BP99
What is it about giants? They often appear as ogres and overall bad characters who haunt the nightmares of little boys and girls. I remember when my children were young one book that they wanted to hear again and again was about a boy who dreamt about a scary giant in his bathtub. Yes, children seem to be obsessed with giants even though they are scary.
Maybe when their young souls think about or dream about giants, they are projecting into the world a frightening archetypal image, as Carl Jung would call it, that actually exists within themselves. Of course, then we are left to ask where this archetype comes from.
Most giants are terrifying like the one we encounter in Jack and the Beanstalk. In that fairy tale, the giant is a flesh eater, specifically delighting in human flesh. When the giant senses the presence of Jack the interloper in his house, he cries out,
Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he alive, or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.
There is one giant who is much nicer and does a disservice to the predominant dark image of the evil giant. The BFG (big, friendly giant—see the book by Roald Dahl) is one of the rare, nice giants whose character tempers the fierce and scary reputation of this race of large beings. However, most giants are decidedly a negative stimulus in our lives as diminutive humans.
Beyond the world of children’s books, let’s look at what some people have said about giants and comment on their observations. First, let’s begin with a most familiar source: God’s word.
As we know, the Bible mentions giants. The most famous of them all, of course, is Goliath. 1 Samuel speaks of this terrifying monster of a man . . .
And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span (almost 10’ tall). He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze (125 lbs). And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron (15 lbs) . . . . And the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.” When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid ~ I Samuel 17:4ff
In this account in the book of Samuel, we have record of an evil giant who is thirsty for combat so he can destroy his opponent. He is a taunting personality who no doubt bullied his peers as a child and grew up to be mean and violent. He certainly did not become a gentle giant. Above all, he was a godless man who served gods other than Yahweh.
What can we take away from David’s encounter with Goliath when the youth felled the giant with a single stone from his sling? Two things. First, we see David’s confidence in His God to protect him during his battle with the giant. He says, The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine.
His trust in God for protection and victory reflects a boy/young man who knew what his God could do. David must have spent hours every day on the hillsides as he tended his sheep practicing the presence of His God. During these times of meditation and worship, he had learned that His divine Shepherd would take care of him. All we need to do is read Psalm 23 to see David’s conviction about His God.
Secondly, the account says that David ran toward the giant to engage him. He didn’t flee from Goliath or approach him with fear and trepidation. He did not shrink from what he feared but moved toward his opponent because he had confidence in the Lord his God. Can we not take away from David’s boldness the example of facing our Goliaths in life instead of letting them have power over us?
So, knowing that Jesus goes with you, run toward that new job, toward the conflict that has never been resolved with your parents or old friend, toward the journey of growth you have been putting off, toward the forgiveness you need to extend to someone who hurt you deeply, toward beginning a consistent personal time with Jesus every day, toward standing up against the temptations and accusations of Satan, even toward going to the dentist or getting that irregularity in your body checked out. Yes, run toward unfinished business instead of avoiding the things in life you need to face.
As Christian counselor Craig D. Lounsbrough put it, Given the giants in my life, I’ve discovered that I need the wisdom to know when to sling a stone and when not to sling one. For sometimes not to sling a stone is the most deadly stone of all.
Another person who makes reference to giants is C. JoyBell C. She says, Remember that when you think you are seeing giants, they may not be giants at all; perhaps it is you who is the dwarf.
Her words give us food for thought. Maybe we sometimes make people bigger than they are in real life. Or maybe some people make themselves bigger than they really are and so they appear as giants not in their physical size but in their large presence. When we are children, many people seem to be giants, especially our parents who can seem like a god or goddess through our young eyes.
Some people around us (occasionally these people are parents) need to make people around them—even children–smaller so that they do not feel threatened, diminished, or scared. They make others smaller and themselves bigger through authoritarianism, threatening behaviors, raging, and even rejecting those who disrespect or offend them. The more fragile a person is the bigger they often become as a means of self-defense.
The most enormous giants are frequently breakable, emotionally young people. The lesson here is to never equate the emotional size of a person with their maturity level.
Some of us who have grown up around these self-made giants naturally see most everyone around us as bigger than they are in real life. We shrink literally and figuratively around others making them bigger in our eyes. Some of this shrinking into the dwarf is due to transference; if we grew up with a giant, we tend to transfer the dynamic of the giant in our childhood onto others in adulthood and make them too big and threatening.
Other times, we project our own gigantesque rage or violent fantasies onto others (because these intense and disturbing thoughts are totally unacceptable for a Christian to entertain) and by so doing give others the power we are divesting ourselves of instead of bringing these sinful temptations to God.
As Craig D. Lounsbrough said, The size of the giant in front of you will always be determined by the size of the giant within you.
