Between studying David and Bathsheba in my Bible class and studying it in a Campus Crusade Bible study, I've had this Bible story in my head a lot lately. It was rather strange to read in the secular Bible and Literature book I had for my class how, over the years, authors and artists attempted to portray Bathsheba as the evil, lost one and David as holy. The authors of this textbook mentioned how a comparison between David and Jesus had arisen, and how some compared the story to Jesus (David) rescuing and lost soul (Bathsheba) from the devil (Uriah). Obviously, it's easy to see how ridiculous such an idea is. David may have been a man after God's own heart, but I love that the Bible includes this less-than-perfect picture of him. Actually, "less-than-perfect" isn't much of a description; the story could be better named appalling. After all, David not only lusts after a married woman and commits adultery, but he also tries to cover it up until he finally murders Uriah.
The fact is, stories like this and others, such as Jacob deceiving his father and then taking two wives, letting them both suffer, or Peter's betrayal of Jesus, or Jonah's attempts at running from God's call, are all encouraging to me. They remind me that even the men and women in the Bible that we often name as Biblical heroes and people to look up to had shortcomings too. They sinned and made disastrous choices. They even committed adultery and murdered or deceived. Their poor decisions caused suffering for themselves and those around them. Yet still, when they turned to God, God was ready to forgive them, to still make their lives into something great, to still work through them so that they would be men and women we could respect, thousands of years later. Of course God doesn't expect perfect people. He just expects us to turn to Him, to give our lives to Him, and He will work through us.
