The Art of Unhelpful Helping
Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 4:1-12
There’s a fascinating study in neuropsychology that reveals something profound about human decision-making. When researchers examined brain scans of people making moral choices under pressure, they discovered that our prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for ethical reasoning, actually becomes less active when we’re focused intensely on achieving a desired outcome. In other words, the more desperately we want something, the more likely we are to experience what scientists call “moral myopia” – a narrowing of our ethical vision that allows us to justify almost anything in service of our goals. It’s as if our brains literally shut down our moral reasoning when we become too invested in a particular result.
I wonder if you’ve ever experienced this phenomenon in your own life. Perhaps it was during a heated argument with your spouse, when winning the fight became more important than preserving the relationship. Maybe it happened in a business deal, when closing the sale mattered more than complete honesty about the product’s limitations. Or possibly it occurred in a church committee meeting, when getting your way on a decision seemed to justify questioning the motives and character of those who disagreed with you. We’ve all been there – moments when our desire for a particular outcome begins to eclipse our commitment to the principles we claim to value.
The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from his prison cell during World War II, observed something striking about the nature of grace and human effort. He noted that we often become so convinced of the righteousness of our cause that we begin to believe God needs our help, even our morally questionable help, to accomplish his purposes. Bonhoeffer wrote, “The man who acts out of free responsibility seeks the real solution in God alone, and he is prepared to sacrifice even the most cherished of his convictions if the truth of God calls for it.”¹ These words carry particular weight, especially when we consider that Bonhoeffer himself was imprisoned for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was a man who had come to believe that even assassination might be justified in service of God’s justice.
Consider the story that unfolded in a small Alabama church during the height of the civil rights movement. The congregation had spent months debating whether to open their doors to African American worshippers, with passionate arguments on both sides. The pastor, deeply convinced that integration was God’s will, found himself facing a board meeting where the vote was likely to go against opening the church. The night before the meeting, one of the most vocal opponents of integration called the pastor with devastating news; he had discovered that another board member, a strong supporter of integration, had been embezzling from the church building fund. “Pastor,” the man said, “if you use this information tomorrow night, we can get him removed from the board, and the vote will go our way on the integration question.” The pastor spent the night wrestling with a terrible temptation: use questionable means to achieve what he believed was God’s will, or trust God to work through legitimate channels even if it meant losing the vote.
This scenario captures something essential about the human condition: our persistent belief that God’s purposes depend on our success, and our willingness to bend our principles when those purposes seem threatened. We see this dynamic playing out dramatically in the ancient story that forms the heart of our Scripture reading today. The political landscape of Israel was in chaos. King Saul was dead, his son Ishbosheth was clinging to power in the northern territories, and David was consolidating his rule in the south. Into this volatile situation stepped two men named Rechab and Baanah, captains in Ishbosheth’s army who had made a calculated decision about which way the political winds were blowing.
These weren’t evil men in the conventional sense. They weren’t motivated by personal grudges or sadistic pleasure in violence. Instead, they appear to have been pragmatists who believed they could serve God’s purposes, and their own interests, by eliminating the obstacle that stood between David and complete control of Israel. After all, hadn’t the prophet Samuel anointed David as God’s chosen king? Wasn’t it obvious that Ishbosheth’s reign was illegitimate and doomed to fail? By removing this weak pretender to the throne, weren’t they simply helping God accomplish what he had already decreed?
The Hebrew word the text uses to describe their action is particularly telling. When it says they “struck down” Ishbosheth, it employs the verb נכה (nakah), which means not just to kill, but to smite or strike in a way that suggests divine judgment. This was the same word used to describe God’s judgment against Egypt in the plagues, or his punishment of enemies in battle. In their minds, Rechab and Baanah weren’t committing murder; they were serving as instruments of divine justice, helping God clean up the messy political situation that was preventing his anointed king from taking his rightful place.
The great American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once observed that “the tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.”⁶ Niebuhr understood that some of the most dangerous moral compromises occur not when we abandon our faith, but when we become so convinced of our faith’s rightness that we’re willing to use any means necessary to advance it. This is precisely what happened to Rechab and Baanah. They had correctly identified God’s will – David should be king – but they had tragically assumed that this divine endorsement of the outcome also endorsed whatever methods they chose to achieve it.
