Apparently I Might Be A False Prophet

I had this funny picture in my head of a freak-show barker shouting, "Come, See a Real Live Preacher".

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Apparently I Might Be A False Prophet

I might be, but I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you as more information becomes available

Recently I found out that I might be a false prophet.

I know! I was as surprised as anyone to hear it. I’ll tell you all about it in a moment, but first promise me that you will resist the urge to leave a comment reassuring me that I’m not a false prophet. I don’t need reassurance. I’m asking a serious question here.

I’m wondering if I AM a false prophet.

I know many of you are not particularly religious and are wondering what I'm talking about. You're not exactly sure what a false prophet is, but you've probably picked up on the idea that being one is not a good thing.

You see, back in the bible days there were men and women who spoke for God. They were called prophets, and the bible is jam-packed with stories about them. It would have been nice if God had just spoken for himself or herself, but that's not the way it worked. In the bible stories, God generally used people to spread the news, be it good or bad. Apparently this was some kind of team-building exercise for humanity.

The tricky thing was trying to figure out who was really speaking for God and who was a false prophet. And it didn't help matters that false prophets were often slick and confident and smart and that they said exactly the sort of things that everyone wanted to hear. Real prophets, on the other hand, tended to be rather anti-social characters who said things that no one wanted to hear.

All of this led to quite a bit of confusion and irritation through the years as people tried to figure out who was and who was not speaking for God. In recent centuries, hoping to avoid a lot of the messiness, some Christians have been saying that God only speaks through the bible nowadays.

But of course, the bible is an extraordinarily long and difficult collection of books to read, and most of the people who jump right into it with no help only end up more confused than ever. And right away they start looking for a prophetic-type person to tell them what the bible is really saying, which of course leads us right back to the same problem.

If you ask me the whole business of speaking for God has become very confusing. Some people, mainly the religious sort, still hold to the old idea that God speaks through the bible and through people in one way or another, even though sorting that out can be very messy. Other people seem to have given up on that idea altogether and say that no one speaks for God. These people are left to form their own ideas about God, if they are inclined toward that sort of thing. And as you might expect, most of them create an idea of God that lines up best and easiest with what they hope might be true about the Creator of the Universe.

So now we live in a world where some people are still looking for prophets to tell them the truth about God, and others are determined that no one is going to tell them anything about God ever again.

This is the world in which you and I live. It is the world in which we are all trying our best to figure out if there is a God and what that God might want from us.

And I might be a false prophet in that world.

Which would suck.

I started wondering about this because I got an email from a guy who is absolutely convinced that I am indeed a false prophet.

That's weird, wild stuff, by the way, when someone accuses you of being a false prophet.

Many of you do not believe in prophets, true or otherwise, so I expect you would simply laugh this off and go about your business. But if you are a Christian and another Christian feels that you are a false prophet, you are honor-bound to hear him out and consider the possibility. At least you should do so if the person making the accusation is reasonable.

I'll say this for the guy. He was nice about it. Well, as nice as one can be when delivering that kind of news. I could tell he wasn't enjoying telling me I was a false prophet, and I appreciated that. Having been accused of being a false prophet a few times now, I can tell you that it's a lot easier to take when you can at least know that the person telling you isn't enjoying himself.

He said, "I cannot tell for certain whether you play the role of false prophet intentionally or not, but nonetheless, play the role you do."

This wasn't some dumb guy either. He was intelligent and sincere. He was very sad that I was a false prophet and worried about it. I could tell he was grieved, and that made me sad too, and a little scared. I think I would enjoy a conversation with this guy, but I don't know if he would be interested. Sometimes when Christians identify a bona fide false prophet they can be a little reluctant to socialize with him.

And who can blame them, really?

So anyway, after I had this whole email conversation with this guy, I got to thinking. How do I know I'm NOT a false prophet? And the truth is, I don't know.

Here are three things I do know.

One:
I know I am a minister, and I write here as a minister, albeit as an offbeat and rather unusual minister who cusses and calls himself Real Live Preacher. I often write about what we might call “spiritual things,” so I suppose it would be fair to say that I have taken something of a prophetic role for myself. And some people are certainly taking my words seriously.

That scares the hell out of me, by the way.

Two:
I know that I am being honest when I write about my search for spiritual truth. I do not intend harm. I really only intend to describe my own journey and do not necessarily wish to prescribe it for anyone else.

But of course that is exactly the sort of thing you might expect a false prophet to say, if he was any good at the business of being a false prophet. I expect all the really good false prophets would innocently proclaim that they have only the best of intentions. Moreover, I would expect them to be gentle and kind and very pleasant, all the better to lead you astray.

So I suppose, just to be safe, you ought to disregard point number two. If I were a false prophet, I’d probably be an excellent liar. Let’s just move on to number three.

Three:
I make the standard Christian claims about Jesus and how he died for our sins, and I read the bible and try to find the best and most responsible ways of applying its truths to my life. But some of my conclusions, drawn from the New Testament and my own experience, sound a little unusual, at least to people who have only been exposed to narrow slices of Christianity.

For example, I say that doubting God's existence is okay and perfectly acceptable within Christianity as long as the person doubting remains obedient and committed to the Christian path.

I also say that some parts of the bible have no connection to objective history. In short, I own up to the fact that some of the bible is myth. This doesn't bother me in the least since I understand myth to be a wonderful way for the Creator to communicate with a great number of people across a wide spectrum of cultures and over a vast amount of time. Archetype, baby! Remember that word. There are mysterious reasons why these stories mean so much to us.

And last, I say that some things in the bible reflect life in an ancient culture and have no business being crudely applied to our modern lives. I search the bible for universal truths and willingly accept the burden and responsibility to read it with scholarship and make those calls for myself.

The truth is, there is no other way to read the bible. You either admit that you read the bible critically and selectively, or you are lying to yourself and others.

As I understand it, it was these things and, of course, my potty mouth that caused this man to decide that I was a false prophet. And that brings me back to the statement I made in the very beginning. Perhaps I am a false prophet. I really don't know.

So okay.

I began with a difficult question, and here I am at the end with no clear answer and only more questions.

What if there was a false prophet in this world, but he thought he was doing and saying the right things all along? And what if he never really wanted to be a prophet at all, only somehow it happened that people were listening to what he said? What if he came to believe that someone needed to be saying something, so he was willing to give it a shot even though it scared him silly? And finally, what if he really loved God but was wrong about some things, and some people came to believe some wrong things because of him?

Do you think God would love and forgive that false prophet? Do you think God's Grace would cover the sins of his theology?

I hope so. I really, really hope so.