I just got back from a presbytery meeting this afternoon at which the most significant piece of business was the discussion of a proposed overture from one of our churches. It was a well-intentioned overture aimed at reducing the tension between the left and right wings of this denomination; it wasn't, however, all that well written, and many speakers raised the argument that it simply wouldn't do what it was intended to do. It failed by quite a large margin, and I think that argument was the main reason why.
The vagueness and imprecision of the proposed overture wasn't the only argument offered against it, however; several speakers objected on the grounds that it would prevent the denomination from speaking "prophetically." I've heard that sort of language so many times already in my scant few years in the PC(USA) that at first this just passed over my head; but the more I think about it, the more it bothers me.
The truth is, any suggestion that this denomination speaks prophetically on anything is just so much yammering nonsense: prophetic words don't emerge from majority votes. What's more, prophets don't have professional lobbyists and Washington Offices; they don't get favorable coverage in the New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, for that matter); they don't show up as talking heads, whether on CBS or on Fox News Channel; and they most emphatically don't support elite opinion or echo the words and positions of powerful people, even if those powerful people happen to be the opposition party at the moment.
Honestly, how on earth can anyone flatter themselves that the PC(USA) speaks prophetically when its leaders haven't had an original thought on public policy in decades? All these supposedly "prophetic" statements and stances are straight off the Democratic Party platform. This isn't prophetic, it's what past generations would have called the Babylonian Captivity of the PC(USA) – its complete alignment (on the national level) with the agenda of one political party. If the PC(USA) were truly being prophetic, would it be hard on the Republican leadership? Yes – but it would also be hard on the Democrats, and (who knows?) maybe harder. When prophets unlimber their rhetorical guns, only the humbly repentant survive; nobody gets off unscathed, not even their own "side" – indeed, they often get hit the hardest, because "judgment begins in the house of God." Go back and read Amos if you don't believe me.
Of course, maybe that's the problem: have all these folks who yammer on about being prophetic really read the prophets? Anyone who can stand there and talk calmly of such-and-such a pronouncement or some individual being "prophetic" has no more clue what they're talking about than does the guy down the street who can calmly suggest nuking Iran. Prophecy is not comfortable, even for the prophet (or perhaps especially for the prophet; just look at Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea), and the self-determination of many self-righteous folks in the PC(USA) – in my experience, mostly on the left – that they're on the side of the prophets suggests that they don't understand that. Anyone who can read the prophets without shaking has never understood them; anyone who can read Isaiah 6 without crying out in fear and shame, "Woe is me, for I am a person of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips!" just isn't paying attention. Prophecy is not about social justice, though that's certainly a major concern – it isn't about the Democratic Party agenda – prophecy is about God. It's about his holiness and his goodness, and his demand that we live up to his standards – all of them.
Therein lies the great difference between the so-called "prophetic" voice of the PC(USA) and the truly prophetic voice: the PC(USA)'s public pronouncements uphold those standards where its liberal elite agree with them (or, at least, where they can find applications of them with which they agree), but feel free to set those standards aside when they don't. Thus on the one hand, the "prophetic" label is claimed when the denomination is "speaking truth to power" – but only when that power is Republican, or otherwise acting in a politically conservative manner – and on the other, it's claimed as a justification for setting aside the word of God on the grounds that "God is still speaking," to borrow the UCC slogan. Well, yes, God is still speaking, but what justification is ever offered for the idea that he's started contradicting himself?
The root problem here, I think, is that the left is trying to slap the "prophetic" label on what is actually a very old problem, common to the whole church: the desire to believe what they want to believe. I tell my congregation sometimes, "If you think the Bible is telling you what you want to hear, look deeper – you're missing something." I realize that's an overstatement, but there's a large kernel of truth there, not about the Bible but about us: as Francis Bacon put it, we prefer to believe what we prefer to be true, and so that tends to be what we prefer to hear the Bible telling us. We don't listen anywhere near as eagerly for the things which challenge us, which contradict us, which convict us; and so one of the key disciplines for the serious student of Scripture is to listen harder for what we don't want to hear than for what we do. This is necessary as a way of balancing out our natural tendencies and cultivating the virtue of exegetical humility.
To take the issue of homosexuality as one example, conservatives should examine every pro-gay argument from Scripture seriously, considering it to see if it stands on its own merits; and on the flip side, liberals should listen to conservative arguments in the willingness to be convicted that they're wrong. After all, none of us are perfect; we all make mistakes as we interpret scripture, and we all have biases and blind spots which skew those interpretations, lining Scripture up to tell us what we want to hear rather than allowing it to convict us of our errors. It's only if we take arguments and interpretations with which we disagree just as seriously as if we wanted to believe them that we can hope to remedy that problem; and we're not going to do that if we insist, in our spiritual pride, in labeling our side as "prophetic."
After all, to the self-anointed prophet, the rest of the world divides into two camps: the righteous (those who agree with me) and the unrighteous (those who don't), which leaves only the question, "What fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Belial?" There in a nutshell is the state of things in this denomination: for too many folks, the presence of people who disagree with us, instead of serving as an opportunity for learning and self-correction, merely hardens us in our own positions, because "we" are light and "they" are darkness. This wouldn't be a problem for someone whose life and beliefs were already 100% in accordance with the will of God, but that isn't any of us; we all have areas where we need to grow, and beliefs (sometimes cherished ones) which are simply wrong, and we can't afford to set those in stone. As a denomination, we need to set aside this self-aggrandizing nonsense that we're speaking "prophetically," which sets us above those with whom we disagree, and learn instead to approach them in a spirit of humility and grace. Our motives and vision just aren't pure enough to justify doing things any other way.
