We should instead understand the prophetic as the calling
out of injustice, the willingness to confront not only the abuses of
the powerful but our own complicity. To speak prophetically requires us
first to see honestly — both how our world is structured by
illegitimate authority that causes suffering beyond the telling, and
how we who live in the privileged parts of the world are implicated in
that suffering. In that same letter, Marx went on to discuss the need
for this kind of “ruthless criticism”:
But, if constructing
the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it
is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am
referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in
the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the
sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that
be.
To speak prophetically is to refuse to shrink from what
we discover about the injustice of the world. It is to name the wars of
empire as unjust; to name an economic system that leaves half the world
in abject poverty as unjust; to name the dominance of men, of
heterosexuals, of white people as unjust. And it is to name the human
destruction of Creation as the most profound human crime in our time on
this planet. At the same time, to speak prophetically is to refuse to
shrink from our own place in these systems. We must confront the powers
that be, and ourselves.
The basics of the prophetic
What can we say about this task of spea king in the prophetic voice? The prophets of the Old Testament offer some guidance.
First, let us remember that the prophets did not see themselves as
having special status, but rather were ordinary people. When the king
’s priest confronted Amos for naming the injustice of his day, Amazi’ah
called Amos a “seer” and commanded him to pack his bags and head to
Judah and “never again prophesy at Bethel , for it is the king ’s
sanctuary, and it is a temple of the king dom.” Amos rejected the
label:
[14] Then Amos answered Amazi’ah, “I am no prophet,
nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore
trees,
[15] and the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel .”
[Amos 7:14-15]
Nor did the prophets seek out their calling. Jeremiah told God he did
not know how to speak, claiming to be only a youth. God didn’t buy the
excuse:
[7] But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you you shall go,
and whatever I command you you shall speak.
[8] Be not afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.”
[9] Then the LORD put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD
said to me, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
[10] See, I have set you this day over nations and over king doms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
[Jer. 1:7-10]
Nor was it typically much fun to fill the role of a prophet. On this, Jeremiah was blunt:
[9] Concerning the prophets:
My heart is broken within me,
all my bones shake;
I am like a drunken man,
like a man overcome by wine,
because of the LORD
and because of his holy words.
[Jer. 23:9]
And, finally, the Old Testament reminds us that to speak prophetically
involves more than just articulating abstract principles which are
relatively easy to proclaim. For example, these inspiring words from
Micah are quoted often:
[8] He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
[Mic. 6:8]
That is an eloquent way to summarize our core obligations, but at that
level of generality it is one that virtually all would endorse. Cite
that verse and everyone will nod approvingly. But remember that Micah
also was calling out the injustice around him, often in harsh terms:
[12] Your rich men are full of violence;
your inhabitants speak lies,
and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
[13] Therefore I have begun to smite you,
ma king you desolate because of your sins.
[14] You shall eat, but not be satisfied,
and there shall be hunger in your inward parts;
you shall put away, but not save,
and what you save I will give to the sword.
[15] You shall sow, but not reap;
you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil;
you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.
[Mic. 6:12-15]
And:
[2] The godly man has perished from the earth,
and there is none upright among men;
they all lie in wait for blood,
and each hunts his brother with a net.
[3] Their hands are upon what is evil, to do it diligently;
the prince and the judge ask for a bribe,
and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul;
thus they weave it together.
[4] The best of them is like a brier,
the most upright of them a thorn hedge.
The day of their watchmen, of their punishment, has come;
now their confusion is at hand.
[Mic. 7:2-4]
To speak with such passion requires a clarity in our own hearts, minds,
and souls. To speak with that clarity to others requires that we have
first examined our own lives. When we call out others, they typically
ask us — and rightfully so — whether we have asked the same questions
of ourselves. When we have asked and answered for ourselves, then we
can find the courage to speak in that prophetic voice, knowing that we
have confronted those questions and are willing to struggle with our
own failures.
Our task is not to shine the light on others, but to shine the light
through ourselves onto that which is unjust in the world. When we have
been honest with ourselves, that light gains intensity and focus as it
passes through us. If we have turned away from a ruthless criticism of
ourselves, that light will never reach the world and will illuminate
nothing but our own limitations and fears.
Risk assessment
That process is not easy, especially in a culture that offers those of
us who are privileged a steady stream of rewards for suppressing these
thoughts and not facing these struggles. It is easy to turn away from
injustice and turn to supermarkets with endless shelves of food, to
glasses overflowing with wine, to television’s stories that lull us to
sleep on those nights when food and drink have not erased completely
our troubling thoughts of the world.
It’s also not easy to speak prophetically because in unjust systems the
people who carry out the system’s orders usually don’t seem to be bad
people. The corporate CEO who throws workers out of their jobs to
increase profits also is a great softball coach on the weekends. The
colonel who orders cluster bombs dropped in civilian areas, ensuring
that children will die for years to come, also is a caring parent. The
real es tate developer who destroys habitat to put up McMansions also
keeps a lovely garden at home. And all of them, no doubt, contribute
generously to their churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples. Many of
us, in fact, do jobs that we know contribute to the unjust distribution
of resources and the steady erosion of the planet’s ability to sustain
life. I don’t exempt myself from this; I work at the University of
Texas at Austin , where — no matter how much critical material I teach
in my courses — I help legitimate an ideological factory system that
certifies students to go off in the world and fire those workers, drop
those bombs, and destroy that habitat.
