Question: [A] Promise Keepers ad [in Christianity Today] caught my eye. It occupied two pages ...

Question: In the March 5, 2001 Christianity Today (CT) a Promise Keepers ad caught my eye. It occupied two pages declaring in large print, “David was a pipsqueak.” On the left was a picture of a youngster aiming a slingshot made from a forked stick and elastic band. On the right-hand page smaller print continued to describe David: “He was only a shepherd...an errand boy, bringing lunch to his brothers. He wasn’t the strongest. He wasn’t the biggest....The king thought he was a joke.... But David had EXTREME FAITH...and he turned the tide of a war. Promise Keepers challenges you to a life of extreme faith....”

Two pages later was another ad showing the feet and lower legs of Goliath just outside a tent door while inside was a tiny, scrawny “David” with a sling and stones studying “rock trajectory” from a computer. Do you have any comments?

Response: In spite of generations of Sunday-school lessons depicting David in that way, he was anything but a scrawny pipsqueak! Sadly, the Promise Keepers leadership lacks either discernment or integrity, willing to abandon Scripture to make a point. And why didn’t the editors of CT notice the obvious error?

Saul was taller than all Israel “from his shoulders and upward” (1 Sm 9:2; 10:23). That he offered his armor to David indicates that David must have been about the same size. David didn’t reject Saul’s armor because it was too large, but because he “had not proved it” (17:39). Although overlooked by his father and despised by his brothers, David was described by one of Saul’s servants thus: “a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the LORD is with him” (16:18). How can it be that the mighty warrior who killed Goliath continues to be portrayed in Christian circles as a scrawny teenager?