Shocking Stories

So two kings met to go to war; the one suggested they inquire of the seers -- all but one suggested they would be victorious.  He warned one of the others that he would know who was telling the truth when he (the one who said they would win) was hiding in the bathroom.
The second king said, "you go to battle dressed in royal robes, but I'm going in disguise."
But the enemy had said, "don't kill anyone but the evil king."  (That would be the second one).  The soldiers were going to attack the first one until he cried out, and they knew he wasn't the one they were after.  However, one archer shot an arrow at random and it hit and killed the second king.
He rode his chariot home, but died outside the city wall.
What would you think if I said this story was taken straight from the Bible?  See I Kings 22
I even left out some of the interesting aspects of the story.

Tim Hansel writes, in his book Holy Sweat, "Many of us have one of two basic problems with Scripture reading.  One is that many of us are unfamiliar with the Scriptures. [...]  The second problem is much more subtle and dangerous---we can become too familiar with the Bible's stories and characters so that they no longer astound us."  He lists some of the shocking stories

• In the opening pages of Scripture, amidst the stupendous flourish of creation, we are told that the culmination of all God's artistic ecstacy is that he created man---in his image, no less . . . out of dirt.  A moral agent out of mud.  [emphasis mine]

• He chooses a barren, grumpy old couple named Abraham and Sarah to give birth to a nation that would change human history for all time.  Can't you see Sarah laughing in her 90-year-old apron?

I quote at length because I can't say it better myself

• Then he decides to save this unique nation from captivity through an unemployed Egyptian-Israelite prince who tends sheep and stutters.  He reveals himself to the man through a scrub bush.  And later he puts the Red Sea on dry cycle long enough to allow this ungrateful nation to cross.

• He chooses a teenager who doesn't even have his high school diploma yet to nail a nine-foot enemy right between the eyes with a rock.  The boy grows up to become "a man after God's own heart"---even though the man pulls off one of the biggest blunders in the Old Testament.

That list is incredibly short, and it goes on (later):

The New Testament opens with the most flabbergasting incident of all time---that same Author of creation decided to reveal himself by being born . . . in a barn . . . to a virgin.  Later he set about astounding those around him:

• He took a trusting kid's leftover lunch and fed enough people to fill the Hollywood Bowl and still had enough left over for each of the disciples to have his own take-home basket.  Can you imagine what they were thinking and how these men felt on the way home?
  

• He outrageously shocked, surprised, and exasperated the religious community o the time, the Pharisees.  When the brought him a woman caught in adultery, he wrote something in the dirt and asked the sinless to throw the first stone.  When they dared him to break the Sabbath laws, he did so while quoting Scripture.
  

• The went to parties with people of questionable social standing and morality, and threw "respectable" tradesmen from the temple's steps.  He called Herod "that fox," and was himself looked upon as "a wine bibber and a glutton, a friend of outcasts and sinners."
  

• Rather than sharing the news of who he really was the the proper authorities, he revealed who he really is to a . . . Samaritan . . . woman who had had a handful of husbands and lovers.  Doesn't that at least confuse your prayer life?
  

• He chose the number one persecutor of his followers to become his top evangelist.  And then he gave the keys to the kingdom to the disciple who failed him so badly he denied him three times in one night.  [ed.: with cursing]

Does it sound like my book is already written?  Not by a long shot, but I include that full quote -- most of that is direct quote, but for a few lines -- because I want to awaken people to the outlandish aspects of the Bible.  (I recommend the entire book, by the way, or anything else written by Tim Hansel.)

I'll demonstrate with David next...