Tag Archives: Worldview

Chapter-a-Day

Journalistic Prophets

1 Comment

Journalistic Prophets (CaD Mi 3) – Wayfarer

This is what the Lord says: “As for the prophets who lead my people astray, they proclaim ‘peace’ if they have something to eat, but prepare to wage war against anyone who refuses to feed them.”
Micah 3:5 (NIV)

Over the past few years, I have personally migrated to reading more and more independent journalists who write on sites like Substack, along with subscribing to non-traditional news outlets that ascribe to the journalistic principles of integrity and objectivity that I was taught in journalism classes in school. I find it refreshing to read the work of those who are presenting facts and drawing conclusions based on those facts, even if it makes me uncomfortable.

We recently crossed the 100-day mark from the events of October 7 and the consequential dominoes that have fallen in its wake. Wendy and I have participated in lively conversations with individuals on both sides of the conflict in Gaza. Passions run high on both sides, and I have observed those on both sides of the conflict who are quick to ignore, obfuscate, and reject facts and inconvenient truths.

Yesterday, I read a piece in one of the independent journalistic outlets I previously mentioned. It was a hard read because it challenged some of my own thoughts and feelings with cold, hard facts and objective clarity that I couldn’t ignore. It also affirmed with equally cold, hard facts some of the truths that others I’ve spoken with outright refuse to accept as anything but lies.

One of the things that modern readers of the Great Story often fail to understand is that in ancient society, “prophets” were an entire workforce in the culture. Every religion (and there were many) had its version of prophets. Every monarch and emperor had an entire staff of prophets to provide “divine” guidance.

In today’s chapter, the ancient prophet Micah contrasts himself with the mainstream prophets who served in the King’s court and the pagan temples. What Micah calls out in his peers is the fact that they are driven by selfish motives. Being a prophet is their job, and they are worried about their paycheck and their social status. These prophets, Micah reports, will say whatever their boss wants to hear if it provides job security.

Micah and those prophets we know from the Great Story, were a different lot. The reason we still read their words thousands of years later is precisely because they were willing to say what no one else was willing to say. They were willing to present cold, hard facts about the events of their day even if it meant they were ostracized, canceled, unemployed, beaten, and (in some cases) killed.

Micah makes the point that the “prophets” of his day would prophesy anything that would keep food on their table. I couldn’t help but think of the prophet of Elijah (1 Kings 17:1-4) who, in contrast, told King Ahab that there would be a severe famine in the land, then went to the wilderness where God provided food for him from scavenging ravens. What a contrast.

In the quiet this morning, I found myself mulling over the fact that journalists today are not unlike the ancient prophets. Our society looks to them to interpret the events of our times and predict what’s going to happen. In an increasingly secular society, I find that some ascribe faith and an almost religious zeal to these modern-day, secular prophets. And, I observe that most mainstream news businesses (they are, after all, first-and-foremost profit-driven businesses) hire an entire staff of journalistic prophets who will say what their faithful consumers want to hear.

Reading the ancient prophets like Micah is a constant reminder to me that hearing and reading only those things that make me comfortable and affirm my worldview is ultimately not a spiritually healthy thing for me. As a disciple of Jesus, I am equally reminded that Jesus Himself was executed by the good religious people of His day for saying things that were true, but threatened the powerful and wealthy elites who wanted to keep the revenue flowing. Jesus also told His disciples to expect the same when we truly follow in His footsteps.

It’s that time of the day when I join Wendy for coffee and we read the latest news. God, give me discernment as I partake in what the modern-day secular prophets have to say this morning.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

What I Want to Hear

Leave a comment

What I Want to Hear (CaD Jer 14) – Wayfarer

Then the Lord said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds. Therefore this is what the Lord says about the prophets who are prophesying in my name: I did not send them, yet they are saying, ‘No sword or famine will touch this land.’ Those same prophets will perish by sword and famine.
Jeremiah 14:14-15 (NIV)

In today’s chapter, Jeremiah describes a drought that struck sometime in his prophetic ministry. No one knows when this was, but drought is a periodic reality in that area of the world, just as it is here in Iowa.

What intrigued me about Jerry’s conversation with God was his description of all the other prophets who, claiming to speak in God’s name, continued to tell everyone that every little thing was going to be alright, that the drought would not lead to famine nor would the Babylonians attack as Jeremiah has repeatedly warned.

It made me meditate on three things this morning:

First, there have always been false prophets like Jeremiah describes. In today’s terms, I’m reminded the name-it-and-claim it preachers of prosperity gospel. Health, wealth, and bullet-proof optimism flow from their lips, telling their donors (they are always asking for money) and followers that God wants to bless them with health and wealth, too. I was in college during the televangelist scandals back in the late 80s. They are still around.

