{"id":310,"date":"2021-03-21T13:13:44","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T17:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=310"},"modified":"2021-03-21T14:10:11","modified_gmt":"2021-03-21T18:10:11","slug":"gabriel-david-baldwin-and-saul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/03\/21\/gabriel-david-baldwin-and-saul\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabriel, David Baldwin, and Saul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Gabriel\u2019s first meeting with baby John, the child is enthralled by the music he hears and Gabriel says, \u201cGot a man in the Bible, son, who liked music, too. He used to play on his harp before the king, and he got to dancing one day before the Lord. You reckon you going to dance for the Lord one of these days?\u201d (Baldwin 177). In these phrases, Gabriel refers to David who played his harp for King Saul (1 Sam 16:19-23) and later danced before God (2 Sam 6:14-16). The introduction of David and Saul into Go Tell It on the Mountain<\/em> is exceptionally fruitful as it connects both to the text and Baldwin\u2019s life. Though the connections between the biblical David, John, and Baldwin are equally rich, I want to focus here on the link between Saul, Gabriel, and David Baldwin and the way Saul adds to our reading of the text. In the Bible, David plays his harp for Saul because the king is \u201ctroubled by an evil spirit from God\u201d (1 Sam 16:15). This description implies some mental trouble for Saul, presumably a mental illness. Undoubtedly, Baldwin recognized parallels between Saul\u2019s evil spirit and his father\u2019s mental illness. The shift from serving as God\u2019s messenger to having a mental illness that impairs thought is startling but, as Saul\u2019s example shows, it is not unprecedented nor is it disconnected from God\u2019s larger plan. In the Bible, the evil spirit troubles Saul once the spirit of God leaves him and fills David instead. The spirit of God leaves Saul because he disobeys the Lord in battle. God commanded Saul to \u201cgo and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass\u201d (1 Sam 15:3). Though Saul follows through on killing women and children and fails by not killing the leader of Amalek, God\u2019s command here is worth pondering. God\u2019s instructions illustrate the difference between the Old Testament God and the New Testament Christ; the lack of mercy on anything and anyone seems antithetical to Christ\u2019s message. For Christians, these instructions represent a rift in the faith: is Christianity about love (as Baldwin would assert) or about follow God\u2019s commands on the path to heaven? Ideally, these options are the same but Saul\u2019s case shows that is not always the case. Baldwin favors the Christianity of love and forgiveness, but Gabriel, and presumably David Baldwin, seem to follow a Christianity that features an angry God and a constant serpent in the grass, looking to provoke his ire. In Go Tell It on the Mountain<\/em>,Baldwin repeats Saul\u2019s internal battle between following God, doing the right thing, and keeping up appearances in the story of Gabriel\u2019s life. In trying to balance these impulses, Gabriel fails; the Bible shows that Saul also falls short. Strikingly, the punishment for that failure is also the same. Saul not only receives an evil spirit from the Lord but also loses the right to keep the kingship and spirit of Lord within his lineage; he cannot choose his heir. Gabriel experiences the same reality. By naming their son \u201cRoyal,\u201d Esther forces her imperfect child to serve as Gabriel\u2019s heir. Furthermore, Gabriel hopes that he can pass on the spirit of the Lord to Roy, but he seems to have only passed on the \u201cevil spirit from God.\u201d Rather, God chooses Baldwin, the unlikeliest of heirs like David, to continue his work on Earth, spurning Gabriel\u2019s desires. By looking at Saul in comparison to Gabriel and David Baldwin, Baldwin illustrates how God\u2019s control over the world, both real and perceived, affects the characters in the text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Gabriel\u2019s first meeting with baby John, the child is enthralled by the music he hears and Gabriel says, \u201cGot a man in the Bible, son, who liked music, too. He used to play on his harp before the king, and he got to dancing one day before the Lord. You reckon you going to … Continue reading Gabriel, David Baldwin, and Saul<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[480788],"tags":[486174,483382,264259],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-go-tell-it-on-the-mountain","tag-david-baldwin","tag-gabriel","tag-saul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}