An Underdog Problem

This is a meditation that I originally delivered October 22, 2017 to the congregation at Decorah United Church of Christ. It is reflecting on 1 Samuel 16:1-13.

“Everybody loves an underdog.” I’ve been struggling with this mantra recently.

My struggles have centered around how mostly white Christian men have recognized, embraced, and gained visibility with this theme. I could easily point “over there”—looking out to the men who descended on Charlottesville and have appealed to a small group of followers by telling the story that society and politics are overlooking and replacing them—a story that says their ideas and perspectives are undervalued. As society becomes more diverse, some misinterpret sharing space as being replacement.

“Everybody is not an underdog, even if everybody may feel like one. ”

Though it may be the far-right who has recently been telling an underdog story, it is not just neo-Nazis who are among those who fear or feel replaced—I hear a more subtle, less violent version of the narrative in academia—and I suspect it’s found in other many other sectors of society.

With everything going on in the world, these worries have been on my mind. Certainly, they are worries that, as much as we might like to, religious folks, especially those of us working against hatred and for a more just world, just can’t ignore.

But why mention them at the start of a meditation on David? For starters, since ancient times, everybody “loves an underdog.”

When I teach this story from 1 Samuel—and the history of Israel’s early monarchy—I state this oft-repeated theme, which helps to connect some of the story’s details that my intro to Bible students are prone to notice. One thing they love to is how David has “beautiful eyes” and the story’s seeming fan-girl-or-boy obsession with how hot the young future king is…

Of course, the features that made David “hot” by our standards—I point out—did not necessarily make him “hot” in ancient society. With his beautiful eyes the story emphasizes that he is the underdog, the last person anyone but God would expect to be a strong, ruler-warrior. After all, if David has “nice eyes,” the implication is, perhaps, that that’s his best outward feature. He’s not brawny and strong like his older siblings. Even in modern dating standards (where “You’ve got nice eyes” can be code for nothing below them is worth pursuing), David isn’t actually “hot,” my students assume he’s hot because he’s king David, after all, the dude with eyes so beautiful that several of Saul’s kids, female and male, later developed crushes on him. But really, David’s beautiful eyes are the story’s way of saying “He doesn’t look like the hot manly warrior-king Samuel and the people expected.” Of course, the story and its audience both know David winds up being a great—arguably the greatest—king.

The text reflects, then, social, political, and cultural changes. Maybe David’s skills lay behind those piercing eyes—perhaps, the text implies, it’s the intelligence behind them that will ultimately make David sexier than the stereotypical brawny warriors often celebrated in tribal culture (Joshua, Samson, Barak…Deborah and Jael to remember they’re not all dudes).

“David becomes and is remembered a mighty warrior, capable administrator, and (mostly) man of God, but his origins are as an underdog.”

After all, in the time of David and Saul, Israel was a fledging monarchy attempting to unite and hold together twelve “tribes” of loosely connected people with many socio-political differences as well as some shared stories and values—but even more, shared enemies. Indeed, my textbook describes Saul—the first king whom this story and tradition says God abandoned—as little more than a strong “warlord” who united these twelve groups into a unit able to hold off threats to Israel’s borders better when united and organized under one tribal leader. Might makes right…

But it was David, the great king, who fully established the monarchy with an effective rule that not only maintained secure borders but also brought socio-economic stability and a centralized government.

David becomes and is remembered a mighty warrior, capable administrator, and (mostly) man of God, but his origins are as an underdog. No one would have expected the scrawny, maybe-effeminate-seeming lad with those unexpectedly piercing, beautiful eyes possessed the intelligence and strength that could bring down the powerful Goliath, followed by the Philistines. 

But this story remembers. And this story gets told and retold, it gets dramatized. God is going to point out the new, great king to Samuel—and Samuel, Jesse, everyone expects it’s going to be one of Jesse’s hot sons—those brawny bearded men of the field who scream “conquest,” whose eyes need no mention when they’ve got those hard-earned, sculpted, muscles. They have to go and find David at the very end: that Cinderella moment where they’ve tried the shoe on everyone else and, if it hasn’t fit yet, what’s the harm in letting this scrawny kid give it a shot—only to find that that it’s those beautiful eyes contained real strength all along. (And, like a Cinderella story, once David is chosen and proves himself once, he becomes a princess, marries, grows muscles, and lives—mostly—happily and manly ever after.)

Everybody loves an underdog. 

Okay, so there’s the history lesson; the “brief” exegetical overview that makes my students’ and possibly your eyes glaze over. But it is more than my own nerdy, scholarly obsession with history and texts that makes me prattle on…

“To a community threatened and conquered by these stronger powers, it matters that God chooses underdogs.”

