mixed fruit

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I continue my morning readings, currently in 1 Samuel.

This morning was chapter 19, where Saul tries (again) to pin David to the wall with (seemingly) his favourite thing to have in his hand – a spear. (see this post for more on that theme)

Then he gets swept up in some pretty intense prophetic activity while trying to hunt down David. So intense that he disrobes and lies all night naked.

This is what you might call conflicting accounts. Saul is a mixed bag of a human being (like all of us – even David), and he is bearing mixed fruit.

He gets so wrapped up in this prophetic activity that he appears emotionally overwhelmed and out of himself. Rumours are started about him: “Is Saul also among the prophets?”

But then again, he seems waaaaaaaaaaay too comfortable with a spear in his hand. “Hey Saul, you are looking pretty stressed and distressed… and you and David haven’t been getting on well for a bit… so maybe don’t invite him to play music for you? Oh wait… OK there he is… fine… Well, maybe at the very least, just don’t pick up that spea…. Oh heck, you just tried to kill David… again!?”

Saul’s narrative arc is trending down big-time. And the intense prophetic experience does not undo that.

This should give us pause, too. Having intense spiritual experiences does not prove that we are spiritually healthy.

no sword…

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I’m reading 1 Samuel in my morning devotions.
Today was David and Goliath (chapter 17).
When I read the following words,
I was stopped in my tracks…

…no sword in the hand of David.

1 Samuel 17:50

Why did such a basic statement stop me in my tracks?
Because only a few days earlier I read another passage mentioning weapons in (or not in) hands…

22 So it came about, on the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people who were with Saul and Jonathan. But they were found with Saul and Jonathan his son.

1 Samuel 13:22

The Israelites had tools for agriculture, not weapons for war. Except for Saul (and Jonathan). Just before before 13:22 we read that the Philistines didn’t want the Israelites to have a blacksmith, or else they would “make swords or spears“… So they had to go to their enemies to get their plowshares, mattocks, axes, sickles, forks and goads sharpened.

I get the sense that God didn’t want them to have swords or spears either…

The comparison between sword-wielding Saul and sheep-herding David is deliberate.
The guy wielding a sword (Saul) was going to be rejected…
in favor of the guy who cared for sheep (David)…

This military contrast also plays out in the David and Goliath story.
Just in the gear they wear…

Goliath had lots of large and heavy armour.
Think of The Rock – Dwayne Johnson.

Meanwhile, David couldn’t even walk with all the armour on.
It was just so unnatural for him.
Picture Kip Dynamite.

Later on, in chapter 18, we hear about military weapons again. This time, it’s the strange moment where David is soothing Saul’s troubled mind with his musical therapy.

What is in Saul’s hand? A spear.
(This guy Saul… he loves carrying weapons.)
So he hurls it at this upstart usurper David…
Yikes.

The author of 1 Samuel seems to want us to see something about weapons and trusting God.

I reckon David’s declaration to Goliath is kind of a summary that underlines God’s nature:
God does not side with the strong and the well-armed…
Rather, God is for the underdog, the weak, the humble, the ones who will carry out his will and plan.
Or you could say God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. 47 Then all this assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give you into our hands.”

1 Samuel 17:46-47

Whatever we make of the rest of this book (not least 1 Samuel 15!), there is a clear theme here. God is featured here as the One on the side of the smaller, the weaker, the one without military style weapons. God is not about siding with the powerful, but rather the weak.

the backspace button

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I love hammering that backspace button. I use it. I abuse it. If something comes out in a way I don’t like it, I smash that key and redo it.

As a kid, we had an old mechanical typewriter. Ribbons. Ink. That sound. Shunk, shunk, shunk. Shunk shunk. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp. (That’s the sound of making the carriage ‘return’ to beginning of the line) Shunk. Shunk shunk.

I feel like as a modern society we’ve gotten used to being able to (seemingly) easily undo things. I found it frustrating recently when trying to do a long series of ‘undo-ing’ on a PowerPoint presentation. Why, I asked myself, had this machine forgotten the progression of my work such that I couldn’t just go back at any time to the point I wanted to?

I wonder if we treat life like that a bit? If we don’t like something – hit the big red button. Delete. Undo. Backspace.

In some ways this is a very good thing. We don’t have to fear errors.

If you were so cursed as to make a mistake on an old typewriter, there was a litany of solutions we went through. At one point you had to hold some sheet of white stuff against the page, and type the exact same character in the exact same place. Or then there was liquid white out. Then there was correction tape. It was a lot of work.