There’s a haunting parallel in the story of the Crusades, where thousands of Christians became convinced that their noble goal of reclaiming the Holy Land justified the most brutal means imaginable. Pope Urban II’s call to arms in 1095 promised that participation in the Crusade would earn complete remission of sins, effectively suggesting that the righteousness of the cause could sanctify even the most questionable actions taken in its service. The result was centuries of warfare that violated virtually every principle Jesus had taught about loving enemies and turning the other cheek. The Crusaders had identified a goal they believed God endorsed, but they had assumed that divine approval of their destination also meant divine approval of their journey.
When Rechab and Baanah arrived at David’s court in Hebron, carrying the severed head of Ishbosheth, they expected to be celebrated as heroes. They had eliminated David’s rival, cleared the path to unified kingship, and removed what they saw as the final obstacle to God’s will being accomplished. Their words reveal their expectations: “Here is the head of Ishbosheth, son of Saul, your enemy, who sought your life; the Lord has avenged my lord the king this day on Saul and on his offspring.” Notice how they frame their action – not as murder, but as divine vengeance; not as their own initiative, but as God’s justice working through them.
David’s response must have shocked them to their core. Instead of gratitude, they received a death sentence. Instead of rewards, they faced execution. David’s words cut through their self-justification with surgical precision: “When wicked men have killed a righteous person in his own house on his bed, shall I not now require his blood at your hand, and destroy you from the earth?” The Hebrew word David uses for “righteous” is צַדִּיק (tsaddiq), which doesn’t just mean innocent, but specifically refers to someone who is in right relationship with God and others. David recognized that regardless of Ishbosheth’s political weakness or questionable legitimacy, he was still a human being created in God’s image, deserving of basic dignity and justice.
What makes David’s response so remarkable is that he was willing to punish actions that directly benefited him. These men had eliminated his rival, simplified his political situation, and accelerated his path to complete kingship over Israel. From a purely strategic standpoint, their actions served David’s interests perfectly. Yet David understood something that Rechab and Baanah had missed: the means by which we pursue God’s will must reflect God’s character, or we risk becoming obstacles to his purposes rather than instruments of them.
The 19th-century German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, often called the father of modern theology, wrote extensively about what he termed “the feeling of absolute dependence” that characterizes authentic faith. Schleiermacher argued that true religion begins with the recognition that we are utterly dependent on God for everything, including the accomplishment of his purposes in the world.⁵ This sense of dependence, he suggested, frees us from the anxiety that drives us to compromise our principles in service of outcomes we believe God desires. When we truly trust in God’s sovereignty, we can afford to be scrupulous about our methods because we’re not ultimately responsible for guaranteeing results.
This principle finds powerful illustration in the life of William Wilberforce, the British parliamentarian who spent decades fighting to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. Throughout his long campaign, Wilberforce was repeatedly urged by well-meaning allies to compromise his principles in order to achieve incremental progress. Some suggested he support partial measures that would have improved conditions for slaves while leaving the institution intact. Others recommended that he form strategic alliances with politicians whose support came at the cost of silence on other moral issues. Political advisors argued that his uncompromising stance was actually prolonging slavery by making gradual reform impossible. Yet Wilberforce consistently refused these shortcuts, insisting that the means by which slavery was abolished must be as morally defensible as the goal itself. His biographer noted that Wilberforce “would rather fail righteously than succeed through compromise.”² When the Slave Trade Act finally passed in 1807, it represented not just a political victory but a moral triumph precisely because it had been achieved through principled means.
The contemporary theologian Walter Brueggemann offers insight into why this distinction matters so profoundly. In his commentary on the David narratives, Brueggemann observes that “David’s greatness lay not in his military prowess or political acumen, but in his recognition that God’s kingdom operates by different principles than earthly kingdoms.”³ David understood that if God’s reign was to be established through violence, deception, and injustice, then what would be established wouldn’t actually be God’s kingdom at all, but simply another human power structure decorated with religious language.
This insight speaks directly to our contemporary struggles with means and ends in Christian life and ministry. How often do we find ourselves tempted to use worldly methods to achieve godly goals? The church growth movement of the late 20th century provides numerous examples of this tension. Pastors became convinced that numerical growth was evidence of God’s blessing, and many began adopting business techniques, marketing strategies, and entertainment models that promised to fill sanctuaries but often emptied them of authentic spiritual content. The goal – reaching people for Christ – was unquestionably good, but the means frequently reflected more about American consumer culture than about the gospel’s transformative power.