The second thing on which I meditated is the current state of our culture and media. This is my observation, not a political statement. The fact is that news organizations on both sides of the political spectrum have abandoned objective reporting to feed their viewers whatever those viewers political bent happens to be. One of the fascinating things I’ve witnessed coming out of the Covid years are small, independent news and journalism outlets on platforms like Substack. One that Wendy and I have begun reading regularly states openly that they began their site in order to return to journalism that’s about objective reporting of facts. The founders of the site came from one of the most prestigious news outlets in the world and complained of editors demanding that reporters write within the preferred political narrative the editors were pushing. It’s happening everywhere, and it’s happening on both sides of our cultural divide.

Which leads me to the third thing on which I meditated this morning. False prophets of religion, news, and politics are not going away just as Israel and Iowa will continue to experience periodic droughts as has always been the case. As I chewed on these things in the quiet this morning, I was reminded of Paul’s mentoring words to his young protégé Timothy:

You’re going to find that there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They’ll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant.
1 Timothy 4:3-5 (MSG)

Along my life journey, I’ve observed that life is filled with tragedy and difficulties. It’s also filled will facts and realities that inconveniently refuse to fit into what I want to believe about the world as I desire it to be in the comfortable little box of my personal worldview. Jerry had the difficult job of being the lone voice pointing out the proverbial handwriting on the wall; A message no one wanted to hear. They preferred to have their fancies tickled with false assurances. It was still that way when Paul was mentoring Timothy. It’s still that way today.

I concluded in the quiet this morning that I am on a faith journey as I follow in the steps of Jesus. It is Maundy Thursday as I write these words (the commemoration of Jesus’ final night before His execution) and I’m reminded that the end of Jesus’ earthly journey was not a pleasant one. It’s funny how easy it is for me to believe that it should be different for me than for the One in whose steps I follow. If the world operated perfectly within the comfortable little box of my personal worldview then Jesus would never have had to cry out, “Father, let this cup pass from me” and I would never need faith.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Differences in Interpretation

2 Comments

But Abijah grew in strength.
2 Chronicles 13:21 (NIV)

Yesterday at work I was helping a client with their company’s internal Quality Assessment criteria. One of the common mistakes made when it comes to assessing quality of a service interaction is the avoidance of defining simple, observable behaviors. Instead companies often create criteria in ways that leave the assessment wide-open to the analyst’s interpretation. An analyst who has a bent towards strict, “they could have done better” thinking will mark it one way while an analyst with a bent towards a more gracious “they did the best they could” thinking will mark it another way. The result is worthless data.

Along my journey I’ve observed these kinds of differences in all manners of life. We have diverse personality types with bents toward interpreting and reacting to the same set of circumstances in equally diverse ways. We have differences in life experiences, differences in world-view, and differences in life situations that all lend themselves to me seeing and interpreting things a particular way, while you may see it a bit differently.

I don’ know if you’ve caught it in these chapter-a-day posts the past couple of weeks, but one of the interesting things about the historic accounts we’re reading in 2 Chronicles is that the same historical events are also covered in the book of 1 Kings. One of the things I’m discovering is that some of the most fascinating lessons I’m learning come from comparing the two different accounts. They were written by different scribes living in different time periods and circumstances.

Take today’s chapter for example. The Chronicler tells a great story about Abijah’s (King of the southern kingdom of Judah) battle with the rebel Jereboam (King of the northern kingdom of Israel). Abijah’s battle speech is quoted at length in which Abijah blasts Jereboam for abandoning the God of Israel while Abijah and his tribe of Judah are still worshiping and trusting the God of their ancestors. The Chronicler then leaves his account of Abijah’s reign on a positive note. Abijah defeated Jereboam, grew strong, and had a bunch of wives and children.

The scribe of 1 Kings, however looked at the same reign of Abijah and described it differently. The account of Abijah’s reign is much shorter and the battle speech wasn’t mentioned at all. The writer of the 1 Kings account gives a more negative conclusion of Abijah’s reign:

He committed all the sins his father had done before him; his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his forefather had been.

As I’ve progressed in my Life journey I’ve come to recognize that human groups and systems (religious denominations, political parties, families, communities, and etc.) are naturally driven to building a sense of unity and safety by seeing and interpreting things the same way. These same systems, and the members of that system, often become resistant to respecting, considering, and working with systems that see and interpret things a different way. I become afraid. I feel threatened. I entrench myself in my thinking. I attack and discredit the person or system that thinks differently.

