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Pity the Fool
Intro
I remember once when I was little; I felt like my mom wasn’t paying attention to me.
I was probably only 9 or 10.
So I wrote on a little yellow sticky note.
Nobody loves me, go away, and put it on my door.
Then I slammed my door shut.
I couldn’t articulate it then, but my note was not meant to send someone (my mom) away, but for her to feel bad for me and come and give me attention.
I wanted her to show pity on me.
My note was a form of self-pity meant to elicit a response, any response from anyone, but the response was for someone to feel sorry for me.
A self-pity is a form of false humility.
The Catholic mystic Thomas Merton called it Hellish humility.
Self-pity pretends to be humble, but it is really a form of “wounded pride, wounded self-love, meant to elicit a response of flattery.
Saul, in our text, feels sorry for himself as he moans and complains to his troops that nobody loves him.
He has discovered that his son aided and abetted David in escaping Saul’s death grip (Ch.
21), and no one told him that his son was in cahoots with him.
Self-pity is hellish because it is a form of manipulation, and manipulation is a form of lying.
Saul is trying to manipulate his troops into feeling sorry for him, thereby delivering the whereabouts of David, for he supposes they know.
His little ruse worked, for there happened to be in among his troops an opportunist, someone looking for a way up in the world and willing to do whatever it takes to get there.
This proved to be a dangerous combo.
Saul’s self-pity leads to bad judgment and the treachery of Doeg’s massacre.
As an insidious form of pride, self-pity easily disguises itself as a virtue.
What harm is there in airing my grievances?
I mean, I am a victim here.
So we get out our intersectional scorecard to determine just what our victim status is.
But this is just an institutional form of self-pity.
There may be legitimate wrongs that you have suffered, but self-pity is not the godly response to grief and pain.
Instead, God calls us to contentment and humility.
Both of which come from a settled faith in the sovereignty of God.
They come from the knowledge that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6; 1 Pe.
5:5; from Pr. 3:34 grk.).
Maybe you haven’t given into the woke victim mentality, but self-pity efficiently works its way into our lives in subtle ways.
This story of Saul shows the disastrous consequences of unbridled self-pity.
Since God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, we must cultivate humility and contentment.
It leads to bad judgment.
Picture the scene.
Saul sits on a hill under a tree with his spear in his hand, and his troops all gathered around him.
He has heard that David had escaped from Gibeah with the help of his son Jonathan.
Self-pity gets the best of him, so he begins to complain.
Poor me, nobody loves me.
Will, the son of Jesse, make you rich?
Will he give you land and good jobs?
All of you have conspired against me.
Nobody tells me my son is helping my enemy; nobody tells me that my son has helped David set an ambush for me.
It’s hard to imagine what his troops must have been thinking.
Perhaps they are confused by the turn of events.
One day David is a hero leading them in battle, the next, he is public enemy number 1.
This kind of erratic leadership can be frustrating to work under, especially when it may not be apparent to his troops why David is on the outs.
Saul’s jealousy of David’s accomplishments and the knowledge that God has selected David as the next king of Israel make Saul paranoid.
For he certainly thinks that David is going to attack him.
For he certainly feels that David is going to attack him.
We have a different perspective and know that David is afraid of Saul and is working hard to keep his distance, having no such plans to attack Saul.
But low and behold, guess who is there gathered around Saul? Doeg, and he happens to be sly and eager enough to play the snitch.
We will return to look at Doeg in a moment, but for now, we notice that he is willing to tell Saul what he saw.
He fell into the trap of Saul’s self-pity.
Self-pity, as I mentioned, is an artfully disguised form of pride.
John Piper says:
The reason self-pity does not look like pride is that it appears to be needy.
But the need arises from a wounded ego and the desire of the self-pitying is not really for others to see them as helpless, but heroes.
The need self-pity feels does not come from a sense of unworthiness, but from a sense of unrecognized worthiness.
It is the response of unapplauded pride.
When pride is not strong, it begins to worry about the future.
In the heart of the proud, anxiety is to the future what self-pity is to the past.
What did not go well in the past gives us a sense that we deserve better.
But if we could not make things go our way in the past, we may not be able to in the future either.
Instead of making the proud humble, this possibility makes them anxious.[1]
Saul wants everyone to feel sorry for him because his pride is wounded, so he uses self-pity to draw the sympathy of his troops.
His plan works and draws in Doeg, who tells him that Ahimelech helped David by inquiring of the Lord and giving him provisions and a weapon.
So Saul summons Ahimelech and the rest of the priests to find out more.
Saul accuses Ahimelech of conspiring against him.
Ahimelech shows the confusion that is circling this whole situation.
What Saul calls conspiring was to Ahimelech normal operations before Saul’s vendetta.
One of the hallmarks of bad leadership is a constantly moving objective that no one can clearly define at any given time.
Like in George Orwell’s 1984, they continually change whether they are at war with Eurasia and Eastasia was their enemy or vice-versa.
David was Saul trusted advisor and a commander of his army.
He had often been on missions for the king, and Ahimelech has often inquired of God for him.
Ahimelech speaks truthfully when he maintains his innocence and claims he knew nothing of David’s doing.
Saul is not convinced.
His bitter jealousy drives him towards judgment as he exclaims to Ahimelech, “You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father’s house.”
Self-pity has blinded him to the truth and led him to make a disastrous decision.
But as he calls for his troops to execute his judgment, no one steps forward.
Instead, they wisely spot the faulty justice in Saul’s judgment and refuse to partake, especially since Saul has pronounced judgment against priests and a Levitical city.
How is that someone could make such a disastrous judgment, something so fragrantly vile?
Self-pity.
Saul has spent so much time rehearsing his victim status, how wrong it is that the kingdom has been given to another, and how wicked David must be for trying to steal the kingdom away from him.
Self-pity, as a form of pride, does what all pride does.
It keeps our eyes firmly fixed on “me.”
Because pride’s focus is so fixed on the self, with pity driving the ship, the results are often bad judgments.
Primarily this is because when our focus is on ourselves, and not where it should be, On God, we are prone to make our grievances the guide for our decision making, instead of the will of God.
There are two antidotes to self-pity and the bad judgment it engenders, humility and contentment.
Both of these virtues go hand and hand together.
Humility we might call “modest self-perception.”
Humility is cultivated not by focusing on yourself and your situations but on God and his character.
Pride exalts itself and is then humiliated by God; humility exalts God and is subsequently lifted up above its station.
Humility is having a humble estimation of oneself; pride is having an exaggerated view of oneself.
Saul’s pride is masked as a virtue in his complaint of self-pity but is suffused with grand opinions of himself.
Such that any that don’t align with his purposes should be killed, including priests.
But one of the effects of pride is a blindness to pride.
The self-pitying Saul can’t see that the most basic principle built into the warp and woof of life is that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
Perhaps the clearest example of this in scripture is the story of Hamon in Esther.
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