Several years ago, I wrote a series of posts on a previous blog I authored, called “The Real Saul.”  I decided to reintroduce and re-vamp those posts today after reading through the book of 1 Samuel.  I am always challenged by Saul’s story, and so I thought I’d share some of my observations that I first wrote about seven years ago.

Essentially, this is a character study of Saul, from the book of 1 Samuel.  Saul was the first anointed king of Israel, and a tragic figure in the history of Israel.  He lost his throne to David and spent much of his life as a blood-thirsty villain.  In seminary I was taught that Saul’s problem was his ego.  He was prideful, and that eventually led to his downfall.

But one day, while reading the book of 1 Samuel, looking at the text through fresh eyes, I began to see Saul differently.

I realized it’s too easy to write Saul off as a villain . . . a prideful tyrant, and I couldn’t do that anymore.  For the first time, I saw a guy who was

much

more

like

me

than I wanted to admit.  Saul’s problem wasn’t that he was an egomaniac.  His problem was the opposite.   It was that he was incredibly insecure.  He had deep wounds and insecurities that crippled his future.  Sometimes insecurities look a lot like pride on the outside. . . that’s why there’s often confusion on this.  But on the inside, the experience in the soul is much different.

This is what I mean by an insecurity: an insecurity is a false, negative belief about what and who you are, despite the fact that God has told you you are something and somebody different.

I think many Christians have at least a cerebral understanding that God likes us.  God considers us his children, his beloved, his kingdom of priests.  Sunday School kids have had these ideas drilled into us since we were in diapers.  But insecurities always challenge the things we cerebrally understand, by planting seeds of doubt deep within our souls.  Sometimes we don’t even realize a particular insecurity is there.  Sometimes we know it’s there, but we’ve bought into it’s lie.  Sometimes, we know it’s there, we don’t want to believe it, we know we shouldn’t believe it, but that same false belief creeps into our lives over and over and over again.  I wonder how many negative emotions and behaviors I’ve experienced in my life were motivated by some kind of insecurity I wrestle with.

And that is the foundation, I believe, of Saul’s story.  He was a person who wrestled with one significant insecurity throughout his life.  It was that little voice that tormented him, that little doubt that defied all logic and theological grounding: God told Saul he was king, but Saul could never bring himself to fully believe it or embrace it.  I think this insecurity was the root of Saul’s tragic life.  So, as I said, I’m going to spend the next few weeks sharing some of my thoughts about the life of Saul, and why I believe the biggest lessons we can learn from him are about our own insecurities.