I was in a conversation recently with someone I just met, and we talked a bit about Christianity, and this individual with whom I was talking told me that he steers clear of Christianity because “it is all about who is winning and who is losing — just winners and losers. Christianity is all about a contest,” he continued, “who is going to heaven and who is going to hell. Who is on the right side and who is on the wrong side. Jesus came to show you who is right, and the rest are wrong.”
I shared some empathy with this viewpoint and agreed with my new friend that there was ample room to reach such a conclusion, especially when you take a step away from considering Christianity and look just at the church, at Christian denominational churches. However, I told him that this was not the way I looked at Christianity. Instead I saw Christianity in terms of a Prophetic Journey to live life, because in this prospective there is room for both winners and losers, there is a way to journey together because we are all sometimes winners and sometimes losers. The Prophetic Journey accepts a way of moving toward winning that includes losing. It doesn’t exclude it.
I talked to my friend about the history of biblical prophets who served, not as prognosticators of the future, but rather as mirrors, people called by God to be God’s messenger by holding up a mirror in front of each of us, with the challenge, the invitation of God to change our ways and follow Christ!
Sin is part of the Prophetic Journey towards salvation. I told my friend that once you hear it, once you see this truth, I hope you can say, “Of course, that’s obvious!”
So many of us have grown up in the language of courtroom and judgment and contest, where there are a few winners and lots of losers. If you don’t obey the rules of a particular church you are a loser. This has not served history well nor has it served my own life well — or yours. The Prophetic Journey is a Journey of Life that takes two steps forward and includes one step backward. Often it is two steps backward and one step forward.
Falling and failing and suffering — whatever descriptive word you use —becomes a graced invitation of God for the next step forward.
This is Prophetic language not Contest language. The Christian way is a Prophetic Journey where God holds up a mirror and makes you look at yourself, accompanied by God’s promise to give you freedom to accept what you see — and change — or to choose to deny or ignore what you see — and walk away under your own pathetic strength. We are all alike in this.
Because prophets come from God, people who come from all sexes and races and levels of education, these true prophets of God offer God’s invitation to take “another journey” beyond competitive, us-and-them thinking, beyond fight or flight, conservative or liberal, compliant or non-complaint. Sometimes God’s true prophets don’t realize they are being used by God to be His prophet, and yet what they all demand is that you and I transform our consciousness, our life choices, our behavior and speech, and move beyond a winner and loser mentality.
When you and I are pushed to look into the mirror and see the tragic nature of our choices and lifestyle, we see the tragedy of our human nature. This is why the Prophetic Journey calls us to get on our knees, figuratively speaking, and beg for mercy and forgiveness, and pray for God’s always “sufficient grace” to change our ways and follow Christ. This Prophetic Journey will always be a road less traveled, a kind of “unstable stability” that shows us that this is really the only the real stability, because it is a truthful map of our life, and it is always the “truth that sets us free.” So God has given us the gift of prayer, so that in prayer we can turn to the One who alone finally heals us, and in contemplation, where quite simply we meet the One in His most simple, immediate, and contradictory form. It is the resolving of those immense contradictions in our life that characterize the Prophetic Journey we are all one, the Journey of all who pray.
For this reason may we pray together: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
From the Bible:
“Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”
John 8:31-32.
“I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” Romans 7:14-15.
“God said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’”
2 Corinthians 12:9.
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