The most significant aspect of being a prophetic voice is deeply knowing and clearly articulating the heart of God.

From the time when a major natural disaster strikes, one can hold their breath until people have quickly announced that such a tragedy (which incidentally, happened in a place far, far away and did not remotely touch the speaker) was the direct judgement of God for this or that act of wickedness. This decree is usually accompanied by a montage of clippings from the Old Testament prophets, explaining how such is surely the case. However, it strikes me that there is a tremendous difference between repeating the words of the prophets and embodying the lifestyle and heart of the prophet, no less going on the journey with God of compassionate solidarity with the those who are now suffering. The former seems fairly easier and a trifle more convenient than the latter.

Consider this excerpt from Jeremiah, which is rarely used in such a prophetic montage:

My sorrow is beyond healing, my heart is faint within me! Behold, listen! The cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land: “Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not within her…Harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored? Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! (Jeremiah 8:18-9:1)

Or this:

Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter—my people—is struck down with a crushing blow, with a very grievous wound. If I go out into the field, look—those killed by the sword! And if I enter the city, look—those sick with famine! (Jeremiah 14:17-18)

Or this one from Lamentations:

For these things I weep; my eyes run down with water; because far from me is a comforter, one who restores my soul. My children are desolate because the enemy has prevailed. Zion stretches out her hands; There is no one to comfort her…” (Lam. 1:16)

Each of these passages deals with a situation in which the suffering is clearly caused by a judgement of the Lord and was directly related to the sin of the people. Yet consider how the prophet speaks – not as an outsider standing on moral high ground. Not as a detached arbiter of divine knowledge. Not as a coveted source of clarity. Rather, they speak primarily as those who mourn. They speak of “my people.” They cry out in bitterness of soul. They identify themselves as among those who suffer. The prophet only speaks in compassionate solidarity with the suffering. From a privileged vantage point the “wise men” claim to give counsel. They announce that all is in fact well. But Jeremiah rebukes them saying, “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. (Jer. 8:11)” Those who lounge in affluence and with dry eyes declare that a disaster is in fact a blessing (peace, peace – this is a good thing), have more in common with Jeremiah’s enemies than Jeremiah himself, even though they might quote his writings. They also have more in common with those asking Jesus to explain whose sin caused certain suffering (John 9), rather than Jesus himself, the ultimate prophet, who in response to suffering “bore our griefs and carried our sorrows,” making the ultimate act of sympathetic identification with us by enduring crucifixion and through his resurrection, opened the way for suffering to be overcome. It is much easier to sound like a prophet, then to have the quality of soul a prophet possesses, which feels deeply for the suffering and leads one to suffer alongside them.

To help discern one’s readiness to be a prophetic voice in times of disaster, I’ve come up with a check list:

• If your first thought when a disaster strikes, is a one sentence explanation that allows your life to largely remain undisrupted, you are probably not a prophetic voice.
• If your first thought when a disaster strikes, is to figure out what horrible sin the area affected was committing, you are probably not a prophetic voice.
• If your first thought when a disaster strikes is anything other than broken-hearted compassion, you are probably not a prophetic voice.
• If you have not even skipped one meal between the time of the disaster and your pronouncement, you are probably not a prophetic voice.
• If you are emotionally unaffected by the suffering of people whom God loves, you are probably not a prophetic voice and are likely in a seriously sinful state of hardness of heart.
• If you find yourself talking about “them,” you are probably not a prophetic voice.
• If you think it is good that “they” finally learned about the “futility of man,” you are probably not a prophetic voice.
• If your prayers do not sound like the book of Lamentations, you a probably not a prophetic voice.
• If your eyes are dry and heart unmoved, yet you can manage to have enough “insight” and moral high ground to size up the situation, your soul is in grave danger.
• If you have no input or role to actually help the people in the disaster make sense of the situation, yet you feel compelled to neatly explain the situation in trite one-liners, not only are you certainly not a prophetic voice, but you need to take serious stock of your motives.

