceived as giants that always win. It can be tempting to give in and just say it’s all too complex to confront. But people of good will go up against the giant and “victory” is gradual, pushing the giant back one step at a time. Drug and alcohol addiction can be a huge giant to slay, in part because the giant is both “within” and “without”. Our Place, ( a centre for the poor, homeless and vulnerable in Victoria), has a plan to create a Therapeutic Treatment Centre that brings people into a therapeutic community from one to two years, is a giant-slayer of a type. Probably it won’t be a cure-all for everyone and there will be setbacks, but there is no magic sling shot that will vanquish the giant in one fell swoop.
Life is not so much about always winning but about experiencing a connection with the Holy and with one another that makes authentic living possible. Sometimes David slays Goliath and sometimes life takes us to places where perseverance and hope and community allow us to confront our giants. And God is with us, shaping those very possibilities.
Larry Scott is a retired United Church minister living in Victoria.
You can read more articles from our interfaith blog, The Spiritual View, HERE
