David Cuts Off Al Jaber’s Robe (I Samuel 24)

by Lowell Bliss, Director of Eden Vigil Institute for Environmental Leadership

Are the fossil fuel companies our enemies heading into COP28 in Dubai?   Honestly, having enemies is a confusing thing for someone like me who grew up in a conservative evangelical church, and who grew up in the dominant culture.  I can actually quote Ephesians 6:12 from memory: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”   I’ve always assumed that this means that only Satan is our enemy.  COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber, who surely qualifies as “flesh and blood,” can’t be.  The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, of which Al Jaber is CEO, can’t be.  Last year at COP27 in Egypt, reportedly 636 fossil fuel lobbyists showed up as observers, more than the combined delegations from the ten most climate-impacted countries.  If they return to Dubai for COP28, should we consider them enemies?

Of course, an enemy is an enemy only if they show up with enmity.  And that is Al Gore’s fear in a recent TedTalk where the language of “we vs. they” is featured.  “And now they,” he says, referring to the fossil fuel companies, “have brazenly seized control of the COP process, especially this year’s COP in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. For decades now the companies have had the evidence; they know the truth, and they consciously decided to lie to publics all around the world, in order to calm down the political momentum for doing something about it, so they could make more money.  It’s as simple as that.”

One of Christ’s most famous commands in Scripture, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44), seems predicated on the existence of actual enemies, flesh and blood ones.  The question of whether enemies exist is less important than the question of how we will respond to them.  And then theologians like Walter Wink and William Stringfellow have taught the church much about how human institutions and systems (like the fossil fuel industry) can be the “principalities and powers” that we are called to struggle against.  Finally, we climate activists are well-advised to re-discover Martin Luther King’s famous sermon “Love Your Enemies” (Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, AL on 17 Nov 1957) where Dr. King demonstrates how to separate the individual, created in God’s image, from the evil unjust system.  “But far from being an impractical idealist,” King claims, “Jesus has become the practical realist. The words of this text glitter in our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.”

In the meantime, there is a story in the Old Testament that speaks to the confusion we might be feeling about fossil fuel enemies at COP28.   According to I Samuel 24, King Saul returns from pursuing his traditional enemy, the Philistines, to seeking out David in order to kill him.  According to the prophet Samuel, David is the new anointed one.  According to Saul, David is the usurper.  When David’s men see Saul alone by himself in a cave, they say to David. “This is the day the Lord spoke of when he said to you, ‘I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish.’”  They certainly saw Saul as the enemy, and they ascribe God’s sanction to it as well.  David sneaks up on Saul, but rather than plunge his sword into him, he simply cuts off a corner of Saul’s robe.  He’s going to use it later to make a point to Saul: essentially, “Why are you treating me like an enemy, when—here—I just proved that I have no desire to kill you?”

But even this act was too much for David.  “Afterward, David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe.  He said to his men, ‘The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, or lay my hand on him; for he is the anointed of the Lord.’”  It should be said that being “conscience-stricken” is not necessarily the same thing as being convicted by the Holy Spirit according to the Law, and that even Saul’s later comment that “You are more righteous than I” is not the voice of God judging the morality of this moment.  It should also be noted that the scribes who wrote the history described in I Samuel 24 have a vested interest in protecting the “anointed-ness” of Israel’s royalty, rebellions being a constant threat.   I’ll never forget an incident in 1991 when tele-evangelist Benny Hinn was accused of some “theologically erroneous statements” tantamount to being “heretical” in his bestselling book Good Morning, Holy Spirit.  One day Hinn was apologetic.  Less than a week later, he was on a talk show on Trinity Broadcasting Network declaiming, “You dare not raise your hand against the Lord’s anointed,” meaning himself.  Anointed-ness can be weaponized.  The divine rights of kings, sultans, church leaders, and COP presidents is an inherently fraught thing in the struggle for justice.

In the end, the conscience-stricken David brings the subject of enmity back around.  “May the Lord judge between you and me,” he yells at Saul from a safe distance, “And may the Lord avenge the wrongs you have done to me, but my hand will not touch you.… May the Lord be our judge and decide between us.  May he consider my cause and uphold it; may he vindicate me by delivering me from your hand.”

I won’t claim to say that I Samuel 24 resolves anything about whether we should head into COP28 considering the fossil fuel companies to be our enemy.  I have an Al Gore TedTalk to re-watch and an MLK sermon to listen to again.  I’m also nose-deep in a Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein article from 2012 that I think will be helpful.  COP28 is still a few weeks away and I am mildly confident I’ll travel to Dubai with a new perspective, but what I Samuel 24 does for me is the reassurance that one can sit in the tension of unresolved questions, and that for all the simple, naïve resolutions available to us, there is no more trustworthy path forward in a phrase like “love your enemy” than to focus on the word love.  For that matter, Jesus once commanded the seemingly-more simple admonition “love your neighbour,” and a self-protective over-thinker managed to complicate that one too.  “Who is my neighbour?” the teacher of the Law asked Jesus (Luke 10:29).  Who is my enemy? may end up being an equally moot question.  How to love someone who is my enemy? feels like a question whose answer, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, can save a planet.