The question is, why would someone who has no voice or opportunity to help the actual people in crisis make sense of their situation, feel compelled to conceptually solve the problem? The answer cannot be altruistic concern, because by nature of their location and reach, their explanation cannot be of help to them. They are not a prophetic voice in the situation merely in light of their geographic proximity or lack thereof. So why do people feel so great an urge to explain such occurrences? Who does such an answer help? The only solution I can discern is this impulse comes from one’s own unsettled heart and the desire to assuage it. These answers serve to help ourselves. We all have “small-scale” issues of pain and suffering – a failed relationship, a moral deficiency, financial uncertainty, an abusive past, insecurities, fears, disappointments and regrets. The pain we experience from these are often strong enough to drive us to utter despair. Christians will frequently use trite explanations to eliminate this emotional upheaval – God caused this trial to teach me a lesson, or to test my faith, God is setting me up for an even greater blessing down the road, God is letting me go through this so I can relate to others and reach out to them, God is preparing me for my calling, or the tribulation, etc. These easy explanations help turn a painful experience into one that is apparently not so painful. The once-thought tragedies are actually a blessing-in-disguise. Thus the “explanations” help us maintain an even-keel status quo of emotional stability. In essence they serve to anesthetize the pains of life so we can continue to give off the image that we mostly “have it together.”

But suddenly something extremely terrible happens. Intuitively we know that things are amiss. The impropriety of our rabid and de-humanizing anesthetizing is exposed and so rises the utter need – the compulsion – the addiction – to apply the same logic we used for ourselves on a massive scale. That is the only way we can continue to justify our state. This disaster is truly a blessing because now people will turn to God and be saved. This disaster is truly a blessing because the “pride of man” is being revealed. This disaster is truly a blessing because it is better to suffer now than in hell. But this explanation-addiction does not arise from a compassionate solidarity with those in suffering, such as characterized weeping Jeremiah or the crucified Jesus. Rather, it comes from the selfish desire to maintain a status-quo in which we narcissistically can continue in our mental and emotional sanity and perpetuate the delusional image of our non-savior-needing state. Jesus did not respond to suffering with cliches – he responded by suffering and dying for those in need. The apostle Paul tells us the Christian response to the groaning of the entire creation – the sufferings of the present time – is groanings that are inexpressible (Romans 8:26).

To me it seems likely the reason we so often respond to the sufferings of others with obtuse cliches, is because we respond to our own suffering with cliches. We cannot feel the compassion of God for the hurting, because the god we worship does not have compassionate solidarity with us. He despises and scorns us in our suffering, giving us explanations rather than friendship. How radically different is the true God revealed in the Bible. In all our afflictions, he is afflicted (Isa. 63:7). He truly is the one who weeps with those who weep. His compassions (literally in Hebrew the feelings a mother has for those in her womb) are over all that He has made. In the midst of a world marred by suffering and grief, where is God? In your deepest pain, loneliness and sorrow where is God? He is not far away, untouchable off in his heaven. No, he is among us, suffering with us. The presence of the Holy Spirit is himself an inexpressible groaning within us, suffering alongside us (Rom. 8:26), reminding us of how the crucified Lord drew near to our pain in the deepest way. We do not have a great high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who became like his brothers and sisters in every way. He knows us. He is with us. He has drawn near, in the depths of our darkest despair.

The Scripture gives us clear precedent in the prophets for moments when an explanation for a crisis is given by direct revelation. The Scripture also tells us that before the coming of the Lord there will be untold upheaval like the world has never seen. However, this does not require us to give an explanation for all suffering out of a selfish desire to remain in denial about our own pain. Indeed, if we might even purpose at one time to give that explanation to a world in desperate need, our central concern in the present must be to become the kind of person God would want to give such a message, someone who enters into compassionate solidarity with the suffering, someone whose life has been conformed in passionate likeness to the crucified Lord.

As I have been thinking about this, I find myself remarkably convicted. I see my own dearth of compassion and my need to draw near to the crucified Lord and hear his heart – to know him in an ever deeper way. What capacity of soul drove the Lord of Heaven to endure such shame and ignominy, such rejection and abandonment, by the world he fashioned with love, by his people Israel, by his closest friends, and by His very own Father? What depth of compassion courses through his veins? What manner of self-giving consumes such a one that does not scorn the sufferings of my pathetic state and bows so low to be near me, to know me in my deepest pain? I find myself wanting to be a prophetic voice, yet reduced to silence as I sense the inexpressible groanings in solidarity with the travail of creation ever so subtly begin to emerge within my soul.

Holy God

Holy and Mighty

Holy Immortal One

Have mercy upon us.

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