Why We Killed the Prophets

Why do people kill the prophets?  After all, we admire prophets; prophets are fascinating people. They are usually esteemed in retrospect.  They are spoken of as being courageous truthtellers.  Books are written, monuments erected to remember their words.  Yet, most prophets were persecuted and killed.

In the scriptures, Prophets were threatening figures who did what they could to change people at the root.  Prophets were called by God to speak words they themselves found dangerous. And, prophets were not part of the religious establishment.  In fact, they were usually quite critical of religious leadership and the way people disconnected religion from justice.  Maybe, the only real prophets are the biblical prophets.

Prophets were not pastors or rabbis hired by religious institutions to transmit the tradition.  A prophet was someone who spoke the truth.  Usually, a prophet gave his or her message in the most shocking language available because the goal was not to constantly comfort pew sitters with more and more forgiveness and “cheap grace.”  Prophets were out to wake people up from their stupor. The goal was to change people, to cause them to turn around, to live their lives another way.  The religious word is repentance.

But we have romanticized and domesticated prophets after their death. We made their disturbing radical words part of our bibles and thereby defanged them.  Look what’s happened to Jesus.  Whatever else he was about, he was a prophet.  In every gospel he gets in people’s faces, gets angry and argues with religious people, calls on folks to repent of their hypocrisy and false religion.  He cares about the poor, orphans and widows and uses shocking language to wake people up.  But if you go to most Christian Churches this Sunday, you will find a kind, loving, gracious, friendly Jesus palatable to the masses.  We take out all the juice from the message of the prophets and then wonder how worship services became boring.

And why were prophets killed?

Because they know who we were behind our disguises and masks.  They forcefully ask the terrible questions that silence us.  They get close and personal in our faces.  They won’t shut up.  They don’t care for tact. They are not religious diplomats, politicians or functionaries. They are out to change us, at the root. We honor them in retrospect but we would not have listened to them.  That’s why we kill the prophets.