((wait, does anyone remember word-processor machines? Like those weird in-between devices between typewriters and computers??))

It’s better now. Mistakes are gloriously undo-able. That kind of attitude has positive echoes in life for those who live accordingly. My mistakes, my errors and sins, are not the end of the world. Neither need be the misdeeds of others. It can be amended, forgiven, gotten past, put aside, or otherwise dealt with through the application of relational white out. Spiritual correction tape. The loving backspace button.

But there’s a downside. Sometimes errors are not so easily fixed. Damage is done and can’t be redone. There’s probably no need to give examples here. Sometimes an error leaves a permanent mark, an unfillable hole, an indelible stamp.

In the Christian faith, there is a striking balance when it comes to mistakes, evil, damage and sin. The harm from wrongdoing is to be put aside as quickly and routinely as possible. But there is acknowledgement that some groans will continue until the new creation.

Maybe this can give us a helpful posture of fearless caution as we navigate life. On the one hand typing our way thorough life shouldn’t feel like walking a tightrope. We can get things wrong, and get past them. And yet. We shouldn’t plonk down letters and words and strike the keyboard of live with reckless abandon. We should take care.

Happy typing to us all.

physical, mental & spiritual recovery

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Addiction, according to Alcoholics Anonymous, involves three levels

Physical Allergy
Mental Obsession
Spiritual Malady

Looking at those in reverse…

The spiritual malady is about not coping with life. We are ‘restless, irritable and discontent’. We can’t accept life on life’s terms. We are forever wanting to force our way on others, or getting angry because things, people or situations aren’t as we wanted. We can’t cope.

The spiritual malady leads to mental obsession. We brim and stew over how others treated us. We feel the victim. We feel hard done by. Not recognised, not respected, not empowered. We engage in ‘stinking thinking’, feeling the world is against us, and we let it eat us up. And we start wanting an escape.

Spiritual malady and mental obsession give way to the physical allergy. This is about the effect that our drug of choice (alcohol for alcoholics) has on us. Alcohol destroys alcoholics. Drugs kill their users. And so on. The addict, enmeshed in spiritual disease and mental obsession, can’t have ‘just a little bit’ of their drug. They give themselves to it in ways that others don’t.

I’m not an alcoholic, but I relate to this. And I think we all can actually.

At some level, we all wish we ran the world.
At some level, we all stew on how unfair life is.
At some level, we all escape into some ‘drug’.

Even if we don’t engage those ‘drugs’ in compulsive ways, they can still be problematic. And even if we aren’t proper addicts, the reality of addictive tendencies in most or all of us means we can use the wisdom of recovery.

Step 1 deals to the physical allergy
Step 2 deals to the mental obsession
Step 3 deals to the spiritual malady

Step 1 says ‘we were powerless over alcohol’ (or whatever drug). It’s not that alcohol itself is the problem, but the powerlessness over it. It’s the allergic reaction that the drug causes. For the social media user, it’s the endless hours wasted – high quantities of scrolling and low quality of living. Step one is about admitting this. The physical situation isn’t good.

Step 2 says we can ‘be restored to sanity’. It’s not just about behaviour, it’s that we have problems at the mental level. Some level of ‘insanity’ is at work in our thinking. Addict or not, we can get into endless feedback loops, self-fulfilling prophecies and eternal victimhood. Mentally, we are not well.

Step 3 says we ‘turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood God’. This is not behaviour modification. This is nothing short of spiritual surrender. My will for my life isn’t working. I need a new plan. I need a new power. I need a new life. More of ‘me’ won’t help.

These are some of the deep parallels between Recovery and Christianity.
Not surprising given the Christian roots of the recovery movement.
These are some of the ways that kingdom flourishing is recovered in our lives.

final salvation – the meaningful middle

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When it comes to the ultimate future for humans, there seem to be two extremes.

One extreme would be the most hopeless and bleak form of materialism. Not even the faintest form of vague spiritual continuation of ‘me’. Just cold meaningless death. The brutal transition into non-existence.

The other extreme would be the most indifferent and indiscriminate form of universalism. Not the least bit of justice or varied reward. Just heaven for everyone regardless of what evils or genocides they committed, or what visions of the afterlife they even wanted.

In the middle is the complex but meaningful reality of faith. We are accountable for our actions. Trusting in God matters. The posture of my heart matters. Not everyone is simply lumped into one fate. There is room and space for a real response to God’s acts of creation and redemption.

prophesy against the prophets

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The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord! 3 This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! 4 Your prophets, Israel, are like jackals among ruins. 5 You have not gone up to the breaches in the wall to repair it for the people of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the Lord. 6 Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. Even though the Lord has not sent them, they say, “The Lord declares,” and expect him to fulfill their words. 7 Have you not seen false visions and uttered lying divinations when you say, “The Lord declares,” though I have not spoken?

