Prophets and God

Prophets were not God’s first choice.

God created the earth. Then he reached into the earth and formed man from the dust then he leaned in to breathe the spirit or breath of life into the still unfinished man from thence he took a rib and finished man with his complimentary component, woman.

God spent time daily walking and talking with man. Worship and communication were face-to-face. They were intimate and personal experiences. Both were informal and comfortable. God’s first choice was to deal directly with his people; i.e., face to face.

Sin brought the collateral damage of renewed chaos: disruption, destruction and decay as man was estranged from God.

Reconciliation was itself jagged with the broken, fallen man. Man’s fall has meant his relations ever since have been crippled. Man’s relationship with God became an arms-length-ritualized relational dance. Altar, sacrifice, accompanied by fire, death, and ego-defense mechanisms changes worship from a walk and talk to liturgy with confession and sound-bites of praise and worship and a stumbling, halting, gait replace an easy walk with God.

At one time God dealt directly with his people. He dealt directly with man. Then after the fall woman was subjected to man and God spoke to the primarily to the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but he also still occasionally spoke to the sons, like Joseph, and to women -- daughters and sisters like Miriam and Deborah.

But the people remained fearful of God as they had been at Sinai when they cried out and sent Moses to mediate between them and God.

Later they rejected God’s leadership saying that they wanted a king like the nations around them.

So God told Samuel, then his judge and prophet to the people, they have not rejected you, but me. He went on to tell Samuel to find and anoint Israel's first king, Saul.

Eventually Israel was plagued both with ungodly Kings and false prophets. However, it is the prophet that I wish to focus on herein.

In the beginning every man and woman were in relationship with God and there was no need for prophets. Each person heard directly from God. The fact that they walked and talked in the cool of the day might even suggest the latter practice of God continuing to speak to his people in their dreams and night closed in.

Cain killed able over issues involving their priestly service: sacrifice, worship, and hearing and heeding God’s voice. In one sense then Cain also represents or foreshadows the office of the false prophet; holding forth as God’s word his own will, and wrongly enforcing it. He distorted, at the very least or ,perhaps, misrepresented, God’s desires and he acted in an evil manner as a result.

Jumping down the track we might consider the sorcerers or magicians who supported Pharaoh, a God, himself, among a panoply of Gods and Balaam, an acknowledged soothsayer. These along with a variety of other socially acceptable spokesmen for God(s) seemed to have made a practice of speaking well and or guiding their patrons and in Balaam’s case acted on-demand to curse the enemies of their patron. God, himself, challenging Balaam to act contrary to his pocketbook.

Additionally, it is of serious interest to me that Balaam on the one hand seems entirely comfortable with his communication with God. The point on contention between Balaam and God which the New Testament will further acknowledge is that Balaam was profit motivated.

In the story of the leprosy of Naaman, a military commander, who came from a powerful, neighboring enemy state to seek healing from the prophet Elisha is informative (II Kgs. 5). Naaman presumes that he should offer considerable wealth to the prophet in order to secure this blessing. But the prophet of God waved that off. However, within his ministry staff was Gehazi who saw the opportunity to profit from the man’s willingness to pay and as a result was cursed by the prophet and as a reward was, himself, leprosy stricken. This certainly instructs us that the true prophet of God is not a hireling and does not speak or act from a profit motive.

Meanwhile Balaam is nonetheless in a clear communication loop with God. Our God who can and has used a star to guide wise men to the crib of the messiah, and who has used an ass to correct a profit driven soothsayer to speak truly as God directs can also use the fallen perverted soothsayer to do his bidding when he so desires.

God did not in the beginning chose intermediaries through which to speak to mankind. In the last days the prophet Joel foresaw the coming of a return to God dealing directly with his people as he had in the garden.

Therefore we who are his children need to learn to listen for his voice. Even an ass can hear it!

When Caring Becomes Dysfunctional

Caring behavior which acts to enable an addiction is also commonly known as codependency.

In fact this sick form of caring is not truly for the benefit of the “needy.”

It is actually done so as to make the caregiver feel better, more noble, or even loved. In this way caring can be used to create an indebtedness of good feeling toward the caregiver. It is a form of gaining power and control over the needy.

From Thence did Codependency Come?

Although the behavior is ancient the term, "co-dependent", is a term which was originally associated with co-alcoholic behavior. It was documented in the late 1970s in order to help families and spouses of individuals with alcohol and drug problems. It was thought that one of the partners, often times a non-user, was co-addicted in some inorganic way. Over time the addiction was found not to be directly related to alcohol at all.

The concept was initially directed at family members, especially wives, who often "interfered" with the alcoholic’s recovery thus enabling their addiction. It was suggested that this partner’s behavior made it easier for the addict to continue their unacceptable behavior.

Codependency seems to arise from the co-addicted (but dry) partner’s impaired self-esteem. On the one-hand, the co-addicted partner is not personally under the influence of the substance, but they are addicted to their partner’s need for a rescuer. He or she needs to be needed. This is paramount. Therefore they manipulate everyone and especially the addicted “loved one” so that the codependent partner can go on “caring” for them. In this way the co-addicted (but dry) partners can gain/maintain their own sense of self worth which arises from meeting their addict partner’s perverse needs.

