Jeremiah 20:3 – Anger as Instrument, or Identity?
And it happened on the next day that Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, “The Lord has not called your name Pashhur, but Magor-Missabib. Jeremiah 20:3, New King James Version
“Lord, my anger is indeed unlike yours," confesses Tim Keller in Songs of Jesus. "May your Spirit purify me so my anger is not triggered by my hurt ego as much as by real injustice and evil, and so that it does not remain in me to harden and poison my joy but readily gives way to compassion."
Our plea for this intervention is all the more earnest when we see the inverse process in Jeremiah 20:3. We are perhaps disadvantaged by dramatic irony as we consider Pashhur in the run-up to this verse. We know the rotten culture which positioned him in spiritual authority, and if we have read this section of Scripture before, we know his fate. Therefore, reading backward, we are less likely to be convicted by his plight.
Pause and reconsider more broadly. There is a place for human responsibility for what goes on in the Lord's house, both under the old covenant and the new. Aaron's sons were struck down for offering strange fire there. Even after the Holy Spirit indwells the individual believer and destines him or her for royal priesthood, Paul insists on enforced orderliness in worship and reminds us that the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet.
So Pashhur has righteous ancestors and descendents. There is a place for questioning the prophetic Word from the Lord. There is a place for indignation at its indulgent, ego-centered abuse by those who would disrupt the service and tell us that they and not the established authorities they are interrupting speak for the Lord. Questions ought to be asked, although one might hope for Pashhurs who are more in touch with the Lord themselves and much less quick to resort to slaps and irons as their default correctives.
Therein we begin to see the confrontational cautionary of Jeremiah 20:3. Even allowing for the slim possibility that Pashhur or his spiritual heirs enter that office of oversight and holy, shepherding zeal with the right heart, there is every chance of corrupted motives and lost discernment thereafter.
Having accessed anger towards someone who would speak against the religious status quo, that anger, that blazing emotion will not be an instrument Pashhur can so easily put down and enjoy fellowship with the Lord – if in his case he ever did.
By the authoritative obstreperousness of Jeremiah as God's real prophet, Pashhur is to BECOME that reaction he embodies. Anger and condemnation channeled toward the mere possibility that Jeremiah might be used of the Lord is to so own Pashhur that it will rename him. The admonition be angry and sin not which James spells out in the New Testament and which the Old Testament often exemplifies is no longer possible for him to live out.
How often have we who are spiritual been there? How honestly can we reflect that we would still be indignation's renamed, ever-prickly hostage if the Lord did not intervene? Having seen that which might be legitimately off-key in the Lord's house, we by degrees appoint and anoint ourselves the governor of what goes on there.
Maybe men defer to us by title, and maybe not. For the entrapment of the spirit, it hardly matters. Indignation, even begun for the right reasons, is highly addictive and begins to color our sense of identity and how we see brothers and sisters in the covenant community.
Our mothers might have been teasing when they told us that our faces would freeze in the scowl we momentarily assumed toward a family member, but there is no jest in the Jeremiah 20:3 equivalent.
Oh, introvert, we don't escape. Oh, he or she employing sulking more often than shackles toward Pashhur's end, we are in at least as much danger. The sulker too, unlike the peacemaker, connects Matthew Sink, engages in conflict. Sink reminds us such poison pride is neither hidden nor contained. "Someone who sulks engages," he says, "but they WEAR it."
Are you loath as I am to wear unwashed the contents of your heart toward a brother or sister who might be in error, or who might be used of God to disrupt un-biblical assumptions? Only the Lord can convict and cleanse that deeply. Only He can reach down to our visceral reactions and distinguish that which would defend His unrivaled glory from that which covers pride of position with a theological veneer.
Blessed are we, Christian, that Christ has named us once and for all, that ours by His verdict is the white stone and the royal priesthood. Undo indignation may pass over, it may infest, but it will never own us. It will never compete against the joy of the Lord and win. Why, then, give it quarter for another instant?
“Lord, my anger is indeed unlike yours," confesses Tim Keller in Songs of Jesus. "May your Spirit purify me so my anger is not triggered by my hurt ego as much as by real injustice and evil, and so that it does not remain in me to harden and poison my joy but readily gives way to compassion."
