In 2 Samuel we see the continuation of what happens when humanity makes another human their king, instead of living and acting as God as their King. Our allegiances fall in the wrong places; we begin to see people as "the other" and the "enemy." As soon as we can see another human people as something less than how we see ourselves, we allow the belief that it's justified to destroy the enemy---since they are less than----to take root in our minds and hearts.
We see this same sense of self-protection in the book of Acts. Ananias and Saphhira do not completely trust God as their king. They cannot completely trust that God's abundance will be shared with them. Therefore, they use God's abundance as if it is only their own; they hold some of it back (ensuring they have enough...only reasonable, right?) and this leads to death.
We may find it unbelievable since people do not normally just drop dead due to greed (imagine if that were the literal truth!) No, but death comes in many forms. As soon as greed and self-protection become our leading truth, then the image of God within us begins to dim. Our identity as Christ's own begins to gasp for breath. And someone, somewhere, who needs the very items we are hoarding as our own (food, water, riches, talents, gifts of any kind)----that someone is losing his/her life. Because we fear we won't have enough. We fear that God's abundance won't find its way to our table, so we keep food and water from someone else's table. Death comes in many forms.
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