FLIMSY WALLS AND SMOOTH-TALKING PROPHETS

by Adam Harbinson

In Old Testament days people built walls around their towns and cities for defence. They had to be strong walls, but the prophet Ezekiel warned the Hebrew people that their walls were flimsy, in fact they were worse than flimsy, for they had been white-washed to cover the cracks, so they provided a false sense of security. The Hebrews were always vulnerable to attack by their enemies, but the silver-tongued false prophets white-washed their walls, they told them everything would be alright.  

Ezekiel spoke the truth. He told them to rely on the one whom King David described as a ‘Strong Tower,’ a God who saves and defends, but they preferred to trust their own efforts, but they didn’t want to hear.

I listened to a minister I know on radio a while ago, a modern-day Ezekiel. He said that major changes must be made in the church if it hopes to deliver the word that people need to hear, rather than the word they want to hear. He said that God is relevant and exciting, but he’s often obscured behind meaningless religious rituals. I thought to myself, you’re in for a roasting my friend, and sure enough when I spoke to him a few days later he’d already been summoned by his elders – the false prophets with their brushes and tins of whitewash demanding that he explain himself.

The message we want to hear is that if we’re good people, generous, righteous and kind, then God will be pleased with us, and will love us, and will keep us safe. But the message we need to hear is quite different. God isn’t impressed by our feeble attempts to appease him. There’s nothing we can do to make him love us more, and there’s nothing we can do to make him love us less.

So why do we insist on building our flimsy walls of good works and pious living? Because it’s not easy to swim against the current of our denominational tradition. Here’s an example. I’ve a friend who’s the minister of a church in County Armagh. We’ve enjoyed many a theological debate over the years and I’ve learned a lot from him. There was one occasion when we stumbled on one of his denomination’s doctrines that’s directly challenged by the teachings of Paul – we both acknowledged that, there was no disagreement, but he was heading for a major dilemma: he had seen something in the Bible that threw doubt on his denominational position. I offered to lend him a book that would clarify the point, but he said, ‘No thanks Adam, I’ll not bother, I’m way behind with my reading schedule.’ And that was the end of it.

I find that scary. Here was an opportunity for him to test his theological position against unambiguous scripture, and he chickened out. He preferred to teach his flock an almost-truth rather than risk rocking his denominational boat. Why is that? Because if his people knew how free they were from man-made rules he’d lose control of them and they mightn’t come back – then where would he be?

A tad cynical? Maybe, but Martin Luther discovered the same Scripture five hundred years ago, the difference is that he chose truth and rejected the lie. The result was the Reformation that changed the world forever. And the Scripture? – ‘The righteous shall live by faith,’ nothing to do with rules or conforming or being good. It’s faith from start to finish.