The Fall of King David and the Psalms

One of the crucial tensions we should be experiencing as Mormons while reading the Psalms is realizing that we're reading about David begging for a full recovery from sin he ultimately doesn't receive.

The scriptures teach, even when our people haven't always understood, that David kidnapped and raped Bathsheba, murdered her husband, forced her into marriage, and caused God to kill their son in punishment because of David's sin. He caused suffering to Bathsheba that can never be undone, which is why his consequences will never be overturned. 

The permanent loss of God's favor, even once we have obtained divine forgiveness, is something I want my people to understand better. We have to believe in a God where pain matters, where there are extreme consequences for hurting each other in the worst ways imaginable, or we've imagined a God who is fundamentally unjust.

When men hurt women to such an extreme, there are extreme consequences for that treatment. You can repent, be forgiven, and still never fully recover, like David. That's how much God cares about women. That's how much God cares about women and their pain. He doesn't use "think about the man's future" as an excuse. To us, David isn't a heroic figure. He is a tragic one, and only has himself to blame for it.

Mormonism, and especially its men, should think about that more. So let's talk about it.

What is true repentance?

There are a couple of things we have to talk about in relation to this. Because God does forgive sins, and God did forgive David's sins. But there is a difference between forgiving sins and fully removing the consequences of those sins. Especially for the sins we're talking about in David's case. 

You cannot have true repentance without restitution. If you steal something, you need to pay for it. If you lie, you need to tell the truth. If you hurt someone, you need to apologize and do what you can to make them whole again.

You cannot make restitution when you murder someone. You have taken a life with malice of forethought towards your own gains. You have stolen time from someone else that you cannot give back. You have taken them from their families and loved ones in ways you cannot pay for, even if you went to prison. Incarceration pays a debt to society, but not to the people you have wronged. The only thing that will make restitution to them is to restore the life you took, which is outside of your power to do.

And that's just Uriah. We haven't even gotten to Bathsheba yet.

Uriah died in battle. He died, but he didn't suffer. Bathsheba was raped, forced into marriage against her will, and lost a child to miscarriage because of David. She suffered because of David for the rest of her life.

David cannot pay restitution to Bathsheba. He can't give her husband back. He can't undo that he forced himself upon her when she was already married, a sin punishable under the Law of Moses by death. He cannot bring their child back to her. There is no restitution he can make to her, in any way, that will ever make her whole again. And I say that as a survivor of sexual violence. I have had the Atonement of Jesus Christ in my life for 20 years, and there is no day where I'm not still affected by what happened to me. Especially because what has helped the most is the divine reassurance I've had from God that I will have justice one day. I don't have to ask for vengeance from the Lord. Vengeance is His and He will repay.

Sin isn't just a ritualistic debt that Jesus can magically wipe out. Sin is a debt because it's attached to risk and harm. And where harm continues beyond a person's capacity to make restitution, these become exceptional cases where the regular rules can't apply.

An Abuse of Stewardship

Additionally, David wasn't just a regular person. He was a King in Israel. He was anointed to be King in the name of God by a prophet with priesthood authority. His sin was a violation of both temporal and spiritual law. He violated his office as a King by sending a man to war specifically so he would die. He raped one of his own subjects while she was married. It was a violation of their marriage and his own marriages, all of which were performed under priesthood authority.

If I asked you what the penalty for something like that should be today, you would say excommunication and a prison sentence. You would say that David is guilty of such extreme abuses of power that losing his membership in the Church is the bare minimum of what should happen to him. And I hope you would also see that even that isn't enough.

Our Cosmology is Still Nicer than What David Deserves

Precursor to this for anyone in the audience who isn't Mormon: We have an open scriptural canon that includes more than just the Bible and The Book of Mormon. This assertion comes from one of our other books of scripture. We're also one of the few religious traditions to have practiced polygamy in modernity. And as it was in the ancient Biblical world, we involved God in our practice of polygamy as a people. 

One of the lessons God had to teach was that polygamy isn't always practiced in righteousness. And when it isn't, there are severe consequences. We believe God used David as an example of that happening in D&C 132:

39 David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me, by the hand of Nathan, my servant, and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power; and in none of these things did he sin against me save in the case of Uriah and his wife; and, therefore he hath fallen from his exaltation, and received his portion; and he shall not inherit them out of the world, for I gave them unto another, saith the Lord.

I'm a big fan of telling people that Mormonism doesn't have Hell, the permanent state of being imprisoned, tortured, and punished. In our cosmology, everyone has rewards to look forward to in the Afterlife. There will be joy, peace, and rest for everyone. It's why we call them kingdoms of degrees. And in the highest kingdom of glory, the Celestial Kingdom, is to live with God the Father and to inherit as heirs. But David isn't going there. He has lost his exaltation. And there is nothing he can do to change that, even with God's forgiveness.

We do have a place in our cosmology called Outer Darkness, but it's so unclear about who is going there, we can't even say if Hitler is going there for certain. I've seen people question if mass murderers can qualify for Outer Darkness if they aren't members of the Church because they wouldn't be under oath in the necessary ways for it to even be possible. I don't know, and no one else does either. But what we know is that David wanted to repent, even if he wasn't fully capable. And I think all of us would be deeply uncomfortable with someone like that ending up in Outer Darkness.

Therefore, we have every reason to think that because David repented to the degree that was possible for him, he's going to inherit a kingdom of glory. He's destined for either Telestial or Terrestrial glory, since we know Celestial glory is out. And we know that both of those options are nicer than anything we have on Earth. So really... David is fine. And I think that's the only reason we have this information about someone's eternal destiny, where God is notoriously tight-lipped about that for every other person. David is an exception so extreme, we needed this information for the sake of clarity, especially since we were up to our shoulders in church leaders who were doing A VERY Bad Job of Practicing Polygamy at the time.

This is what I've found myself thinking about repeatedly as I've been reading the Psalms. David is pleading for forgiveness he does receive, and that's why he's not going to Outer Darkness. I think we could make a really good case for that being what almost happened to him. He pleaded for mercy and received it. The Atonement of Jesus Christ does work. I think we underestimate how serious his crimes were though. What he did was that bad AND he knew better at the time when he did it. That second part really does matter more than people think. It changes the entire scoring system when you've made covenants with God. We're held to a higher standard than those who haven't.

But none of this matters to the average person. Most of us will never do anything this bad, or be in such a position of authority where it matters, that we need to be afraid of these kinds of consequences. And what's more, I don't think David is ultimately that upset with his position. He's grateful for his redemption, no matter what it looks like. And that is one of the many things we can learn from his experience. 

God is kind and just to the undeserving who care enough to repent. Even in the crazy exceptional cases of extreme wrong, that remains true.