Hong Kong may well have been the ignition, but the protests have been spreading to Iraq and Lebanon (while I was there for meetings!), Bolivia and Chile, Haiti and Catalonia – and beyond. The causes are no great surprise and seem always to circle back, at some point, to inequalities among people in society and corruption among people in power. The rage is burning.

At the same time, in (mostly) other parts of the world, another phenomenon is happening. It is more quiet. It is less visible. Whistle-blowers are at work. The dictionary describes them as people ‘who inform on a person or an organization regarded as engaging in an unlawful or immoral activity’. President Trump, for example, is in deep yoghurt because a whistle-blower is speaking out on his involvement in the Ukraine. Whistle-blowers expose lies. Whistle-blowers speak truth to power. They subvert big corporations and governments. It takes a lot of courage and sparks a lot of controversy. Are they heroes – or traitors? Edward Snowden has been the face of whistle-blowing in recent years, even inspiring a song:

There is a long tradition of protesting and whistle-blowing, even a biblical tradition.

I save descriptions of the Old Testament prophet (please, send me more!):
the most forceful revelation of God’s personality (Yancey)
covenant enforcement mediators (Fee & Stuart)
counter-cultural trouble-makers (Longman)
God’s prosecuting attorneys (Carter, Duvall, Hayes)
witnesses to the power, pain, purpose & presence of God in human affairs (Brueggemann)
exegetes of existence from a divine perspective (Heschel)

And what about one more?!
God’s protestors and whistle-blowers

Tomorrow I start teaching another module on preaching at a graduate school here in the majority world.  At some point I will once again bear witness to my passion for preaching from the Old Testament. And once again I will survey the class and be disappointed by how little preaching they have heard/done from the Old Testament. I despair.

When I look into our world and look deep into peoples’ lives and see the trauma that they encounter, I am amazed that pastors and preachers today do not spend more time opening up the wisdom, the poetry and the prophets of the Old Testament. I can think of no better place in the Bible to begin in order to grab peoples’ ears, echo peoples’ hearts, resource peoples’ lips and strengthen peoples’ walk – and from there, lead them to Jesus.

Actually, that was me. I wrote that more than ten years ago. I still believe it. The Wisdom. The Poetry. The Prophets … or, the sage, the singer and the seer. There is no better way to engage a world of protest and whistle-blowing, than with theocentric (God-at-the-centre), christotelic (Christ-as-the-goal) preaching from these parts of the Old Testament … and then to see where the Spirit of God leads us from there.

One more thing…
There is a common denominator in these protests. The youth are front and centre. Interestingly, there is also a common denominator in the church outside the majority world. The youth are back and marginal.  You want to see young people back at the heart of your church communities? You want to do something about losing a generation? Don’t run from the Bible, thinking it has been tried and found wanting … run toward the Bible because it’s truth is what is wanted and has not been tried. In its pages, especially the sage-singer-seer pages, you will find words that will galvanise the younger generation.

nice chatting

Paul