Ezekiel 13:1-7

What makes a person, a church, a ministry, a sermon, or what-have-you prophetic? It depends on what you think prophecy is, or who prophets are.

Prophecy is the activity of prophets. Yes, that sounds circular. Well, a prophet (navi in Hebrew) is one who sees. Everyone sees things in one sense, but a prophet is someone who can see things others aren’t seeing, or aren’t seeing yet. Prophets change the vision of a community.

What the heck is going on in this passage, then, when Ezekiel is told to prophecy against the prophets? Hint: he’s criticizing their prophecy.

Prophetic Critique

Criticism is kind of a thing that we need if we are going to be prophetic. But I reckon we need just the right amount of it. And it needs to be directed at things that need to be critiqued. The alternatives are: a) critiquing what does not need critique, or b) not critiquing what needs critique.

What gets criticized in your church context? Usually in a church setting, criticism is directed externally at ‘the world’. And fair enough, too. There are things we can rightly critique. Sometimes a church will criticize other churches. And that can have its place too, and it could in a sense be what Ezekiel is doing here.

But I think it goes even further.

This is, I think, critique from within.

The Value of Critique

Ezekiel is critiquing “the prophets of Israel”. Ezekiel was a priest, a Levite, a member of God’s people. Prophetic critique was most often turned on the people of God, to call them back to the ways of God.

When it comes to critiquing our leaders, we go to extremes. None or way too much. When it comes to leaders welcoming or dealing with critique, we have room for improvement. Critique can be unhelpful in various ways:

  • When the one critiquing exaggerates the criticism, making it easier to dismiss it.
  • When the critic is insensitive to the timing (e.g. don’t critique a leader immediately after the church service!) of the critique.
  • When one is closed off to critique, feeling they never need it.

Wise leaders know how to remain open to critique, and to be willing to even seek it out at times, and follow up the critique with change and work. The prophets of Israel in this passage are – shall we say – not open to critique.

Pretend Prophets

Ezekiel doesn’t hold back. He calls their prophecy false. Prophesying out of their own imagination. Following their own spirit. Seeing nothing. Blind seers! The Lord has not sent them, and the Lord has not spoken what they are saying.

That is pretty intense. Imagine modern prophets being told they are full of it!? “Hey you so-called anointed and appointed prophets going around doing your thing with your prophetic pastor friends. You’re making it all up, bro. That’s 0% God’s spirit, and 100% your ego. Stop lying and pretending.”

Eugene Peterson’s rendering is provocative. These prophets are “making things up out of their own heads and calling it ‘prophesying.’” They “fantasize comforting illusions and preach lying sermons. They say ‘God says . . .’ when God hasn’t so much as breathed in their direction. And yet they stand around thinking that something they said is going to happen.”

A bit later in Ezekiel 22:23-29 , the critique is extended to everyone – we might say the five P’s: Princes, Priests, Prophets, Politicians, and the People. Again the prophets are accused of “false visions and lying divinations”, and saying “ ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says’—when the Lord has not spoken. “

Positive Prophets?

The wider context in Ezekiel (and Amos, and Micah, and Isaiah, and…) is violence, idolatry, compromise, injustice, sin. Things are awful, and these false prophets are papering over it all with positive prophecies, whitewashing a thin wall, saying “peace” when there is no peace (Ezekiel 13:10, 16 – see also Jeremiah 28:9 where Jeremiah makes is clear that prophesying peace places the prophet under special accountability!).

Restorative Prophecy

It is really easy to critique, and I’ve erred (and I really do mean erred!) in the past on the side of critiquing where it was not needed or helpful or appropriate. But the prophets of Scripture are absolutely clear: being ‘prophetic’ has nothing to do with papering over the sins of God’s people with positive distracting declarations of the nice things God is going to do. This is the opposite of prophecy. Instead of seeing and saying the transformative things God wants to say, such happy distractions don’t transform anyone, and remain blind to what is going on and what God is saying.

God desires us to turn from our arrogance, violence, sin and injustice; and become channels of love, grace, mercy, hospitality, care, healing and reconciliation. Where the Church is turning from evil and doing good, we dare not critique that. But where Christians are participating in things that do real harm to people. Critique is coming.

Sometimes we need to prophesy against the prophets.