coming closer now to the truth

A little while ago I got asked to sub in Sunday School, which was great because I love Sunday School but it was less great because it was the David & Bathsheba lesson, which can be extremely controversial (and it was for me, for some reason).

I pondered about it a LOT and gathered quite a few resources. And I also woke up with a phrase in my head one morning that I knew I had to get in there somehow. The phrase was this:

"If you feel like you can't say no, you can't say yes."

It's about consent. Which I feel is relevant to the lesson? But others did not because as soon as I said it, a boy yelled at me about what does this have to do with the scriptures we were reading. And so there went the Spirit because voices got raised and it ruined my week and the rest of the lesson was a haunted affair.

But I really do believe that if you feel for any reason that saying no to something (in this case, a sexual action) is something you just can't safely do -- if you worry you'll lose your job, or you'll be blackmailed, or the king will have you executed -- your consent is gone, because it wasn't a real yes because there was no option to say no. So even if Bathsheba was fine with what King David did, she didn't consent because she couldn't. You can't say no to the king. (We have no idea how Bathsheba felt about it, since she has as much agency and feeling as a rubber duck in this portion of the story.)

From the scriptures it's also pretty clear that King David had no intention of continuing his relationship with Bathsheba, because as soon as she told him she was pregnant he brought back her husband and tried to get them to sleep together. If he wanted to eventually make her his wife or whatever, he wouldn't have done that. She was literally an object to be used and then discarded (or brought into his household to hide his shame when his other plan didn't work).

Anyway. The point of the lesson was repentance. We all sin so how do we repent when we inevitably fall? Psalm 51 was the scripture we used, and I think that part went okay. I was still pretty shaken, but the talking points were made. Too bad the rest of the lesson was such a failure because I had hoped (before I knew what the lesson was and the direction I was prompted to take it) to turn it into a calling (since I haven't had one for 3 months). I guess these are the sacrifices we make.

Here's the resources I used to prepare the lesson:
By Common Consent's Sunday School post
And from the comments of that post I also read, Bathsheba's Story, Surviving Abuse and Loss
And that article that made the rounds on Facebook (and yet nobody in my ward seems to have read): Bathsheba wasn't on the Roof and Here's Why That's Important
And another one by the same author that has some different points: Crowned in Charity and Power