Principle 9: Rooftop principle
(Don’t even go there)
I coined this principle while studying and teaching from the life of King David in 2 Samuel 11. Up to that point, David had reached the height of his glory as a king. He ruled over a vast empire and accumulated much spoils of war in his capital. In the midst of all these successes, he fell into the sin of adultery, which set off a chain of events that caused him to break almost all of the Ten Commandments.
Here’s a man, purported to be a man’s after God’s heart (1 Sam 13:14, Acts 13:22), yet in a simple careless act, he compromised his entire future. He forfeited his own personal right to build the Temple of God (2 Samuel 7:12-13, 1 Chronicles 22:7-8). The privilege went instead to his son Solomon. From 2 Samuel 12:7-12 we notice that to David, there was the withholding of financial blessings (v.8), the doors were opened to a spirit of violence (v.10), it brought about a curse (v.11), he was exposed to public shame (v.11-12) and a spirit of infirmity and death came upon the family (v.14-15). On top of that, he experienced the heartbreak of rape and murder within his own family. He lost his throne to his own son, Absalom, for a brief moment as well.
If you were to trace these tragedies to its very root, it came about from 2 Samuel 11:1-2. When kings were supposed to go to war during spring, David decided to take a holiday. An innocent thought no doubt yet was disastrous to the very core in its outcome. After siesta one evening, he walked on the rooftop of his palace, enjoying the cooling effect of a day coming to an end. We may not be looking for temptation but often it finds us at our unguarded moments. David saw a beautiful woman bathing and he sent someone to find out about her. Curiosity and lust got the best of him in spite of finding out that Bathsheba is Uriah’s wife. An unwanted pregnancy followed this adulterous affair. Hoping to cover his track, he invited Uriah back from the frontline in the pretense of finding out how the war was going. He sent him back home hoping that Uriah would sleep with his wife thus covering up the source of the pregnancy. Uriah being a man of honor refused to go back and instead slept at the servants’ quarters. David’s second attempt by making him drunk yielded the same result. What a man who held his honor even when he is drunk!
With that failure, David set in motion plan B by writing a letter to General Joab to sent Uriah to the frontline where the fighting was the fiercest. Uriah carried his own death sentence in his hand and after the mourning period, David married Bathsheba.
As I reflected upon this story, I can’t help but go in retrospect to the palace rooftop. What if David had not gone to the rooftop? Often we can place ourselves unwittingly on the rooftops of our lives, where we are most unguarded spiritually because everything seems to be going well. This reminded me of my early career years as a sales engineer. Being one of the top performers, we are regularly sent on incentive trips to places catering to a man’s sexual fancies like Bangkok, Haadyai or Cebu. Being an international conference, men would disperse to ‘tourist spots’ after dinner and I knew I had to pro-actively do something to prevent myself from even going near these places. Christians would often naively say that they can go to some of these places to identify with their non-Christian friends but they need not indulge in sinful activities. How one draws that moral line defies my logic. I know how wicked my heart can be and I don’t trust it. Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
So I flee. I prayed for a Christian friend and God gave me a fellow engineer from Singapore whom I caught up with each time after dinner during these conferences. I suppose you can say we saved each other from our rooftops!
Being careful with our lives is not only about starting well, but finishing well too. A single careless and foolish act can cost us everything. No committed Christian seeks to sin deliberately but through an unguarded moment, we can compromise ourselves. Be very harsh and discipline with yourselves. What or where are the potential rooftops of your life? Don’t go there or near them! That’s wisdom in life!
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