Jeremiah 26:16 – Culture As a Check on Our Passions
So the princes and all the people said to the priests and the prophets, “This man does not deserve to die. For he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.” Jeremiah 26:16, New King James Version
"We have no right to renounce all that is wrong in another person, place, or culture," distinguishes Pete Greig 's Dirty Glory, "until we have recognized all that is right, good, and useful."
Jeremiah 26:16 provides an intriguing example of God's grace expressed through other people, ostensibly less spiritual people. The protectors of the covenant, the priest and the prophets, are of one mind in their self-certainty to kill Jeremiah. They are, despite Jeremiah's warning, ready to bequeath his innocent blood to their heirs. Whom does God use to check such base passions clothed in religious righteousness? He uses the princes of the people to give perspective.
Comparatively, they're not the Bible experts. Yet, the God Who disturbed sleep of pharaohs to check the wholesale advance of depravity in a culture can move whom He will to confront one more wrong action than He would permit. Can we who are spiritual pause long enough to see grace and mercy in this, to look within our hearts to recognize the residue of evil? Or, will we instantly initiate a contest of spiritual pedigree before we consider what the person or people who oppose our purposes are saying?
Yes, we can quote more verses, but we still might be wrong. Yes, we can connect our current desired action all the way back to Creation, site precedent with Abraham and Moses, but the same murderous flesh still has input in our actions. Recognizing this, we seek input from God's image-bearers, lost and saved, wherever He would grant it.
They are, to varying degrees, His art and His artists. As Peter Schjeldlhl of The New Yorker says of the literal vocation, "Artists assign themselves an evergreen social mission to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." So before we get too comfortable in our capacity as God's anointed to stifle or drown out whom we can, we might search our hearts and our environment for other voices.
Even within our individual sphere, the principle holds. A friend of mine admits that she has often been checked from the passions of a given moment not by someone with prophetic credentials or an apt verse, but by the reality that her children are watching what she does and will imitate it. This compounding effect, an idea of our unintended influence if we proceed, should move us closer to doing justly, to loving mercy, and to walking humbly with our God.
"We have no right to renounce all that is wrong in another person, place, or culture," distinguishes Pete Greig 's Dirty Glory, "until we have recognized all that is right, good, and useful."
Jeremiah 26:16 provides an intriguing example of God's grace expressed through other people, ostensibly less spiritual people. The protectors of the covenant, the priest and the prophets, are of one mind in their self-certainty to kill Jeremiah. They are, despite Jeremiah's warning, ready to bequeath his innocent blood to their heirs. Whom does God use to check such base passions clothed in religious righteousness? He uses the princes of the people to give perspective.
Comparatively, they're not the Bible experts. Yet, the God Who disturbed sleep of pharaohs to check the wholesale advance of depravity in a culture can move whom He will to confront one more wrong action than He would permit. Can we who are spiritual pause long enough to see grace and mercy in this, to look within our hearts to recognize the residue of evil? Or, will we instantly initiate a contest of spiritual pedigree before we consider what the person or people who oppose our purposes are saying?
Yes, we can quote more verses, but we still might be wrong. Yes, we can connect our current desired action all the way back to Creation, site precedent with Abraham and Moses, but the same murderous flesh still has input in our actions. Recognizing this, we seek input from God's image-bearers, lost and saved, wherever He would grant it.
They are, to varying degrees, His art and His artists. As Peter Schjeldlhl of The New Yorker says of the literal vocation, "Artists assign themselves an evergreen social mission to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." So before we get too comfortable in our capacity as God's anointed to stifle or drown out whom we can, we might search our hearts and our environment for other voices.
Even within our individual sphere, the principle holds. A friend of mine admits that she has often been checked from the passions of a given moment not by someone with prophetic credentials or an apt verse, but by the reality that her children are watching what she does and will imitate it. This compounding effect, an idea of our unintended influence if we proceed, should move us closer to doing justly, to loving mercy, and to walking humbly with our God.
Lord, help me.
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