So, go to Jesus with your gigantic emotions and unacceptable thoughts. Allow Him to develop the fruits of the Spirit within you instead of you hiding your sin and then projecting your own power and emotions into others and fearing them.
Practicing sin can also shrink us into dwarves through guilt, lingering shame, separation from God, vulnerability to Satan’s lies when we are walking in the darkness, and a fear that others have some special X-ray vision that peers into our souls and sees our deepest, darkest transgressions.
In short, be aware that when others feel like giants to you, one of three things is happening. Some people may be trying to be bigger to protect their fragile ego, or you may be transferring or projecting giant material into them, or your sin may be shrinking you into a smaller person until everyone around you seems bigger than you and ahead of you in the journey of life.
Max Lucado, in his book Facing Your Giants: God Still Does the Impossible, refers to the role of the enemy in the world of giants. He says, [Satan] vies for the bedside position, hoping to be the first voice you hear. He covets your waking thoughts, those early, pillow-born emotions. He awakes you with words of worry, stirs you with thoughts of stress. If you dread the day before you begin your day, mark it down; your giant has been in your head.
Never overlook the role of the accuser, the liar, the murderer, the thief in your soul who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy. If you take your eyes off Jesus, the enemy of your soul will soon become the primary voice in your mind and will rule your life like giant screaming untruths into your psyche.
Ed Welch has some thoughts about how we allow people to become giants in our lives. He says, However you put it, the fear of man can be summarized this way: We replace God with people. Instead of a biblically guided fear of the Lord, we fear others. Of course, the “fear of man” goes by other names. When we are in our teens, it is called “peer pressure.” When we are older, it is called “people-pleasing.” Recently, it has been called “codependency.” With these labels in mind, we can spot the fear of man everywhere. Diagnosis is fairly straightforward.
I want to piggyback on Welch’s words and say that we humans are all born with a towering shadow over us that runs infinitely into the distance beyond sight. We come into the world made for eternity (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Eternity itself casts its giant shadow over us.
Even more significantly, God Himself casts a shadow over us as seen in Psalm 91:1-2: He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.
In other words, humans come into the world with an awareness that something or Someone bigger than them exists whether they are willing to admit that truth or not. We all desire to worship something bigger because we were created to live in the presence of an unimaginably mammoth Being who is eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. If we deny God’s authority in our lives, we must find something else to worship.
Even young children want their parents to be strong, present, bigger than them, godlike. I have worked with many adults who have said that they grew up with a deep, hidden anger, even hatred, for their parents because they experienced them as weak, anxious, and unavailable for them.
God made parents to be His earthly representatives for children, and when parents do not live up to that created design (a common problem after the Fall), children may not be able to verbalize the anger and anxiety they experience within themselves. They just know that something is off, wrong, not the way it should be.
These individuals end up internalizing their emotions and hiding their true selves. They will experience significant Leakage or Volcanic eruptions in adulthood if not earlier.
Here, then, is another critical reason to have God in our hearts. If we seek Him first and He becomes not just a philosophical thought but a personality who is the anchor of our reality, God will increasingly become the unfathomable Being who we trust above all others. Then everything in our lives will take on its proper size. There will be no giants beyond the eternal God.
We will see humans (including ourselves) as walking dust when we abide in the presence of the sovereign God. We will fear no man or woman.
We will have no need to make ourselves bigger as an act of self-defense because Jesus washes away our sin and guilt and fills us with His righteousness. We won’t have to become giants to ward off others who threaten our fragile egos because the Holy Spirit will grow (sanctify) us from the inside out and ground our security in His character not our own.
If God is for us, who can be against us?
If the Spirit is big in our hearts, who will we fear?
If Jesus has made us perfect, why do we need to make others small when they touch our shame?
If God came to destroy the power and works of the Devil, we need not give the evil one any power over us but remind ourselves that He who is in us is stronger than he who is in the world.
No, we will fear no giant in this world, and neither will we have to become giants to defend ourselves.
In fact, there will be no more giants.
When Jesus is in the picture, everything shrinks and takes on the right size in the face of His awesome power, glory, majesty, dominion, holiness, and strength.
So, walk with Him every day. Be in His word and take in His character and His promises. As you seek Him, He will become bigger in your eyes and all others will become quite small.
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers [giants] assail me to eat up my flesh [fee, fi, fo, fum], my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident ~ Psalm 27:1-4
It is the faith of the man that determines the size of the man. Therefore, in a society that raises up paper giants as fast as they fall, we can know that (although they are small by society’s standards), there are Godly giants out there that walk on paper ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough
So maybe there are giants in the world after all–giants of the faith, men and women who walk with Jesus and are being transformed into His amazing likeness as they behold His face (2 Corinthians 3:18).