Y’SharAL is a spiritual nation. Its weaponry isn’t carnal, and neither are its adversaries. We war against spiritual forces within our souls that we create and empower by our choices in the days of our lives. The devils and demons with which we contend are constructs of the unsavory attributes and proclivities within our own beings. The gods we serve are little more than idolized caricatures of our own existential qualities; for we cherish the “acceptable” self image we retain in our minds as though it were a favored idol on a corner shelf in the living room. We nod our heads at the notion of a living God, but we live unto ourselves, gearing our lives to the self interest of saving our mortal souls from everlasting peril and our bodies from mere discomfort.

Our own thoughts bear witness against us as they elevate the bias of our hearts and minds above all other considerations. When a single-minded point of view determined by the metrics of our own, personal standards becomes the measure by which we excuse or accuse everything and everybody, we have become primly demonic.

Without guidance by HaShem, we will pursue those self-serving standards as though they were gods, believing that adhering to their demands will serve us well when a final judgment of our worth is made. We will comfort ourselves in the belief that we will be justified if we can weave kindness, idealism, and material success into our lives and that, if we should fall short, we can rely on our decency as merit for mercy.

Imagining that we are in control of our lives, we will marshal our arguments for self-justification, brazenly taking our stand at the head of like-minded zealots, as if we were a Goliath; and we will challenge all comers to defeat the logic of our single-minded focus. Puffing ourselves up with will power and brandishing our piety, we will defy any to war against us; for we know in whom we have stubbornly believed and trusted.

Cowed by the intensity and general popularity of such reasoning, the spiritually weak are easily misguided and manipulated as they suffer rim shots within the drumming of humanistic doctrines born of bigotry. Parents, misled in so many ways, watch in silence as their children are seduced into warring on the wrong battlefields in a world that stands on the brink of planet-killing destruction. The status-quo is guarantor of the bottom line; so they remain silent about distortions. Wisdom is justified of her children.

Goliaths of commerce and finance back their demands by issuing their challenges with the trappings of worldly power and the endorsement of religious shills. They are confident they will accomplish their agendas, but they are unprepared for a revival of such spiritual warfare as was waged by King David, whose bravery confounded armies that had gathered for a final battle. David’s example teaches us to war with songs of wonder, so that those with ears to hear will embrace the wider understandings of life that come with allegiance to the demands of spirit, as hearts answer to hearts.

David’s people were simply proud of him. King Shaul had been an appealing man, and the people credited him with killing his thousands; but of King David, they bragged that he had “killed” his ten-thousands. He hadn’t murdered them, as King Shaul had done in his determination to retain the throne HaShem had entrusted to him, which had become his by his claim. By contrast, humble David avoided confrontation where possible. He preferred to change hearts and minds by using the same playful tactics of restraint he demonstrated as he lay hidden in the brush while King Shaul lowered his skirts in answer to nature. Not by choice a man of war, David preferred to circumcise the enemies of Y'SharAL with the blade of reason.

He was not called to the throne as a warrior, but as a rural shepherd; and in
tending the herds, young David’s heart had approached congruence with
the heart of HaShem. Their relationship is understood in the emblems
that spell his name. “David dwd” is a sigil for a man whose heart d was
wed w with the heart d of messiah: in his lonely life, he had meditated
on the reality of his spirit until his perceptions d were brought into
alignment w with divine revelation d. A man of vision, the great poet of
the book of Psalms, a prophet, a spiritual warrior, King David understood
the saying, “Let not the sound of the ax or the hammer be heard as you
build the temple;” for he was a tabernacle man who submitted to God’s spirit.