We have lost our prophetic voice.
Sometimes, we run too far away from the world,
finding ourselves in a place where the sins and injustices that should be
surrounding us can no longer glare at us. We round the corner away from their
presence and use the tactic we have been trained to use since childhood - out
of sight, out of mind. In this sense, we feel that we are good Christians who
have separated ourselves from the world. We sit around working - if we're not
just talking - on being a perfect church. When in reality, we are just hiding
our light in the midst of the wilderness. A light that doesn't penetrate the
darkness is not a useful light at all.
We have lost our prophetic voice.
Another approach that I observe Christians take is to cloister our spiritual lives up in religiosity. This allows us to keep our spiritual lives
separate from our secular lives. We still do the religious things, but we have
bought into the American concept of separation of church and state so much that
we believe our religious views are to be confined to our private life while our
secular views are to be confined to the public arena. Bible study, prayer, church and
God's will are all elements that should remain private. While our views on
government, economics, and politics should not be shaped by those private
elements. This view leads to a compartmentalized faith that is powerless to
transform lives. If your private views don't influence your public views, then
you really don't believe your private views. They are just fanciful ideas and
concepts that you are using to help you feel good about yourself and sleep well
at night.
We have lost our prophetic voice.
Maybe my recent post on the decrimalization of drugs is the wrong stance for a Christian to take. I was writing about our sin in the treatment of addicts, not the possible or probable sin of those addicted. I'm still not writing about that sin, so please don't misconstrue what I am saying. Maybe my view that those who claim to follow Jesus shouldn't be complicit in supporting a system that imprisons addicts is misguided. I don't think it is, or I wouldn't have written it. But maybe it is. I do concede that. The point is that something is wrong. Without acknowledging that and discerning what we, as Christians, do to help cause that problem and discovering what we can do to help solve the problem, we become accomplices in an unjust system.
We have lost our prophetic voice.
But the thing that struck me in writing it and the
conversation that surrounded it was that we, especially pastors, are terrified
to point out an injustice in our society. We fear offending the supporters of
the injustice, especially those in our pews who can get us fired or may leave
because we upset them.
I received a message from a good Christian friend who is a pastor. He pointed out that he agreed with me, but that he didn't say anything on my post expressing his view or even like the comment he specifically wanted to like for fear that he would lose his job. I had the same hesitancy in writing the article. I'm actually putting it in our local paper, and the fear I have in doing that is nearly enough to call them up and ask them not to publish it. I don't think the church that I have the honor of serving at as a pastor would fire me over something like this because I believe that we are consciously and deliberately trying to discover and help with social injustices in our society, but the potential to have this message blow up is always there.
We have lost our prophetic voice.
Now, I want to clarify that our society can
continue down the path it wants. But my dear brothers and sisters in Jesus
shouldn't complicity support the injustices of the society around us. At a
minimum, we shouldn't be supporters and promoters of the injustices in our
society. If there are no prophetic voices pulling us back from the precipices,
then we will just fall over. It seems to be society's natural inclination to just keep running, like Wile E. Coyote, long after the ground it is running on has disappeared. We are the salt of the earth. But if we've lost
our saltiness, then what?
I have a young one learning to talk. It may just be
me, but she seems to have more going on in that brain of hers than she can
properly communicate. Sometimes she blurts incoherencies. Other times she will
say a sentence as clear as the day. She is learning to talk.
We must learn once again to be prophets.
