There have always been folks who have thought they could change the world, people who were unwilling to leave things as they are, who want to make a difference, who want to get things done. They want to change the world. The trouble is, they usually run up against harsh human reality.
Eighty or so years ago, our grandparents announced that they were fighting a war to make the world safe for democracy. They thought they were changing things forever. But barely twenty years later that dream came crashing down under the flag of Nazism. Changing people’s warlike habits was not so easy.
Less than forty years ago, a dashing young American president created the Peace Corps. It attracted a legion of young people who believed that, with American technology and boundless energy, they could go anywhere and pay any price and do anything to lift up people. They thought they could teach birth control to India, flood control to Pakistan, and disease control to Nicaragua. But many of them found they could not teach self-control to anybody! Changing people’s cultures was not easy, and changing individuals was nearly impossible.
Thirty years ago, young people were clamoring to go to medical school, so that they could be the next Charles Drew or Jonas Salk and could eradicate disease. They were pressing into law school, so that they could walk in Thurgood Marshall’s shoes and eliminate racism. They were filling up the social work schools, so that they could fight the war on poverty, build the great society, end Vietnam, and change it all! We demonstrated for change everywhere, the campuses, the streets, and the Woolworth’s lunch counter. We would change the very face of America.
And now? How much has changed? Woolworth’s lunch counter is in the Smithsonian, and, as of this week, Woolworth’s itself is history; but the sicknesses of the human heart go on and on. Little seems to change.
We are not the first generation to find this discouraging. We are not the first to hold the great expectation that we can change others, only to founder on that expectation. Three thousand years ago, a drama was acted out in the Judean hills that tells us about our great expectation, that we can change people.
The key players in this drama are the men surrounding the King of Israel. David is getting pushed around by two people. One of them is his military chief, Joab. The other is his son, Absalom. Between the general and the prince, a whole lot is going on to try to change the King. They really believe that they can change David. But it’s tougher than they supposed.
In brief, the story is this: Absalom had arranged for the murder of his half-brother, Amnon, in revenge for Amnon’s rape of their sister, Tamar. As angry has David had been about Amnon’s sin, he had not punished his son, so David’s other son, Absalom, had taken it upon himself to work vengeance. As our story is set today, David has grieved over Amnon’s slaughter. Absalom is a fugitive, and David is grieving over that, but the king cannot bring himself to forgive his son and bring him home. He is in conflict. He doesn’t know quite what to do, and like a lot of us who aren’t sure what we should do, he does nothing. He just sits and nurses his wounds. Something needs to change.
I
Enter General Joab. Joab sees that David needs to change. David needs to get off dead center. So Joab selects a strategy. Joab sets up a shame game. In this shame game, Joab enlists a woman to come to the king and tell him a story about her two sons, one of whom has supposedly killed the other, and now she is afraid somebody will kill the remaining one, and she and her husband will have nobody left in their old age. It is quite a tearjerker. She gets the king to promise that he will protect her family against anyone who would harm that other son.
But then it dawns on David what she is trying to say. It dawns on him that she is really talking about his two sons, not hers. And David also figures out that Joab put her up to this. Joab has played the shame game on David. It appears to work! It appears to work, because, as a result, David lifts the ban on Absalom. David gives permission to Joab to go get Absalom from his exile and bring him back to Jerusalem. The shame game appears to have worked. David appears to have changed.
However, that is an illusion. It doesn’t work, because, although David does order that Absalom be brought back to Jerusalem, then David issues another order, "Let him go to his own house- he is not to come into my presence."
You see, we think we ran change people by shaming them. We think we can create an emotional crisis and change people. And, true, that may change their immediate behavior. But it will not change their hearts. We can play the shame game, as Joab did, and we may get the response we are looking for, but nothing has really changed, because down deep, the heart remains untouched. David said "yes" on the outside, but on the inside there was a very deep "no". David let Absalom come back to the city, but refused to let his son come back to his heart. No real change.
A church member told me this week about the work he is doing this summer, running a city youth program. This member told me that he is dealing with people who have never known anything but dependency, third and fourth generation. He said that these young people act as though the world owes them everything, because they have never learned to work for anything. The hope is that in summer camp something can be done to help break that cycle, that something will change that mentality. But, he says, when one of these youngsters gets out of control, and the staff goes to a parent to try to get help in restoring order, more often than not the parent is indifferent, the parent doesn’t care, the parent is part of the "you owe it to me" cycle. And so, you see, even though you might shame this young person into behaving better today, tomorrow he will be right back where he started, because the shame game changes nothing down deep. The shame game does not touch the heart and core. Getting somebody emotionally wrought up and touching their shame may affect today’s behavior, but just for a little while, if the core hasn’t been touched.
If you think you can change somebody by making them feel ashamed, you are mistaken. Joab found that out with David.
II
So somebody else tried another strategy to change David. Absalom himself tried to change his father. Absalom’s choice was to use force. His strategy was to use trickery and drama, extreme attention-getters.
Absalom wasn’t getting the response he wanted from his moody, brooding old father, so Absalom tried to change David by pushing him, forcing him, manipulating him.
Remember the story thus far. Absalom had murdered his brother, and had been kept out of Jerusalem, as a fugitive. But David had relented, to a degree, and had let Absalom come back to the city, but only so far. He had not allowed Absalom to come home. He wouldn’t see Absalom personally. He had not really changed, down deep.
So Absalom escalated the effort. Absalom took extreme measures to get his father to change. Absalom went back to Joab, who had been the go-between the first time. Joab ignored him. Absalom sent messages to Joab; they came back refused. Absalom asked Joab to visit, and Joab said, "Don’t call me, I’ll call you." Absalom got no satisfaction. So Absalom went dramatic. He looked out and saw Joab’s nice ripe barley field, and he set it on fire! Now that was pretty hard for Joab to ignore! That was dramatic! You will listen to me!!
