The Time Is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage

by Joan D. Chittister

Most of all, they judge no one. They argue only for change, not for conviction. They attack no persons and assume that all of us operate out of good motives but that some of us are bogged down in destructive ideas. Finally, they do not despair. They know that God’s time is not our time. They understand that change comes in seasons.

It is not an attack on anyone; it is simply a declaration that there is something missing in the God-life we claim to live. It is the call to consciousness and conscience.

It is impossible to ask what prophetism demands of us now unless we look today square in the face and ask what is missing that we must attend to because no one else is doing it. Understanding the present—its ills and its sins—is of the essence of a prophetic spiritual life.

Irresponsible affluence and egregious corporate greed, xenophobia, and malicious militarism anesthetize the modern mind as well. What would it take for religious prophets of our own time to risk their own public approval to call upon the soul of the nation in a global world to see its obligations differently? Globally. And, if it is a spiritual mandate, why aren’t religious groups doing it?

To neglect to pursue the social sores of our own time, to omit taking these kinds of public steps in a world of growing populations and evermore creeping destitution, and yet to go on declaring ourselves to be spiritual people who are “protectors of the poor” has got to be spiritual game playing. Jesus goes on asking every generation unremittingly, “And you, what will you do?” We cannot see injustice and say nothing, do nothing. Not if we are really to be authentically spiritual rather than simply pious actors in the game called “church.”

The truth is that institutions are important foundations of any society. But it is also correct to say that the prophets of every society are the watchdogs of its institutions. When the institutions lose their way and ignore their own reasons for existence, they become the problem rather than the solution to social ills. When governments balance their military budgets on the backs of women and children, unwittingly, perhaps, but truly nevertheless, they themselves become the oppressors of an unwary population. Then it is the prophet’s responsibility to sound the alarm.

What prophetic spirituality most demands is the strength to go against the very crowds that have formed you. The spiritual town crier begins to speak a language different from that of the surrounding society.

If the prophet is to be sustained through the long process preceding the rise of public concern for a problem already too long ignored, four elements cry out for attention. Only a strong spiritual life, good friends, distance from the issue, and laughter really bring balm to the heart and renewed strength to the soul.

At the same time, there is nothing prophetic about becoming what we say we hate. There is nothing godly in murder and mayhem, in doing damage to people and property, in bringing chaos and anarchy while we say we seek peace and justice. The prophet sets out to address an issue—not to annoy, irritate, and disgust the people whose attention is key.

The prophet is loud, clear, and nonviolent. There is nothing self-serving in the actions of the prophet. On the contrary, prophets almost always suffer loss of social status and an increase of personal rejection, not to mention the legal punishment of the governments they confront. They pay the social cost imposed by societies still blind to their own violence, yet unconscious of their own social sins. And they do it to expose the systemic roots of the violence they confront.

And therein lies the problem. Prophetic spirituality is not a badge to go looking for self-satisfaction if what you mean by self-satisfaction is either success or status.

To engage in a discussion about what we do not intend to alter is itself a tacit admission that there is something worth dealing with here. And we can’t have that. So everyone turns away, pretends not to hear the question or to see a problem or to consider a question worthy of attention.

People who engage in these issues, who advocate for these changes, who open these discussions, feel the resistance immediately. The cry in every case is a simple one, basic to the faith, we say, but earthshaking nevertheless: Scripture tells us, “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me.”

Being right, the prophet must learn, is not enough to justify being insensitive. Nor is it effective. In the end, the tensions remain, the people on both sides of the divide feel rejected and the Word of God becomes a bludgeon rather than a blessing.

There are two basic facts that undergird the prophetic process: The first is that the prophetic message never really disappears. Issues remain until they are resolved, however many years or lifetimes that may take. The second is that people grow slowly.

Prophecy is a matter of dialogue, of education, of process, of patience. Not force. The message grows on us. And the soul grows, too, it seems, but only an inch at a time.

To raise a voice in prophetic announcement that God is doing something new again is not a vocation for the weak and the fearful, the unconscious and the uncommitted. It is not a vocation that dodges criticism by being sure to do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

What people do not understand they tend to disregard; what they understand but do not like, they tend to disparage. Neither group makes much of an effort to examine either the ideas or the circumstances that underlie new ideas. It is a commonplace of human history.

As Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “To vilify the great man is the readiest way little people can themselves attain greatness.”

Trust those whose heart has been formed in the scriptures and whose sincere commitment is to the coming of the Reign of God.

Really? Narrow, exclusivist view - don't trust non-Christians or secular folks with integrity?

In fact, if anything diminishes the power of the prophetic statement, it is a prophetic statement that is wrong about an important issue. Not correct. Not thought out. Not presented carefully—and honestly. The prophet does not come to condemn those who think differently about a thing; the prophet comes to warn, to persuade, to enlighten.

Ironic given the paragraph above.

Prophetic communities do a great deal more than pray. They study; they teach; they organize others; they add something of the things of God to the situation.

No, as time went by, the spiritual path came to be more and more about us: our salvation, our public identity, our eternal rewards, our very special, very safe institutional ministries. Gone were the grubby and the outcast around us, gone were the forgotten or forsaken. These kind, we figured, should do it for themselves. After all, we had.