Most of my life I had a terrible misconception about the role of the prophet in ancient Israel. When I heard “prophet” I imagined an oddly dressed, unkempt, riddle speaking sage that didn’t quite fit in with polite company, but was incredibly valuable because he could see the future and tell of future events. To me, a prophet was just about predicting the future.
Time has very much changed the way I understand the role of the prophet, and as you will see in this essay, the way I define just who is a prophet. I’ve grown fond of the quote from Steven Charleston, via Richard Rohr, “Prophets are an early warning system to culture…we made them foretellers of Jesus to individuals and that ruined their impact on our culture. Power, money and war and phony religion is what they aim their arrows at because this is corrupting culture.” Add to that the words of Christopher Benek, “Being prophetic is not about looking into a crystal ball and predicting the future. Being prophetic is about observing trends and connecting the dots of how they will impact the future.”
Simply put, the prophets spoke truth to power. The higher up the food chain you go, the more wealth and power are consolidated, and the less likely you are to be surrounded by people who will oppose you and tell you the truth, and the more people there are who will bend over backwards to protect you and the power you wield. People figure out quickly that their proximity to power can be very advantageous to them, and staying in their good graces comes with many perks. This is how Michael Jackson ends up having sleepovers with children and being administered propofol to go to sleep at night by his personal doctor and no one in his circle says, “Hey, this isn’t ok.” This is how Mike Tyson, arguably the greatest boxer of all time, stops taking his training seriously and gets knocked out by a far inferior boxer, and then burns through hundreds of millions of dollars in cash buying tigers, cars, homes, and getting his face tattooed, on his way to bankruptcy then prison. The list of examples could go on endlessly, but the point is power seldom gets critiqued to its face, and when no one tells you to your face that your idea is bad, you begin to think that every idea you have is a good idea, no matter how foolish, destructive or evil.
This is also how kings (and presidents) declare war on and invade countries preemptively. Prophets were adjacent to the power of the throne and could tell them to their face, “This is not the will of the God you claim to serve.” You can imagine how well this tended to go over. With few exceptions where a king would be brought to humble repentance — think David after being told by Nathan the prophet, “You are the man!” — most of the time the prophet would spend his remaining days as a fugitive of the state, being imprisoned and executed if caught. Then and now, powerful people don’t like being told they can’t do something, or they are wrong for something they’ve done. How many times in recent years have we witnessed our highest elected officials calling legitimate journalists “fake news”, “enemies of the people”, and “human scum”? In recent months this antagonism has escalated from words to regulatory threats and legal intimidation, and in a few cases, incarceration. Why has power come down so harshly on the media? Their “crime” is speaking truth to power.
Prophets can pop up in the strongest of places. Many were inside the palaces of power like Isaiah and Nathan, but many others were far away in the wilderness or the slums, like Elijah, Ezekiel, and John the Baptizer. “Decent” people were offended by them and found them vulgar, crude, rude, and too rough around the edges for “civilized” society. And yet, God’s words often came from their mouths. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to recognize the words of God when I hear them, and I had to get over my inclination to push back simply because I did not think God would use “someone like that” as a mouthpiece. If you read the bible enough you start to realize that God has a habit of speaking through unexpected mediums. I mean, He spoke through a donkey for crying out loud.
Two of the more recent surprising sources of scripture I’ve encountered were Bob Dylan and Ozzy Osbourne. Yes, that Ozzy Osbourne. Ten years ago I would have associated Black Sabbath more with the devil than Jesus, but if I'm being honest, some of his lyrics remind me of the prophets much more than the things coming out of the mouths of so called Christian nationalists. I realize how far fetched that may sound to some, but is it really that big of a stretch to think that a guy who bit the heads off of bats had a little in common with a guy who bit the heads off of grasshoppers?. This isn’t to say I agree with everything Ozzy ever said or did, but his song “War Pigs” might as well be pulled directly from the book of Psalms (seriously, read Psalm 94 alongside the lyrics below if you think I’m losing my mind).
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerer of death's construction
In the fields, the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that all to the poor, yeah
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait till their judgment day comes, yeah
There aren’t many scenarios where you would compare the music of Black Sabbath to Bob Dylan, but in his song “Masters of War”, Dylan sings the same song, just a different verse. In fact, as hard as it may be to believe, Dylan is the more aggressive and brutal lyricist of the two in this comparison. Dylan writes what might best be described as an imprecatory psalm. That term may not be a familiar one to you, but it was certainly well known to David the poet singer. The word “imprecatory” means to invoke evil, curses or calamity on the wicked. God fearing people can only take so much unchecked evil and injustice before they begin to cry out to God to do something, and by that point, emotion has overtaken reason. These psalms shouldn’t be read as an instruction manual o dealign with enemies, but they are graphically, brutally honest examples of the rage that can well up within us when we witness evil and injustice. If you think Ozzy or Bob are being too harsh, just remember the author of Psalm 137 wanted to see his enemies children — more literally, their babies — heads dashed against the rocks.
Masters of War
Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
By the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead
The latest war, invasion, campaign, military operation, whatever you want to call it, has brought with it the usual appeals to pray for our troops, our leaders, our country, etc. I’m not critical of that, but it did bring something to my attention I’d never considered before. In thirty years of being in a church three times a week, I have constantly heard these prayers and requests for prayers. Pray that the war ends quickly, that our soldiers are kept safe, that peace can prevail, etc. I’ve heard, and hear these types of prayers so often they almost go unnoticed, a formality like the “guide, guard, and direct us” that typically closes the prayer at the end of our church services. Today though, I realized I’ve never once, not ever, not a single time, heard any of us publicly pray for our “enemies” who are being destroyed at a massively larger scale than “us” or “our soldiers”. It was brought to my attention that four U.S. soldiers have been killed in the latest conflict, with many more likely to come per our president. These soldiers committed their lives to serving in the military knowing that this could very possibly be their outcome. Even still, it is a tragedy that their lives were cut short. No doubt there are parents, spouses, children, siblings, friends, and others who will grieve them for the rest of their lives. We pray for them, as we should, but I haven’t recently, nor ever in my life, heard anyone publicly pray in church for the other soldiers were were killed in Iran (or Iraq or Afghanistan - all the wars that have taken place in my lifetime) or for the civilians who are killed, maimed, or just have their homes and homelands reduced to rubble, or for the children who are “collateral” damage, like the hundreds killed this week when a bomb hit their school. Collateral damage is a vulgar and profane euphemism for blowing up children, a term created by spin doctors who prostitute the name of Jesus in order to be given power to rule by Christian voters. In exchange for power, they respond to news stories about dead children with speeches about collateral damage to enable those good American Christians to sleep at night and sit in churches praying for peace with a clear conscience.
I’m a 50 year old man who has been in well over four thousand church services and I’ve never heard anyone publicly pray for our enemies, despite the fact that our Lord literally told us to do that very thing. I’ve asked a number of other preacher friends from around the country, encapsulating tens of thousands of church assemblies, and two people can recall hearing it two times in total. I don’t know what that says about our faith or the state of modern American Christianity, but it brings to mind sermons from men like the prophet John the Baptizer who said in his generation, “Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.”
On second thought, listening to Ozzy and Dylan again, and the truth they speak to power directed at our leaders, maybe when we are praying for our leaders we actually are praying for our enemies after all.
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
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