Well, it worked, sort of. It worked in that Joab did go to the king and did seek permission for Absalom to come and see his father. It worked in that David did allow his son to come to court. It worked in that when Absalom got to court, the king kissed his son. David embraced Absalom. Father and son apparently reconciled. End of story? Manipulation does work? Dramatic nonsense does change people, right? Right? Wrong!
Wrong, because in the very next chapter we see Prince Absalom and King David at each other’s throats. In the very next chapter, Absalom is leading a conspiracy against his father, and his father is gathering troops, weeping bitterly, and wishing that Absalom had never been born! What is going on?
What is going on is that Absalom’s vanity, Absalom’s egotism is playing itself out, and David’s conflicted heart is getting more and more bruised. What is going on is the crafty, selfish, pride-filled Absalom, about whom the Scripture says that he was an immensely handsome man, addicted to admiring himself in the mirror.. this crafty, selfish, ambitious young man is wounding the heart of his weary, embattled father.
When we try to force people to get them to change, it’s not about them. It’s about us. It’s about our need to be successful, our need to win, our need to fulfill our ambitions. When we try to manipulate people to change, it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with us. We are the issue, we are the problem, we are trying to burnish our own images. We are trying to feel strong and powerful.
And people don’t change under those circumstances. Nothing gets better under those conditions. No one is helped when they are forced to do something they really do not want to do. Ultimately the seeds of conflict have been sown. Ultimately David and Absalom will fight, because Absalom is not really about helping David. Absalom is about boosting Absalom. Growing David was never the agenda in the first place. Forcing people to change is not about their hearts- it is about our own. It is about our own pride, our own sin.
You want that child to do the right thing? You beat up on him, you use nothing more than the fabled board of education, and he does what he is supposed to do. But the seeds of resentment are sown. You want that daughter to live on the straight and narrow? So you maneuver, behind her back, to monitor her every move. Is that really about her, or is that about you? Is that really for that child’s benefit, or is that about your reputation? You want that co-worker to get busy and do the job? Your arguments are airtight, your logic is irrefutable, your threats are heavy duty. But he still is a slouch, she still does sloppy work, they still hide from responsibility. Because they have figured out that what you are about is looking good, not about developing them. They have figured out that you want to burnish an image, and you want to use them in the process.
Can you change people by pushing them around? You may change behavior for a time, but you will only sow the seeds of conflict. And some day, like Absalom and David, you will find yourself on the field of battle, a battle in which there are no winners, only losers.
III
So if you cannot change people by shaming them, and if you cannot change people by forcing them, is there anything at all that you can do? Since change is not brought about by creating an emotional crisis, and since change doesn’t happen when out of our own egotism we try to force people to change, is there any way we can make a difference in anyone’s life?
Oh, what a wonderful answer comes out of the Scriptures! What an awesome response comes out of the life of the stubborn old king, his haughty general, and his vainglorious son!
The battle is joined. Absalom has stretched David’s patience to the breaking point. The king’s armies are in hot pursuit. David gives but one order: do what you must to quash the rebellion, but do not harm the young man Absalom. Take out his armies, put down his followers, crush his conspiracy. But protect my son. Leave my son unharmed.
The tide of battle goes with the king’s forces, and the young prince must flee. Off he rides, at breakneck speed, into the woods. He does not see a low-lying branch. As his mount races past, Absalom’s long flowing hair is caught in the branch, and he hangs in the tree, helpless, at the mercy of whoever should come along.
General Joab comes along. Joab, whose barley field Absalom had burned. Joab, who had tried to change David’s heart by creating an emotional crisis. Joab, who had been strictly charged by his sovereign to protect the young rebel. But Joab disobeys. Joab thrusts three spears into the side of the prince. Absalom is buried in a great pit and it’s all over.
The news makes its way to the king’s chambers. Absalom is dead. The traitor, the rebel, the one who would have pushed you around, he is dead.
Oh, there are no more poignant cries in all of history than David’s weeping for his son Absalom. His very heart is broken, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, 0 Absalom, my son, my son!" This at last has touched David at his core. This at last has penetrated his defenses. This gets to him in a way that nothing else has.
And if you read the next chapters, you find a different David, you find a changed man. In the next chapters, David is not the same. He pardons a man whose crime should have cost him his life. He gives land and position to one of Saul’s grandsons, who might have challenged him for the throne. He offers hospitality to an old man, he even stops messing around with a house full of concubines! This is a new David, this is a kinder, gentler David. This, at last, is a changed man.
What did it? What changed him, in the end? It was not an emotional crisis, not shame. It was not being forced or manipulated. What changed him was a spiritual crisis, a relationship crisis. David saw the death of his son. David saw what his brokenness had done to someone he cared for. A spiritual crisis, a relationship crisis.
For, you see, what changes us is to discover that we have injured someone who matters. What finally changes us is to feel the pain of those we have resisted. David was changed when he saw his son, hanging on a tree, spears thrust in his side, and his body broken and buried. It changed him forever.
You and I will be changed when we see the Son and know what our sin has done to Him. You and I will be changed when we see Jesus, hanging on the cross, great nails in his hands and feet and a spear in His wounded side. You and I will be changed when we watch His body broken and buried. You and I will be changed when we feel it for ourselves, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends"
So you want to change the world? So you want to someone? Point him to Jesus, wounded and bleeding, and he will be changed. Point her to Jesus, crushed and dying, and she will be changed. Point them to Jesus, buried and yet risen again, dead and yet alive, bruised and yet victorious, for us and in us, and they will be changed, really changed, forever.