The types of rote and repetitive sales and service interactions I assess on a regular basis for my work are relatively easy to break down, define, and interpret once you know how to do it. Driving a consistent and repetitive user experience is one thing. Reducing an individual’s lifetime of stories, experiences, events, choices, words, and relationships into bullet point is a completely different ball game.

Of late I’ve been feeling the pain and frustration of watching societal groups and their members entrench themselves out of fear and suspicion of anyone who thinks differently. I find myself personally rebelling against that mentality. As a follower of Jesus I find it antithetical to the inclusive, boundary-breaking love that Jesus exemplified and commanded of those of us who follow Him. I always tell the Customer Service Representatives I coach and train that Rule #1 is “do the best you can with what you have.” I’m trying to do the same thing with my faith. I can’t change the entire culture of a nation, but I can daily control my own words, actions, interactions, and relationships. I can change the culture around me, the one I immediately impact.

Today, I once again endeavor to be a little more respectful, a little more considerate, a little more open, and a little more loving to the people I run into and those with whom I interact. People who may be members of a group who interpret the world much differently than myself.

Chapter-a-Day

Unconditional Love for Irreconcilable Suffering

Leave a comment

job-and-eliphaz2“Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?
    Where were the upright ever destroyed?
As I have observed, those who plow evil
    and those who sow trouble reap it.
Job 4:7-8 (NIV)

When I was young, I began to notice that men and women have very different sub-textual conversations. I became fascinated with a phenomenon I observed in my female friends. I would be in a social setting with a female when another female enters the room. My friend would suddenly turn and whisper some critical remark about the stranger. A few probing questions led me to the realization that within a nano-second my female companion had sized up the female who just entered the room and had filled out a complete mental dossier on her competition. She knew what the other female was wearing, her socio-economic status, what kind of person she was, and exactly where she was to be filed in the categorized file cabinet of her brain. The hi-speed, interpersonal judge, jury, and executioner from across the crowded room.

Along the journey I have continued to observe this non-verbal social world of women. I have, after all, spent much of my life in an estrogen wonderland surrounded by females. I find it fascinating. (Personal Note: I realize that I’m making a broad generalization here. I’m not picking on women. Men have similar unspoken judgments, but in my experience it just looks and behaves differently. That’s another blog post for another day.)

As Wendy and I were in the depths of our journey through infertility, I became aware of just how deep and strong women’s thoughts and core beliefs around pregnancy and motherhood can run. In this unspoken, invisible world of non-verbal female communication there exists a sub-culture in which fertility is spiritual currency. If you are a woman who gets pregnant at the drop of a hat and cranks out multiple children in succession, then you are a female all-star, blessed and living right. If you are a woman struggling to conceive then there are some serious question marks surrounding you and this curse you are experiencing. There must be some reason God is withholding this fundamental female blessing from you.

In yesterday’s chapter we left Job and his three friends on the ash heap. For seven days the four of them sat in silence when Job finally opened his mouth to speak. What poured out what was a highly emotional rant of despair that you might have expected from a man who had lost his children, his workforce, his wealth, and his livelihood before breaking out in painful sores all over his body.

Today, the first of his three friends opens his mouth to speak. His name is Eliphaz, and he comes from the ultra-religious wing of society for whom life is very simple. Everything in life fits neatly into their black and white box and it parallels the thinking I’ve observed around fertility in certain subsets of the female population. If you are visibly prospering you must be living upright and piously because God is blessing you. If you are visibly suffering then you must have done something to deserve God’s punishment. Plain and simple.

Too simple. Eliphaz asks, “Who, being innocent ever perished?” Stop right there, Eli. Let me give you a short list off the top of my head:

  • Still born and miscarried children
  • The millions who were marched into the Nazi gas chambers
  • Millions of civilian war victims throughout history
  • The journalists who were beheaded on video by ISIS to make a point
  • The Christian couple I read about in Pakistan who just last week were beaten to death by the Muslims in their village.
  • My friend who was hit by a drunk driver
  • My friends and loved ones whose lives were cut short by incurable diseases

Job has suffered incredible tragedy and the first thing he hears from his friend is a backhanded accusation that he must have done something to bring down God’s wrath upon himself. Eli’s words reveal his heart. He is less concerned with showing love, empathy, and compassion to his friend, and more concerned with trying to reconcile what he’s witnessed with the rose-colored glasses through which he sees a simple black and white world.

Today, I am thinking about those who suffer around me in ways I can’t comprehend. I am determined that I do not want to be a friend like Eliphaz. Trying to reconcile irreconcilable suffering within my personal world-view is less important than simply loving a suffering friend without reservation or judgment.