Is He Crazy?
To the outside observer, it is a clear mismatch. It is, in King Saul’s words, “just a boy” against “a warrior” (1 Sam 17:33). Is David crazy?
Some people have asked the same question about Alex Honnold. In 2017, Alex made history by climbing El Capitan, the iconic vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, without any ropes or protective equipment. Brain scans made the year before have led some people to the conclusion that Alex really is crazy, that he is a sort of freak of nature. When he was presented with images that elicit fear in most people, his brain’s amygdala—the part that registers fear—showed abnormally low activity.[1] On the surface, these scans seem to explain Alex’s daredevil climbing. He’s just got a unique brain. He doesn’t feel fear.
But Alex himself has pushed back against this interpretation. “I find [it] slightly irritating,” he says, “because I’ve spent 25 years conditioning myself to work in extreme conditions, so of course my brain is different—just as the brain of a monk who has spent years meditating or a taxi driver who has memorized all the streets of a city would be different.”[2]
In other words, Alex’s abnormal brain may be the result of an abnormal amount of practice. Alex began climbing at age 11, when a rock-climbing gym opened up in his town. He would go for hours at a time, and when he couldn’t catch a ride there, he would ride his bike. That he did not want to be at home is no surprise. He reports that his parents had a very unhappy marriage. Rock-climbing was a refuge for him. It was where he smiled.[3] I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that rock-climbing was Alex’s salvation.
Protecting the Flock
When King Saul protests that David is “just a boy,” not fit to fight a warrior (1 Sam 17:33), David explains his confidence. The giant Goliath is not the mismatch that Saul thinks he is, for as a shepherd David has repelled the attacks of lions and bears. In other words, this is not so different from what he has done before. This is his thing. He has practice. If we could take a scan of David’s brain, perhaps we would discover abnormally low activity in his amygdala too.
David bears an extraordinary confidence. But rather than glorify it as a superhuman or godlike quality, as something that separates King David from us mere mortals, perhaps we should take David at his word. Perhaps his confidence has less to do with a heroic fearlessness and more to do with a faith that has been cultivated by doing his thing. Perhaps his confidence is not an arrogant self-belief but rather a trust that God is with him when he is doing his thing—that is, protecting the sheep. Saul pictures the imminent contest as between “a boy” and “a warrior,” but David suggestively reimagines it as another opportunity for him to protect the flock. Indeed, in the ancient Near East, kings were commonly compared to shepherds. Their duty to the people was the shepherd’s duty to the sheep, namely protection. So when David compares fighting lions and bears to fighting Goliath, he is implicitly comparing the people of Israel to his flock. He is saying, “This matter is no different than before. I will do my thing as I have always done, and God will be with me as God has always been.”
The rest of the world may see a mismatch: an inexperienced boy up against a giant warrior, or a crazy climber up against a giant cliff. But the eyes of faith see it differently. It is simply a matter of doing your “thing,” where you found salvation before…and where you’ll find it again. There is no mismatch when you are true to yourself, because your true self is where God is at work. (Here, by the way, we see the difference between arrogance and confidence. Arrogance is trusting in what we might call our false self, that is, our constructed self, the strong or intelligent or beautiful self that can do things on its own. Arrogance says, “Look what I can do!” But confidence is trusting in God, trusting that we are safe when we are doing the thing God has given us to do. It says, to paraphrase David in verse 46, “Look what God can do!”)
“To Be a Saint Means to Be Myself”
Alex Honnold has been something of a lightning rod since his rise to fame. His critics question his choices to embark on death-defying climbs. Why risk your life? I don’t wish to wade into this debate. It may be true that, on some level, Alex’s climbing exploits are motivated by a need for attention and validation, as much of our behavior is. Even so, what strikes me about Alex is his steadfast resistance to the suggestion that he be someone other than himself, that he do things the way other people do things.
In the same way, when Saul clothes David in armor and equips him with a sword—all of which makes good sense when going to battle—David removes it all and reconfigures himself once more as a shepherd (1 Sam 17:38-40). David does not try to be someone else.
I am reminded here of what the Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote: “To be a saint means to be myself.”[4] When David takes to the battlefield, he walks out there confidently not as a warrior but as a shepherd—as the child who found salvation protecting sheep. When Alex walks to the foot of a mountain, he goes there confidently not as the professionally branded climber he is pressured to be but as the child who found salvation on the side of a cliff. Our salvation is not some thing that we are missing and need to find or develop. Our salvation has been with us all along. It is in the heart. It is felt in the things that bring us to life, that awaken us to God within.
In the film Chariots of Fire, the Christian sprinter Eric Liddell puts it like this: “When I run, I feel [God’s] pleasure.” The real Eric Liddell, who wrote a spiritual classic titled The Disciplines of the Christian Life, fleshes out this experience of God’s salvation being found in the things that speak to our heart: “If in the quiet of your heart you feel something should be done, stop and consider whether it is in line with the character and teaching of Jesus. If so, obey that impulse to do it, and in doing so you will find it was God guiding you.”[5]
David at the Battlefield…as a Shepherd
The story of David and Goliath is frequently told as an underdog’s tale in which an unlikely hero triumphs against the odds. While this is certainly a valid interpretation of events—it is, after all, how King Saul sees the contest, as “just a boy” fighting against “a warrior”—this way of seeing things obscures David’s own experience, which may be the most instructive element for us as people of faith. David goes to the battlefield with confidence. Not because of his weapons and armor. Not because of some secret knowledge. He goes to the battlefield with confidence because he goes there as himself, a shepherd who has known God’s salvation time and again.
I wonder if this is not good news for us. We can walk forward confidently to meet the day and its challenges and opportunities, not because of what we have or what we are able to do, but because we can walk forward as ourselves, as people who have felt God’s pleasure and known God’s salvation time and again in the unique histories of our lives. I don’t know that any of us are shepherds or climbers. But all of us, whatever we are, have known God’s salvation. And so there are no mismatches. We can face the giants ahead of us—giants like Paul regularly describes, sadness or sickness, dishonor or lack—with confidence, as ourselves…saying as David said, “The Lord who saved me…will save me [again]” (1 Sam 17:37).
Prayer
Whose pleasure we feel,
Whose salvation we know—
In a world that tells us we are missing something,
May we be grounded in the good news
That we are your wondrous creation
And your salvation is with us
…
May we face our giants confidently,
As our true selves,
Trusting in your salvation.
In Christ, whose way we follow: Amen.
[1] J. B. MacKinnon, “The Strange Brain of the
World’s Greatest Solo Climber,”
https://nautil.us/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-solo-climber-236051/,
accessed June 17, 2024.
[2] Eben Harrell, “Life’s Work: An Interview with
Alex Honnold,”
https://hbr.org/2021/05/lifes-work-an-interview-with-alex-honnold, accessed
June 17, 2024.
[3] Mary Claire Murdock, “A 3,000 Foot Drop: The
Story of Alex Honnold’s Life of Passion,”
https://medium.com/the-road-to-character/a-3-000-foot-drop-8ce6a1909083,
accessed June 17, 2024.
[4] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 2003), 33.
[5] Eric Liddell, The
Disciplines of the Christian Life (London: Triangle, 1985), 27.
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