Similarly, consider the ongoing debates about political engagement among Christians. Believers across the political spectrum have become so convinced of the righteousness of their positions that they’re often willing to support candidates or tactics that clearly violate Christian principles, justifying these compromises by pointing to the importance of the policies at stake. Conservative Christians might overlook a candidate’s moral failures because of their position on abortion, while progressive Christians might ignore concerns about religious liberty because of their commitment to social justice. In both cases, the assumption is that the righteousness of our goals justifies questionable means of achieving them.
The story of Rechab and Baanah challenges this assumption at its foundation. These men weren’t motivated by personal ambition or malicious intent – they genuinely believed they were serving God’s purposes. Their mistake wasn’t in identifying God’s will wrongly, but in assuming that divine approval of their goal meant divine approval of their methods. They failed to understand that God cares not only about destinations but about journeys, not only about outcomes but about the character we display in pursuing them.
There’s a beautiful passage in the Talmud that addresses this very issue. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel taught, “The world stands on three things: on justice, on truth, and on peace.” When his students asked how these three could coexist – that is, surely justice sometimes requires conflict, and peace sometimes demands compromise with truth – the rabbi replied, “When justice is pursued through truth, peace is the result. When peace is sought through falsehood, neither justice nor peace can be sustained.”⁴ This ancient wisdom echoes the principle David embodied: righteous ends require righteous means, not because God is fastidious about procedures, but because the character of our methods shapes the character of our results.
The apostle Paul understood this principle when he wrote to the Romans about the relationship between faith and works. In Romans 14:23, Paul makes the startling statement that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” The Greek word he uses for “faith” is πίστις (pistis), which encompasses not just belief but trust, confidence, and reliance on God’s character and promises. Paul’s point is that actions taken without this fundamental trust in God’s sovereignty and goodness – even actions that achieve good outcomes – miss the mark of God’s intended relationship with his people. When we compromise our principles to advance God’s kingdom, we demonstrate that we don’t really trust God to accomplish his purposes through faithful means.
This brings us to one of the most challenging aspects of this entire discussion: the question of timing. Often, our moral compromises are driven not just by doubt about God’s methods, but by impatience with God’s timing. Rechab and Baanah weren’t necessarily wrong about God’s ultimate plan – David would indeed become king of all Israel. But they couldn’t wait for God to accomplish this in his own way and time. Their assassination of Ishbosheth was essentially an attempt to force God’s hand, to accelerate divine providence through human initiative.
The great preacher John Claypool used to tell a story about a man who prayed fervently for God to provide a job during a period of unemployment. After weeks of prayer with no apparent answer, the man decided to embellish his resume with false credentials and references. When he was hired based on these lies, he thanked God for answering his prayers. Claypool would ask his congregations, “Did God answer this man’s prayer, or did the man’s impatience prevent him from receiving God’s answer?” The question cuts to the heart of our tendency to assume that God’s apparent slowness justifies our moral shortcuts.
The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with stories of people who couldn’t wait for God’s timing. Abraham and Sarah couldn’t wait for God’s promise of a son, so they devised the plan with Hagar that created centuries of conflict. Jacob couldn’t wait for God to fulfill the promise of blessing, so he deceived his father and cheated his brother, creating family divisions that lasted for generations. The Israelites couldn’t wait for Moses to return from Mount Sinai, so they built the golden calf and nearly destroyed their relationship with God entirely. In each case, impatience with God’s timing led to compromise of God’s methods, and the results were consistently destructive.
David’s response to Rechab and Baanah represents a different approach entirely. Earlier in his life, David had multiple opportunities to kill Saul and claim the throne immediately. Twice he came close enough to Saul to take his life – once in the cave at En-gedi, and once in Saul’s camp while the king slept. Both times, David’s men urged him to seize these opportunities as divine providence, signs that God was delivering his enemy into his hands. Both times, David refused, declaring that he would not “stretch out his hand against the Lord’s anointed.” David understood that God’s timing was as important as God’s will, and that faithful people wait for both to align.
This doesn’t mean that David was passive or fatalistic. Throughout his years as a fugitive, he actively built alliances, gathered supporters, and positioned himself to assume leadership when the time was right. He worked diligently, but he worked within the boundaries of righteousness. He prepared for kingship, but he refused to seize it through illegitimate means. His approach embodied what the apostle Paul would later describe as “working out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
The contemporary implications of this principle extend far beyond politics and church leadership. Consider the parent who is so desperate to protect their child from making mistakes that they lie to teachers about missing assignments, complete homework projects themselves, or manipulate social situations to ensure their child’s success. The goal – wanting the best for their child – is admirable, but the methods undermine the very character development they claim to desire. Or think about the spouse who discovers evidence of their partner’s infidelity and faces the choice between confronting the issue honestly or secretly manipulating circumstances to prevent the affair from continuing. The desire to save the marriage is good, but methods that violate trust and dignity are unlikely to produce the reconciliation they seek.
