Jesus, David and Jack Bauer
In the mornings I am reading 1 and 2 Samuel, and in the evenings watching episodes of '24'. What strikes me is that despite the thousands of years that stretch between the two, nothing much has changed. Human beings are still a mixture of striving for the best they can be; fighting ( often literally) for justice, for peace, for a piece of land for themselves, their family and their tribe; and crippled by their hunger for power, by lust, and by the mistaken belief that the end justifies the means. What a contrasting picture of what it means to be human is offered by Jesus. No wonder the people around him didn't "get it", when King David was the nearest they had come to a godly model of kingship and leadership. It's still the model of power and leadership that we prefer today, however much we talk about servant leadership. Is it possible for human beings to create a society that does reflect more the values of Jesus than the example of David?