The Hebrew prophets would not see the neutrality of church leaders as a virtue while people are victimised.

They would name it as an idolatrous vice.

The Hebrew prophets would see impartiality in the context of injustice as a travesty. They would ache with those on the receiving end of oppression. They would cry out with the poor.

The Hebrew prophets so radically identify with the hurting that they can’t keep silent while people suffer. Their concern is not for civility but the dignity of those whom the Powers prey upon.

Can you imagine Jeremiah extinguishing the fire in his bones to get an invitation to a prayer breakfast? Amos not speaking out to get photo ops with the powerful? Hosea seeking less offensive metaphors to share meals with rulers? Isaiah toning it down to “not lose people”?

The prophet is forever living in the awareness that it is not only the powerful, not only the Presidents, not only the Mining Executives, not only the corporate CEOs, not only the Senior Pastors, but *EVERYONE* who is in the image of God.

& that’s why it’s a pity that the tweet calling Trump a bully was deleted cos we desperately need prophetic courage to name Trump as a white supremacist who hates the poor and is criminally incompetent during a pandemic and climate catastrophe that literally threatens the planet. https://twitter.com/hillsong/status/1311141094948700168

The prophets were so partisan that they unquestionably & consistently sided with the underdog, the marginalised, the demonised, disadvantaged & scapegoated. They were in no Party’s pocket and not beholden to anyone in power cos they were held in the bosom of the God of the poor.

Solidarity with the prophets, who piercing poetry is always found in radical solidarity with the poor, will save us from “neutrality”.

Solidarity with the poor will also save us from being successful chaplains to the “military industrial entertainment incarceration complex.”

As Heschel’s reminds us, “The thought of God [of the Hebrew prophets] and indifference to other people’s suffering are mutually exclusive.”

If we can hold “god” and indifference to the suffering together, the prophets will insist we are worshipping in an idol.

To call that which enables lives of indifference to injustice “God” is to engage in an insidious blasphemy against the God of the Hebrew prophets.

We need to name clearly that much of Christendom’s presumption of coercive power and it’s corresponding “persecution complex” when it’s threatened with democracy is a blasphemous rejection of a the God of the prophets, and the Way of the nonviolent Messiah from Nazareth.

A few thoughts on what the “ @Hillsong #Debates2020 ” deleted tweet actually reveals (it’s not what you think)

https://www.facebook.com/303558839764454/posts/3297864187000556/