SLAYING A GIANT

SLAYING A GIANT

There is an idea in the Bible how one can deal with a pesky giant (I Samuel 17). Yes, it is the story of David and Goliath. In those days, champions fought before armies were engaged. King Saul of Israel had no one that could match the armor and strength of Goliath the Philistine. In came this shepherd lad with food for his brothers. He was upset when he heard the giant blaspheme God and His people. It was David and he volunteered to take on the blasphemer. King Saul and so did Goliath thought that it was a joke that a lad with no armor or a weapon could slay a champion? It is difficult to picture in our minds a boy with a slingshot and a pouch with some small stones facing the giant, and telling him to say his last prayers; for the God whom he was blaspheming was about to deliver him into a lad’s hands. Faith in God was essential for David, but so was his confidence in his accurate skill to slay the giant. He knew he could do it with one swing.

David, obviously, did not teach his skill to his soldiers. He continued warring with men power and weaponry. It was cumbersome, costly and devastating. This approach was used throughout history and is still today. Gunpowder; however, has changed the way a giant is slain. Then it is the one with the most dreadful explosives that is feared. The USA, in the eyes of many in the world, is in such a gigantic position. It negotiates from military strength. It relies on its huge arsenal of nuclear weapons. It is also a gentle giant that believes it can by intimidation keep those that intend to harm at bay. It is that gentleness that encourages little men with slingshots to inflict the giant with un-nerving wounds. Even brutal and ruthless giants, in the past, were no match for a single or a few people with fatal slingshots. Single individuals have unseated leaders and conquered kingdoms.

North Americans find it incomprehensible why a giant with all its might cannot subdue these pesky little fatalists. It is tragic that our leaders do not see what the purpose of these fatalists is, namely the slaying of the giant. Their wounding will not fell the giant, but the prohibitive cost to use such huge forces will. I was born in a country that faced such a giant. I was nine when my father had to report to his Polish military unit. They had 500 men, 50 rifles, 2 horses and one rusty canon. My father was in charge of the horses. They were facing a host of German shinny tiger tanks glittering in the morning sun. It took a few minutes for the Germans to dispose of the canon and left another man and my father alive. Four years later, the same powerful weapons were made obsolete by the lack of gasoline. Their army was in disarray. The Germans began to draft old men and children (I was kept from obeying such orders), placed a Panzerfaust (it looked like a toilet plunger with a bomb attached) in their hands and ordered to disable Soviet tanks. The idea was similar to saboteurs, kamikaze and the Jihads. They were and still are deadly. These fatalists cost little and their results are devastating. Nine Eleven (9-11) is a reminder of what they are capable of.

Military actions against fatalism, whether it is racial, political or religious is self-destructive. Our leaders could take a lesson from David. He did not negotiate, compromise or engage the army. He simply hit the giant on the head and that was the end of his threats. He gave Goliath something of his own medicine. President Truman was coerced into applying the same principle to the kamikaze followers and it ended the war instantly. Western leaders keep on tolerating Jihads that bring destructions to our best cities. When will our progressive humanist realize that they are the leaders of the giant these Jihads will bring down? Apprehending them and assigning a hotel suit in our modern prisons will not correct or change a mentality that requires some one’s life to qualify for heaven. Jesus declared, “for all that draw the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). With the measure they measure, they must be measured (Matthew 7:2). How would the Jihads feel when their places of worship are dishonored and their cities wrecked? Beware of the giant that has the means to retaliate. At the present he is in a slumber, waiting for a leader that will end this human madness. Let us hope it is not Armageddon.