In each of these situations, the fundamental question is the same: do we trust God enough to pursue his will through his methods, even when those methods seem slower, riskier, or less certain than the alternatives we could devise? The story of Rechab and Baanah suggests that this trust is not optional for those who claim to follow God – it’s the very essence of faith itself.
David’s execution of these two men wasn’t merely punishment for murder, though that was certainly part of it. It was a theological statement about the nature of the kingdom he intended to establish. By refusing to benefit from their crime, David demonstrated that his kingship would be founded on justice rather than expedience, on righteousness rather than results. The Hebrew phrase he uses – “require his blood at your hand” – employs the verb דרש (darash), which means not just to seek or demand, but to seek with the intensity of one conducting a thorough investigation. David was saying that justice cannot be compromised for convenience, that righteousness cannot be suspended for results.
This principle finds its ultimate expression in the cross of Jesus Christ. When Jesus faced the temptation to achieve his messianic mission through worldly power – whether in the wilderness temptations, Peter’s sword in Gethsemane, or the crowd’s desire to make him king by force – he consistently chose the path of sacrificial love over the shortcuts of coercion. He could have established God’s kingdom through military might, political manipulation, or miraculous coercion. But he understood that such methods would produce a kingdom that contradicted God’s character. Instead, he chose the slow, painful, seemingly inefficient path of the cross, trusting that God’s methods of redemption would ultimately prove more powerful than any human alternative.
The early church faced this same temptation repeatedly. When persecution threatened to destroy the Christian movement, some believers advocated for compromising with pagan religious practices to reduce the pressure. When theological controversies divided congregations, some leaders suggested adopting ambiguous language that would avoid conflict even if it obscured truth. When opportunities arose to gain political influence through questionable alliances, many Christians argued that the potential good justified the moral compromise. In each case, the church had to decide whether to trust God’s methods or to employ worldly wisdom to advance divine purposes.
The church fathers understood this tension clearly. Augustine wrote, “Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?”⁸ He recognized that even good goals pursued through unjust means ultimately produce unjust results. Similarly, John Chrysostom observed, “The church is not held together by the power of position but by the ties of love. It is better to offend all the world than to offend Christ.”⁷ These early theologians grasped something that Rechab and Baanah missed: the means we use to advance God’s kingdom become part of the message we communicate about God’s character.
This brings us to a crucial contemporary application. In our hyperconnected, results-driven culture, we face constant pressure to measure success by quantifiable outcomes – attendance figures, budget numbers, social media engagement, political victories, or career advancement. These metrics aren’t inherently evil, but they become dangerous when they begin to shape our methods more than our principles do. When we start making decisions based primarily on what will produce the results we want rather than on what reflects the character of God, we’ve begun the journey that led Rechab and Baanah to David’s doorstep with blood on their hands.
The neuroscience research I mentioned earlier offers an important insight here. When our prefrontal cortex becomes hijacked by outcome-focused thinking, we literally lose access to our moral reasoning capabilities. But the research also shows that this hijacking can be prevented through what scientists call “moral reminding” – deliberately focusing on our values and principles before making decisions. For Christians, this might mean beginning difficult decisions with prayer, consulting Scripture, seeking wise counsel, or asking questions like: “What would this choice say about God’s character? How would this action affect my witness? What kind of kingdom am I building through these methods?”
David’s response to Rechab and Baanah provides a model for this kind of moral clarity. When presented with an outcome that served his interests, David didn’t evaluate it primarily on the basis of its usefulness but on its righteousness. He asked not “Does this help me?” but “Does this honor God?” The Hebrew word he uses to describe Ishbosheth – צַדִּיק (tsaddiq), meaning righteous – reflects David’s recognition that every person possesses inherent dignity that cannot be violated for political convenience.
This principle has profound implications for how we conduct ourselves in every area of life. In business, it means refusing to misrepresent products or services even when such misrepresentation might increase sales or market share. In relationships, it means speaking truth in love even when silence or deception might avoid conflict. In parenting, it means allowing children to experience the consequences of their choices even when intervention might produce better immediate outcomes. In ministry, it means trusting God’s Spirit to change hearts rather than relying on manipulation, coercion, or entertainment to produce decisions.