History matters. We need this history to appreciate how Israel—a small territory uniting twelve tribes—is throughout biblical history an “underdog” compared to the imperial powers that would dominate or threaten to dominate over it: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome…

To a community threatened by these stronger powers—and, eventually, conquered and ruled over by them—it matters that God chooses underdogs. That intellect, trickery, devotion to and covenant with God can ultimately prevail over brawns. Might does not make right. In the story of David, God makes might. And God makes right.

And for a small community struggling to survive under dominant imperial cultures, it matters that God is on the side of the underdogs, the tricksters, the devoted, the unexpected, those who only have “beautiful eyes”—or even no particular beauty to talk about.

But what happens when underdog stories take on lives of their own?

Part of the problem with the mantra “Everybody loves an underdog” is precisely that: everybody loves an underdog. But everybody is not an underdog, even if everybody may feel like one. 

Perhaps this is because underdog stories are powerful. When told by the powerless, they allow persons without a voice in society or politics to claim that their lives matter, that, despite oppressive conditions or small odds, they can persist, resist, survive, and even thrive.

So, we can see how these stories are important after the fall of Israel’s monarchy, to a scattered community exiled and dominated by Babylon, whose rulers insisted their gods were more powerful than the God of Israel. Indeed, the import of these stories doesn’t fade as post-exilic Jewish communities continue to survive and thrive under the rules of other empires…

The same could eventually be said of the early followers of Jesus, Jewish and otherwise, who claimed and found meaning in the stories and texts of ancient Israel. Just as first-century Jews were “underdogs” under Roman rule, slowly but surely seeing more direct occupation and taxation, so too those early followers of Jesus—eventually coalescing as a distinct group of “Christians”—were conquered Roman subjects across the Mediterranean world. Occasionally persecuted and certainly viewed as “less than” Rome’s socio-political elite, these wo/men who gathered to follow Jesus found inspiration in stories of underdogs who, by trusting God, rose to power.

But, important and powerful as underdog stories are, they aren’t without problems: eventually the Roman empire becomes a Christian-Roman-Empire.

“Underdog tales have power, but they usually don’t contain a vision for what could come next.”

And even when told among oppressed, powerless, and minoritized communities, these stories far too often still adopt some of the problematic socio-political values of the powerful. David may be the underdog in 1 Sam 16, but he soon becomes almost exactly the sort of powerful man that he once seemed not to be. For all David’s brilliance and strength, we see him abuse his power over Uriah, a foreigner, and his wife, Bathsheba.

Underdog tales have power, but they usually don’t contain a vision for what could come next. They express hope that the underdog will use undervalued skills to gain voice and gain power, but they rarely imagine a world without underdogs. That’s not to undermine the importance and power of these stories, but it’s a problem that hearers and tellers of underdog stories should be warned of.

Which leads to my larger concern with underdog stories, especially when they are claimed and told by majorities, those with relatively—or considerably—more power. By, for example, Christians.

After all, it is much easier to see our actions through the lens of the underdog. (Don’t get me started on the number of gay men, once including myself, who have identified with the effeminate, musically-inclined David whose only true love was Saul’s son Jonathan…) Usually we identify with underdog and do not think about how we might also play the roles of others in the stories.

If part of the problem with underdog stories is that the underdog merely joins or replaces the powerful in-crowd, then we cannot just repeat underdog stories. Underdog stories are most powerful and most effective at moving toward change when they are told alongside stories, visions, poems, and hopes for a more just world—egalitarianism—a world without underdogs.

“The egalitarianism can be found elsewhere, reminding us that we cannot and should not read underdog stories in isolation—and that we should be careful and cautious about how we identify with and tell these stories when we do.”

Moving forward a few weeks in my intro class: that is the beauty of the Hebrew Bible as a composite text of stories from different periods and different perspectives. When the different views and theologies are woven together, again as my textbook helps note, they produce something else, a newly evocative theology.

And so we see with the reading from Psalm 51: the stories of David the underdog-turned-powerful-manly-mighty-ruler sit alongside a collection of poems on of which portrays David humbly asking forgiveness. The poem imagines him admitting his rule has fallen short of producing a just world. Many psalms ask God for justice, for social responsibility, for a world where no one is oppressed, no one is voiceless, no one is mistreated.

The egalitarianism missing in 1 Samuel can be found elsewhere, reminding us that we cannot and should not read underdog stories in isolation—and that we should be careful and cautious about how we identify with and tell these stories when we do.

Reading and struggling with the story of David’s anointing—and with how “everybody loves an underdog”—this multivocality of different stories, woven together, is something I find helpful and hopeful as we struggle and work for a more just and inclusive world.