So how are we to find the strength to speak in the prophetic voice? The
answer is in the collective. Unless one is truly a saint, it is
difficult to resist all the temptations and confront self and others
without support. We think of prophets as lonely figures who have
stepped out, or been cast out, of a society for spea king the truth
bluntly. But even if an occasional idiosyncratic figure can speak from
such a solitary place, most of us cannot endure that kind of isolation.
So, we must speak prophetically together, not in unison or in lockstep
— spea king prophetically means spea king from one’s own heart, which
will mean our voices are always distinctive — but in solidarity.
But even when we are surrounded by those who share our concerns for the
world and for each other, there are always risks if we are to take up
this role. To claim the prophetic voice that is in each of us, we have
to assess those risks so that we can deal with them sensibly. Here I
want to borrow from an exercise developed by Allan G. Johnson.[4] At a
conference for activists wor king on issues around racial justice,
Johnson posed three questions about risk. My slightly modified version
of his list is:
1. What are the risks you would have to take (or have taken) if you
actively work for social justice in a way that is self-critical and
challenges powerful institutions and people?
2. What are the risks if you don’t do that work?
3. If you take the risks in #1, in order to survive and thrive what do you need from:
· yourself
· others
· institutions and organizations (public and private)
When people with relatively high levels of privilege do not make a
conscious attempt to assess accurately these things, we tend to
overestimate the risks of acting and underestimate the risks of not
acting. In other words, privilege makes it easy to avoid our
responsibilities. So, it’s important for us to consider these questions
carefully, not just for what we learn about ourselves but to help us in
reaching out to others. We need support, and others need us to support
them, to understand the risks they face. We need each other to
encourage us to take risks.
The prophetic path to love
We live in a society that appears to be awash in political talk and
religious activity. But, in fact, we live in a deeply depoliticized
society, full of political chatter on cable TV but lac king spaces in
which we can have meaningful discussions about how to address problems
that politicians often ignore. We live in a largely soulless culture in
which megachurches flourish, but many of us search for something beyond
doctrine and dogma to help us answer questions that preachers often
ignore. We live in a world in which politics is too often little more
than public spectacle and religion is too easily cordoned off as a
private matter.
In such a society, we don’t need more politicians who avoid the
pressing problems that have no apparent solutions. We don’t need more
preachers afraid of the questions that go beyond the available answers.
And we don’t need a prophet. We need prophets, ordinary people like us
who are willing to tap into the prophetic voice that I believe is
within us all.
To speak in that voice is not to claim exclusive insight or definitive
knowledge; it is not to speak arrogantly. To speak in the prophetic
voice is not to proclaim the truth self-righteously but to claim our
rightful place in the collective struggle to understand the truth,
which we do in order to deepen our capacity to love. This we should
never forget: We seek the prophetic voice within us to allow us to love
more fully, something that Paul understood. When we call out injustice,
when we find the courage to speak truths in a fallen world, it can be
easy to be consumed by our anger and our grief, to lose track of that
love. I know this, painfully, from experience.
So, as we go forward to find the courage to speak prophetically, we
should hold onto these words from Paul’s first letter to the
Corinthians:
[2] And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and
all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but
have not love, I am nothing.
[1Cor. 13: 2]
Let us seek knowledge. Pray that we stay strong in our faith in each
other, that we help each other find the courage to speak prophetically.
But, more than anything, let us remember to keep our hearts open so
that we do not lose the capacity to love, always more. Let us leave
here today ta king seriously — as if our lives depended on it — a
question posed in song by one among us who regularly dares to speak in
the prophetic voice, Michael Franti:
“Is it Love enough yeah, Love enough yeah, Love enough yeah
Or could you love some more?”[5]
Michael Franti & Spearhead - Is Love Enough?
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book is Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). Jensen is also the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books); and Writing Dissent: Ta king Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online
[1] Wes Jackson, “Toward an Ignorance-Based Worldview,”
The Land Report, Spring 2005, pp. 14-16.
[2] For more on this, see my 2003 interview with Wes Jackson,
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/wesjackson.htm.
[3] Karl Marx, letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm
[4] Johnson has written two widely used texts about power and privilege:
The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, rev. ed. ( Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2005); and
Privilege, Power, and Difference, 2nd ed. ( New York : McGraw-Hill, 2005). For more information, see
http://www.agjohnson.us/
[5]
Michael Franti and Spearhead, “Is Love Enough?” from the 2006 CD “Yell
Fire!” That question also runs throughout Franti’s video documenting
his trip to Iraq , Palestine , and Israel , “I Know I’m Not Alone,”
http://www.iknowimnotalone.com/
Writings 
It may be the fate of humans always to believe that we live at the most important time in history, that our moment is the decisive moment. But even factoring in this tendency toward collective self-centeredness, it is difficult to ignore that today we face multiple crises — economic, political, cultural, and, most crucially, ecological — which have the potential to make ongoing life on the scale we know it impossible. Predictions about the specifics of the trajectory are beyond our capabilities, but we can know — if we choose to know — that we must solve problems for which there are no apparent solutions and face “questions that go beyond the available answers,” to borrow Wes Jackson’s phrase.[1] These threats have been building for the past 10,000 years, intensifying in the past two centuries to levels that only the foolhardy would ignore. The bills for the two most destructive revolutions in human history — the agricultural and industrial revolutions — are coming due, sooner than we think.[2] 
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