On Being Prophetic

I was recently criticized for being too critical in my preaching (the irony has not escaped me). In response I have been doing some thinking about what it means to be prophetic (and what it doesn't). i am pasting an excerpt from the book I am finishing. Just a bit of my thinking on the subject. Being here among the poor has only further illuminated the questions and not really the answers.

...Prophesy does not have to be negative. I once asked a group of my staff a simple yet profound question. Is God happy with the human race or not? What about the church? I mean, in a general sense, when God looks at his people is he pleased with them? Or is he disappointed? It is a question about which I have vacillated in the 10 years since I first asked it. There are days when I feel connected to the heart of God for the poor, the violated, the abused and forgotten and I rage. I do not know how to describe it other than to say that it is not the kind of rage that comes from ego or self interest. It is deeply spiritual and deeply honest. On these days, spent among the poor of the earth or remembering them in my heart are days when I know that God is not pleased. That the cries of the afflicted that rise to the throne of God day and night are indeed heard, and the promise of vengeance is the clear reply from the compassionate and powerful heart of God. On these days, I sense that God’s anger burns against the child killers, the slave holders, the frustrated megalomaniacs who make the weakest parts of humanity their theatre of power. Yet, on other days I sense the affection of God for me in such a way that I know it applies to a great sinner. I see in Scripture a God who loves outcast, who sees epic failure and responds with mercy and tenderness. I find this reaction harder to understand but I know it also represents the truth about God that no human being no matter how despised or despicable is beyond the love of God. On the contrary, that love seeks and saves those very people.

So which is more true than the other? Are they both true equally? How can that be? I still do not know the answer. I am not entirely sure which one outweighs the other or how they intermingle in the mind and heart of God. But I know that both are true at some level. Scripture makes that clear. So prophesy has to embody both of these realities.

Being prophetic means representing the truth about God, as best we can within the limitations of our own personality. And it is not simply a matter of saying two positive things before you say one negative. It is about knowing what pleases God and saying that with as much conviction and passion as what does not please God...