The codependent partner is manipulative because they are typically unable to ask directly for love. Instead they seek to obtain it by ingratiating their partner to them. They care for their partner in ways that more assertive persons would not. Their passive-aggressive manipulation passes seductively for caring. In a type of quid-pro-quo arrangement their partner having been the recipient of extreme/sacrificial/heroic care will now owe love and care back to them.

Accountability for our own happiness can be a scary thing. Codependency allows one to relinquish responsibility for our frustrating lifestyles.

Codependency applied to church life

In the church world codependents are often disciple-makers (helpers or rescuers). They act as the guru or teacher does who leads their younger disciples into the way. They are always teaching. What they teach does not truly free their disciples from their enslavement. For instance proverbial legalism keeps a high standard before the disciple and condemns them thoroughly when they fall short, but they never offer the freedom that grace does. Legalism is just one way which this captivity is continued. All the while the co-dependent person tries to appear that they have the inside information and have accomplished the lifestyle and therefore are a suitable teacher and guide. The New Testament describes both Pharisee and Sadducee in terms that mean both we unworthy leaders and failed to guide Israel into real truth and relationship with God.

Balaam's Ass: is a Jenny.

Let me begin with a little background.

Talking animals:

It is common for animals to talk to humans in folklore. The bible, however, does not typically portray talking animals. In fact only two do so. The first was the serpent that tempted the woman in the Garden of Eden. The second was Balaam’s ass.

What kind of animal:

While older translations referred to Balaam’s animal as an ass modern speech translations seem to prefer the term donkey. The modern scientific name for this latter critter is: Equus asinus.

Jack or Jenny?

Scripture refers to Balaam’s donkey in the feminine gender: making his donkey a Jenny and not a Jack. So it was female.

Animal Traits:

Students of animal behavior have noted that certain animals like cattle are without depth perception and are therefore extremely nervous about ledges which also accounts for their unwillingness to cross a cattle guard. Donkeys in comparison with horses are slower and less powerful, but they are extremely intelligent animals. Donkeys are exceptionally strong, patient, and persistent animals and make excellent pack animals. Horses are much more high strung, i.e. in times of panic or danger they will run away, donkeys, however, will simply freeze when frightened. Donkeys also have a strong sense of survival and if they deem something as dangerous they simply won’t do it, hence they don’t make steeplechasers.

What makes this Story and Animal Important?

Balaam was a hired gun type of soothsayer. Soothsayers were in the entourage of the wealthy. They never spoke against their patrons (you do not bite the hand that feeds you). They instead prophesied against the foes of their patron. In this case Balaam was being hired by a paranoid King Balak to curse Israel.

Balaam surprises us because he is in contact with God who speaks to him in a dream. Balaam is not shocked so either he has had some on-going relationship with God or he is an equal opportunity prophet open for business with any and all higher powers, or both. Clearly Balaam is not dedicated to God. In the closing books of the New Testament it is clear that his character was thought to be crooked. He was a wheeler-and-dealer using Spiritual Formation as his gig.

The ass had never spoken before and had no record of ever having spoken again. Her behaviorial track record to which Balaam gives ascent was as a loyal, dedicated, obedient, hard working beast of burden.

The only reason she breaks her silence is she is empowered by God to do so. What she says seems to arise to a great degree from her own character. Surely she warns Balaam for his life, but she does even that in a clearly self-serving context; protecting herself and making a plea for her own fair-treatment. In this there is also a self-righteousness quality.

My take-away:

I am not a “dumb animal” albeit in this moment in her story neither was Jenny. On the other hand, scripture states that the righteous man has regard for the life of his beast. So, too, I want to be a man of Godly compassion for all of God’s creatures and creation.

I am not female. I do, however, owe it to both Jenny and the other half to try to be more sensitive to a female worldview when I speak in her voice.

I do not want to be self-righteous nor to sound self-righteous. I am reminded that when we read that passage about the Pharisee, you know, the one that stood in the temple and prayed his haughty prayer - thanking God that he was not like this publican, etc.... that we are very often guilty in that same moment of “thanking God that we are not like that Pharisee – and in doing so become exactly what we despise. Lord help me be more humble and aware of my sin.

I do not want to be self-serving however I think that might well be at least somewhat unavoidable. I learned along time ago that we all say, preach, and teach what we want to hear and that which edifies ourselves for the most part. I must accept that I am guilty of that too.

If someone has already said what I am saying then I want to say something else and let their message be enough. I do not need to have nor to air an opinion on every topic – just to see myself in print.

I do not want to be harsh, strident, nor merely alarmist. Jenny did not speak until the last minute, albeit in this case the timing must have been God’s, duh. Perhaps, I might speak best when God has seemed to open a door for me, too. Otherwise like Jenny I should remain quiet/mute.

Thanks for letting me share. I will try to use this as a guide for myself..

In the name of Balaam’s Ass, Jenny