The story reaches its climax with David’s final words to the assassins: “So now, when wicked men have killed a righteous man in his own house on his bed, shall I not require his blood at your hand, and destroy you from the earth?” The rhetorical structure of this question reveals David’s theological understanding. He’s not asking whether he has the power to execute these men – clearly he does. Rather, he’s asking whether righteousness demands their punishment, regardless of how their actions might have benefited him personally. The answer, for David, is unambiguous: justice cannot be sacrificed for expedience, even when expedience serves our apparent interests.
The execution that follows serves multiple purposes in the narrative. On one level, it demonstrates David’s commitment to justice and his refusal to benefit from murder. On another level, it establishes the moral foundation of his kingship and distinguishes his rule from the pragmatic violence that characterized much of ancient Near Eastern politics. But perhaps most importantly, it reveals David’s understanding that God’s kingdom cannot be built through ungodly means – that the character of our methods inevitably shapes the character of our results.
As we consider the implications of this ancient story for our contemporary lives, we’re challenged to examine our own tendencies toward moral compromise in service of good goals. Are there areas where we’ve convinced ourselves that righteous ends justify questionable means? Are there relationships where we’ve manipulated rather than trusted, careers where we’ve deceived rather than waited, or ministries where we’ve coerced rather than served? The story of Rechab and Baanah calls us to repentance for these compromises and to renewed commitment to pursuing God’s will through God’s methods.
But this passage offers more than just moral challenge: it also provides profound hope. David’s response demonstrates that it’s possible to achieve God’s purposes without compromising God’s character. His eventual unification of Israel wasn’t delayed or undermined by his refusal to benefit from Ishbosheth’s assassination. If anything, his moral stand strengthened his legitimacy and established the foundation for a kingdom that would endure for generations. When we trust God enough to pursue his will through righteous means, we discover that his methods are not obstacles to his purposes but expressions of them.
The means by which we pursue God’s will must reflect God’s character, or we risk becoming obstacles to his purposes rather than instruments of them. This principle doesn’t make faithful living easier. It often makes it more challenging, slower, and seemingly less efficient. But it makes faithful living more authentic, more sustainable, and ultimately more fruitful. When our methods align with our message, when our means reflect our Master’s character, we discover that God’s way of accomplishing his purposes is not only morally superior but practically more effective than any alternative we could devise.
The call, then, is to examine our lives for areas where we’ve been tempted to help God through questionable means, to repent of those compromises, and to trust him enough to pursue his will through his methods. It’s a call to believe that the God who created the universe, who parted the Red Sea, who raised Jesus from the dead, is capable of accomplishing his purposes in our lives without our moral shortcuts. It’s a call to be the kind of people who would rather fail righteously than succeed through compromise, trusting that the God who sees in secret will reward in the open those who faithfully reflect his character in both their goals and their methods.
Closing Prayer
Almighty God, you who are righteous in all your ways and holy in all your works, we confess that we have too often sought to advance your kingdom through methods that contradict your character. Like Rechab and Baanah, we have assumed that our good intentions justify our questionable actions, that our correct identification of your will grants us permission to pursue it through any means necessary. Forgive us for our impatience with your timing, our distrust of your methods, and our presumption that you need our help to accomplish your purposes.
Grant us the wisdom to see that the means by which we pursue your will must reflect your character, or we risk becoming obstacles to your purposes rather than instruments of them. Give us the courage to choose righteousness over results, integrity over expedience, and your ways over our own understanding. Help us to trust you so completely that we can afford to be scrupulous about our methods because we know that you are faithful to accomplish what you have promised.
Make us people of such character that we would rather suffer loss than achieve success through injustice, rather fail righteously than succeed through compromise. Transform our hearts so that we desire not merely to see your will accomplished, but to see it accomplished in ways that bring glory to your name and demonstrate your love to a watching world.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who refused every shortcut to glory and chose instead the path of sacrificial love, we pray. Amen.
References
Bonhoeffer, D. (1955). Ethics. Macmillan.
Pollock, J. (1977). Wilberforce. Lion Publishing.
Brueggemann, W. (1990). First and Second Samuel. John Knox Press.
Pirkei Avot 1:18. Mishnah.
Schleiermacher, F. (1928). The Christian faith. T&T Clark.
Niebuhr, R. (1932). Moral man and immoral society. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Chrysostom, J. (c. 390 CE). Homilies on Matthew. Homily 77.
Augustine. (426 CE). The city of God. Book IV, Chapter 4.
