A Response to Some Questions Rachel Held Evans Asked Three Weeks Ago

I'm too slow for the internet age.  I've got too much to do, too many places that my kids need to be, too many meetings, etc.  I've made a number of efforts to blog with some regularity, but that always fails spectacularly.  Oh, I've got thoughts and ideas about stuff to write  - but they get moved to the side by the normal stuff of day-to-day ministry and life.  I say all that because I wrote a response to some questions that Rachel Held Evans  posted which are (I think) intended to be part of a discussion that she will be 'hosting' over the summer.  Below is my response to her first set of questions.  Not sure who will read this, but here ya go:

1. What's the difference between being prophetic and just being a jerk? 

I think it can be boiled down to two things: intent and content.  For ancient Hebrew prophets, their intention was to proclaim the message that God gave to them.  Their motivation was faithfulness to God, even in the face of hostile opposition and, for some, the very real threat of death.  The Hebrew prophets covered a wide range of approaches, rhetoric, and personalities - the delivery methods employed were not the issue.  The primary issue was faithfulness to God's call and God's message. 

I always brace myself when I hear someone label themselves or their message as being "prophetic".  There are typically two reasons they do this, in my experience: (1) they are worried that their message is somewhat controversial and so they are attempting to forestall any potential criticisms or dismissals by appealing to the so-called "prophetic" nature of their message, or, (2) they may assume that using that label gives them carte blanche to be confrontational or mean-spirited and any dissenters can just shut up and take their medicine. 

However, being a prophet means being a vessel for God's message, speaking for God, delivering God's Word.  Put simply, a prophet's job is to tell the truth as revealed by God.  Being a prophet is NOT simply telling people controversial stuff.  It is NOT crafting your message so that people will feel bad, about themselves or others.  It is NOT challenging or confronting or exposing simply for the sake of doing these things.  What many who claim to be 'prophetic' often forget is how much praise, encouragement, joy, and hope can be found in the Hebrew prophets. 

As a Christian, my conviction is that love must motivate any teaching or sermon or statement that we deem 'prophetic'.  If we are not motivated by love of God and love of our neighbors, then the claim of being prophetic is an empty one.  When our message is motivated by self-righteousness, moral superiority, or theological competition, we are not prophets, we are Pharisees.  And jerks, too. 

2. How do we advocate both prophetic challenge and grace-filled public engagement without resorting to incivility on the one hand or tone-policing on the other?

First, I wonder what is meant by "public engagement" - which public is assumed here?  Who are we advocating for exactly?  Our own public engagement, the Church's in general, Christians who claim to be 'prophetic'?  I'll assume that we're talking about Christian leaders who have the responsibility to speak and whose platform extends beyond the local church, which is a large number of people given the prominence of social media. 

Not to be flippant, but I think the answer again is love.  Not tolerance or pity or paternalism masquerading as love.  And not judgmental moralizing or warnings about damnation cruelly posing as love.  But cruciform, kenotic, Holy Spirit powered love that contains within itself both prophetic challenge and grace in abundance.  The most difficult prophetic message for our time (in my humble opinion) is that God's love revealed in Jesus Christ persistently pushes/leads/pulls/urges us towards both introspective confessional humility and towards indiscriminate, active serving of others. 

In terms of tone-policing, the difficulty in our current time and place is that so many of us feel the insistent urge to oversee other peoples' words and actions.  So many of us feel responsible to point out others' deficiencies, typically as they relate to some fuzzy notion of 'tolerance' or 'acceptance' on the progressive side of things and stridency or strict adherence to a theological program on the other side.  The mechanism (social media) makes the lure of pharisaical tone-policing almost irresistible.  And if it is a Christian who is doing the policing (which is so often the case as it relates to your content), then I typically assume that such persons have not spent much time actually wrestling with Matthew 7:1-5 or Romans 2:1-11 - of course, I could be wrong about that.

When it comes to civility, I personally think it's overrated as well as being an ambiguous standard for judging our speech.  Civility, like tolerance, is a very low bar to set for our discourse, although we should by no means strive for incivility, either.  Civility is a fine enough standard for secular political discourse, but for Christians, we are called to something much greater and much more difficult: the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ and made possible in us through the Holy Spirit. 

3. Is an online “call out” an effective way to create change, and if so, how can it be done well?

No, it's not effective mainly because it is so impersonal.  Meaningful correction/rebuke is most effective when it comes from a place of love and is bolstered by authentic relationship.  Again, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a Christian, so I have nothing to say about this outside of the Christian faith.  I am certain that Christians "calling out" non-Christians and vice versa online is a non-starter.  The same is true between persons of different denominations or theological positions.  I can't really say any way that this can be effective if there is no personal connection since anything online is so easy to misinterpret or ignore. 

Being Christians together is so very difficult because it requires work that is extremely time and attention intensive.  I must spend time getting to know people and I must listen to them patiently and with much grace before I can offer meaningful correction.  Honest, loving rebuke must arise out of a seedbed of Christ-centered love, not anonymous self-righteousness.  This, of course, demands patience and humility.  The way of Jesus is a way of self-denial and sacrifice, sacrificing even our insistent need to be right and to point out the faults and missteps of others - especially those with whom we have no relationship.