Danica McKellar Shares Lesson She Learned from King Saul’s Failings
By Movieguide® Contributor
Danica McKellar shared a lesson she learned from reading King Saul’s story in 1 Samuel and the danger of rationalizing why we disobey God’s commands.
“I am just so amazed at what I find in the Bible,” McKellar said. “So, where I am right now is in 1 Samuel, and I’m midway through it. It’s so interesting, like, there’s so many, like, human things in it. King Saul is in charge right now at this point. Samuel’s the one who’s talking to God, he’s the prophet. And God has given very specific instructions to Saul that he is to kill all the Amalekites, even all the animals, and Saul doesn’t do that. He keeps the best cattle and puts them aside.”
“I mean, I can understand why, I guess. Like, wow, all this amazing cattle, why would I destroy it? But that wasn’t obeying his [God’s] instructions, and when Samuel calls Kind Saul on it, he’s like, hey, what are you doing? Why would you disobey the Lord when he does everything for you,” she continued. “And [Saul] is like, he just justifies it, like, well, I did. I did obey the Lord, he insisted. I carried out the mission he gave me. I brought back King Agag, I destroyed everyone else, then brought back the sheep, goat, cattle and plunder to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal.”
“What I see in this is the very human trait of justifying and rationalizing behavior that we know is wrong, but we want it to be right. I feel like we’ve all done that,” McKellar added. “I’ll speak for myself, I’ve done that before, and then you look back, and you’re like, hmmm. I was rationalizing that because I wanted it to be true, because it was convenient or safe or attractive or whatever, but it wasn’t right.”
Lessons like this are an amazing part of the Bible and speak to its timeless nature. While King Saul’s specific experience is not one that anybody would relate to today, his actions and thoughts feel very modern. Because of this, readers can glean wisdom on how to not follow his folly.
Last year, as she was finishing reading the entire Bible, McKellar reflected on what else she learned from the Old Testament.
“There’s a lot that I really, really love in the Old Testament. There’s a lot to learn,” she explained. “My takeaway from the Old Testament is really the sovereignty of God, and that humility and forgiveness are the two things for us to keep our minds on in our relationship with God and our relationship with the world.”
McKellar added, “I discovered that through the Old Testament, that humility feels good. When you’re humble before God, it feels good. Humility is a gift.”
McKellar has been reading through the Bible recently and has shared lessons like this with her fans.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Danica McKellar says her self-challenge to finish reading the Bible in one year helped her get “to know God better.”
The WONDER YEARS star completed her 2023 goal of reading the Bible and is on “round two right now.”
“It’s just doing something regularly that’s always a challenge, right?” she explained while walking the red carpet at this year’s Movieguide® Awards. “Because you get busy. And my life doesn’t have a regular schedule to it, doing movies and then not doing movies, but I found that if I did just two sessions a day for a little while, I could catch up, like after shooting a movie. That’s the most challenging.”
McKellar added, “The most rewarding thing is just getting to know God better and understanding some of the patterns and going, ‘Oh, this theme of ego versus humility’ is really strong through the whole story. Maybe we should pay attention to that.”
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