Ziklag 4.16 - Rest, then Seize.

SOS, and the Cave

SOS Discipline - Daily Proverb and Red Letter Reader

Words are not so cheap as to waste them on those who do not listen. cf Mt. 7:6

Why do you look away? cf Pr. 28:27

Rest, then seize. Then, rest. Then, seize. cf Sun Tzu 4.13

From Today’s Stack

From or To the Cave

Plato tells a nice story about a cave. It changed the world (and threatens to keep changing it if we don’t do something about it.)

In his story, the cave is a controlled and sterile place where everyone does what they are told because the smart people say so. It’s very inspiring to let the metaphor take hold and inspire you as you see Plato’s cavelings free themselves from mental slavery and break loose into the real world beyond the cave.

Stories of breakthrough and escape are inspiring. I like to tell them, too. But the other half of Plato’s story is a gnostic cosmic horror story in which the grove of Academy morphs into Baal-worshiping communism run by the CIA. It’s all very against the Constitution, and it may not even be true. But the devil is certainly at play in American politics, and getting outside the cave has more than become a religion in its own right.

There is another story about a cave that inspires me more than Plato’s. It is the story of the Cave at Adullam, where David, the son of Jesse, hid from the Israelite King Saul, who, taken with fits of paranoid malice and passion, sought to kill his son-in-law and great-general.

Living in the cave, David soon found himself surrounded by dissident men: debtors, malcontents, rabble. It could have become a real problem. But what did David do? He harnessed the entire situation for the good of all. He led the men who might otherwise become brigands to become a local fighting force, keeping the fields free from bandits and the borders safe from invasion, even while avoiding the ire of the ever reactive Saul.

What was it like those first few months, with just thirty or so men? What did David see when he looked out? Did it matter what stories had been told around the fire? Or was it important for him to change, to grow, to become a new man?