Our plea for this intervention is all the more earnest when we see the inverse process in Jeremiah 20:3. We are perhaps disadvantaged by dramatic irony as we consider Pashhur in the run-up to this verse. We know the rotten culture which positioned him in spiritual authority, and if we have read this section of Scripture before, we know his fate. Therefore, reading backward, we are less likely to be convicted by his plight.
Pause and reconsider more broadly. There is a place for human responsibility for what goes on in the Lord's house, both under the old covenant and the new. Aaron's sons were struck down for offering strange fire there. Even after the Holy Spirit indwells the individual believer and destines him or her for royal priesthood, Paul insists on enforced orderliness in worship and reminds us that the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet.
So Pashhur has righteous ancestors and descendents. There is a place for questioning the prophetic Word from the Lord. There is a place for indignation at its indulgent, ego-centered abuse by those who would disrupt the service and tell us that they and not the established authorities they are interrupting speak for the Lord. Questions ought to be asked, although one might hope for Pashhurs who are more in touch with the Lord themselves and much less quick to resort to slaps and irons as their default correctives.
Therein we begin to see the confrontational cautionary of Jeremiah 20:3. Even allowing for the slim possibility that Pashhur or his spiritual heirs enter that office of oversight and holy, shepherding zeal with the right heart, there is every chance of corrupted motives and lost discernment thereafter.
Having accessed anger towards someone who would speak against the religious status quo, that anger, that blazing emotion will not be an instrument Pashhur can so easily put down and enjoy fellowship with the Lord – if in his case he ever did.
By the authoritative obstreperousness of Jeremiah as God's real prophet, Pashhur is to BECOME that reaction he embodies. Anger and condemnation channeled toward the mere possibility that Jeremiah might be used of the Lord is to so own Pashhur that it will rename him. The admonition be angry and sin not which James spells out in the New Testament and which the Old Testament often exemplifies is no longer possible for him to live out.
How often have we who are spiritual been there? How honestly can we reflect that we would still be indignation's renamed, ever-prickly hostage if the Lord did not intervene? Having seen that which might be legitimately off-key in the Lord's house, we by degrees appoint and anoint ourselves the governor of what goes on there.
Maybe men defer to us by title, and maybe not. For the entrapment of the spirit, it hardly matters. Indignation, even begun for the right reasons, is highly addictive and begins to color our sense of identity and how we see brothers and sisters in the covenant community.
Our mothers might have been teasing when they told us that our faces would freeze in the scowl we momentarily assumed toward a family member, but there is no jest in the Jeremiah 20:3 equivalent.
Oh, introvert, we don't escape. Oh, he or she employing sulking more often than shackles toward Pashhur's end, we are in at least as much danger. The sulker too, unlike the peacemaker, connects Matthew Sink, engages in conflict. Sink reminds us such poison pride is neither hidden nor contained. "Someone who sulks engages," he says, "but they WEAR it."
Are you loath as I am to wear unwashed the contents of your heart toward a brother or sister who might be in error, or who might be used of God to disrupt un-biblical assumptions? Only the Lord can convict and cleanse that deeply. Only He can reach down to our visceral reactions and distinguish that which would defend His unrivaled glory from that which covers pride of position with a theological veneer.
Blessed are we, Christian, that Christ has named us once and for all, that ours by His verdict is the white stone and the royal priesthood. Undo indignation may pass over, it may infest, but it will never own us. It will never compete against the joy of the Lord and win. Why, then, give it quarter for another instant?
"Indignation...is highly addictive and begins to color our sense of identity and how we see brothers and sisters in the covenant community."
ReplyDeleteI have both seen and lived this reality. I have seen men and women, so worn down from decades of ministry, that they have twisted the haunting words of 3:11-18 into a condemnatory and outward prophecy, forgetting their own warped nature. The cycle self-perpetuates and pain received becomes pain inflicted - hurt people hurt people. I have also seen this in finer areas of doctrine on two fronts.
The neophyte in any divisive area of theology will often become indignant at the possibility of others holding alternative view points. Conversely, the embattled warrior who has spent years debating the same point of unpopular theology just wants to rest from the fight.
In all of these cases it is the internalized indignation that leads to sin, whether it be seen through the tenacity of youthful belief or the curmudgeonry retort of the seasoned debater. When indignation becomes our garment, praise of Christ is nowhere to be found. That is because we are worshipping our own image rather than the creator who is blessed forever.