lifeasmission

Making Room for Prophets

January 18, 2006

I have been working with this post for over a month now. After much revision and with lingering apprehension, I decided just to “put it out there already.” Look forward to your thoughts.

I want to offer some words on a topic that has been on my mind for some time and has come a little closer to home in the recent past. I want to say at the outset that I hope what I have to say will be understood in what I would like to call a bold humility. That is to say that my aim is to be assertive without being arrogant, a risky propsal given the limitations of the medium through which I am communicating.

Last summer when I was back in Ohio I attended a church service at which the individual offering the sermon for the morning was taking a look at the prophet Isaiah. The overall message he wished to convey was that we as Christians need to be as bold as people like Isaiah in speaking “the word of the LORD.” He even advised us to do this in the full knowledge that, like Isaiah, it may cost us dearly. He went on to inform the congregation that according to chuch tradition Isaiah was sawed in half. What he never said, or even alluded to, was the fact that Isaiah’s message was aimed solely at Israel, the people of God and that it was these people who allegedly sawed him in half after they tired of his message.

As in Isaiah’s day, I find it increasingly true that there is no room for prophets in the church. I believe this is the case for several reasons (I may discuss these later). What I want to voice here is a growing trend to be overly sympathetic and accommodating to that which God finds displeasing.

What has sparked these thoughts most recently are some comments that my friend Ryan and I made in regard to Ray Comfort’s efforts to “do evangelism” by way of latching on to the Narnia film and using it as an opportunity to argue for the Christian faith by way of putting cd’s under the wipers of cars who went to see the film. Two friends voiced their concern about our being overly critical of these people and their efforts. One said, ” I wonder how we can use these brothers and their judgemental evangelism to our advantage.” Another said, “I don’t believe that people leaving the cd’s or enacting any of the other “confrontational ways”, love God any less passionately than I or you do.” I suppose that what I want to say is not so much in response to what these friends of mine said, but what I feel is left unsaid.

The plain fact is that this form of “evangelism” finds absolutely no precedent in the biblical account, and I find can’t find any way to reconcile it with the character, nature, and mission of God as held out to us in the Bible. A professor of mine was recently commenting that the concept of praying to receive Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior is only about 150 years old and therefore, there is not much in the way of church tradition to support it either. This form of evangelism seems to propogate the idea that emerged within modernity and through the Enlightenment that salvation is a private matter and that what is of supreme importance is ones personal relationship with God, both ideas, in my opinion are great deviation from what God and the biblical authors want to convey.

Even a brief look at the idea of salvation in the Bible will demonstrate that salvation is always something that matters, first and foremost, in the here and now. More than that, salvation is always understood as a great act of mercy, forgiveness, and deliverance on the part of God addressed to a community of people. Just taking these two ideas into consideration (many others could be considered) should be enough to help us see how the kind of evangelism mentioned above probably does more to lead people astray from the truth of God’s saving grace as it distorts the very notion and purpose of salvation. But I digress.

Of course so much of this really necesitates a lengthy discussion about the nature of the gospel and a biblical vision of conversion and salvation, but that’s obviously not going to happen right now. Ultimately, what I want to convey is that there is a time to call a spade and a spade and to take a stand for that which God stands for. I am decidedly of the opinion that the sort of “evangelism” my friend and Ryan and I were lamenting does a great amount of damage to peoples understanding of the gospel, the church, and God himself. If I am right (I don’t wish to claim prophetic status at this time!) then what is needed is not sympathy or accommodation, but a call for repentance and a hard fought return to faithfulness. Neither of these things, I might add, will come about without serious theological reflection and dialogue.

Some legitimate questions…

1. Who gets to decide on matters of orthodoxy? Not sure.
2. Does God use prophets the same way now as in biblical times? Not sure.
3. Does our culture necessitate a new kind of prophetic witness? Not sure.

But, short of working toward answering these questions, I am still hopeful that we won’t shy away from speaking boldly in the face of that which falls short of God’s vision for His people.

I close with a word of warning from Jesus, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate.” (Mt. 27:37-38)

I pray that the church of our era will not continue in this sorrowful rejection of those prophetic voices God speaks through whose aim it is to call the Church back to her King.

Posted in: church, theology