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!

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

My Odessey to The Ass

I shared the scripture portion in an earlier post (Num. 22). Now I am telling you what Balaam’s Ass means to me.

Now I am over sixty years old and I look back across my years: I see that I spent almost all of my life learning, living, and promoting the unique, twisted doctrines of my heritage.

I have repented heretofore. I owe a great debt to all the others I sought to bring to my version of “the faith.” I have tried to say that elsewhere in my own voice and name.

Here I seek to tell you about Balaam’s Ass.

In my Bible training I found the story arresting, but even my brilliant teacher did not really unpack it for me. He did have a saying that has done me well. “God has a lot of unusual tools in his tool chest.” Amen.

As I entered into my late twenties it dawned upon me that most of the theology books I consulted were written by incredibly spiritual people of faith who were outside of my heritage.

I also slowly and repeatedly noticed that people I taught were often preloaded with respect for God and scripture.

I continued my own education as a nontraditional student, finding teachers with real faith and real truth and astounding insights at numerous turns in the road.

The importance of truth regardless of who spoke it brought me back again and again to Balaam’s ass. Even Balaam.

At one point, I chose as a personal research topic a study of the miraculous and its connection with false prophets in the Old Testament.

I was amazed to learn that God allowed false prophets the ability to work wonders and to speak “prophetically” even while they promoted their personal error. This was haunting to me. I concluded that numerous false prophets might well have been true prophets for God at times in their lives. Like Balaam.

Then I continued to suppose my heritage still was following important doctrinal truths which I was open to question but unable to see any loop-holes within.

Then I was given the tools and light dawned. I was nearly forty when that happened. It was during my last ministry tenure, too. Cracks of light were coming at me from a variety of ways, but the answers were being hammered out largely alone and within my study. This was fragile and filled with trial, error and self-doubt.

It was years before others too were publishing what I had come to see even if it was a fuzzy puzzle for me.

Today I recognize my heritage was a denomination while I grew up taught to think it was nondenominational.

I was taught that we were a unity movement, and certainly there had been some historic moments when that is how we had seemed to behave. However, many of those previous events were combative debates and therefore illusions of unity efforts.

I was not taught peacemaking but holy war!

In fact, my heritage has splintered repeatedly (80 plus times) and seems not to have the tools for any repair or healing with the smallest exceptions. We were sectarian and no unity movement in point of fact. In fact those spun-off have been even more hard-bitten, bitter sects. Strangely one of the more unity-driven prophets from among came from one of these sub-groups rather than the mainline. In the mid-seventies one of our foremost leaders remarked in an assembly that our congregations “ought to take out full page ads apologizing for how we had behaved.” I eventually wanted to leave my church with its baggage.

Truth had always been much revered by my forebearers and rightly so. Strangely we seemed like ancient Israel to kill our own prophets that arose from among us.

As a young adult I tried to be a minister of the gospel and after several churches I decided that my church punished ministers for seeking to better learn and teach challenging truth.

Today that feeling has been replaced with a clearer understanding – yes it was true. Nevertheless, some ministers were able to dance the dance in that tension better than others. Some were somehow able to maintain their livelihood as ministers and grow and challenge and change the church somewhat all at the same time. Not me.

Over-time I learned that my truth was based in the wrong-headed assumptions. Our hermeneutics were crippled. My truth was twisted. I tended to under-value or even devalue the very personage of and our relationship with God, his Christ and the Spirit.

I came to be ashamed of myself and my heritage. I kept measuring other churches looking for a better place to go. There were many with parts of the truth, but very few that seemed healthy. Today I think postmodernity has forced a number to rethink and change at least somewhat. God is still using earthern vessels!

Now I see that the church is like my own dysfunctional natal family. It too has along with its baggage also given certain gifts to me.

I was able to return to school again and therein I began to face my shame and I found that I was a damaged soul too. One always becomes like the thing we worship! Idol worshippers become like their idols, even dead truth and twisted truth! Beware my friend, there are demons in the road and well as angels with swords drawn!

Now in retrospect I see that God was grinding stone against steel trying to hone and shape us both: the church and me.

Today I also see that I have been a false prophet. I see I was dead in my sins. I once gloried that I walked so well among my brethren whose dedication was less fiery and hot. I did not realize my self-righteousness until I lost my standing!

Now, I have been broken. I was rejected and humiliated by churches that I sought to serve. That was a shock. I felt betrayed by a pampered child who turned to drugs (to whom I surely passed-on my own damage). Finally my angelic wife ended our empty marriage (sorta like telling me to curse God and die); likewise in the end she seemed not to know me and certainly or to care for me – I was humiliated. It was some years before the emptiness in my life became clearer to me.

Accordingly, I have my own insights into a current story about the minister's wife (Mary Winkler) who killed her minister husband with a shotgun. Mostly overly money and deadly emptiness that prevailed). I suspect that their emptiness, idols and addiction was killing them all first!

I came to see myself has having been an idolater following a dead religion, a parody of Christianity. I can not now blame them for being empty and dead - I was, too. I had failed them.

So, whereas I once seemed to have a worthy resume and my family seemed a picture of high standards. So that I seemed to be a man of God with honor and faith that all proved illusory. I am a broken, defiled man – but now I cling to Jesus: for he is the way, the truth and the life.

As for Balaam’s Ass: now I see that God once guided wise men to Jesus using a star. That the ground cries out with the blood of righteous Abel. And the whole earth groans awaiting its day of salvation. So, too, once an ass tried to save the life of his misguided owner Balaam. Balaam was God’s target and he for a moment sought to do God’s bidding. Ultimately, Balaam was drawn back into his high-paying soothsaying lifestyle in spite of finding God’s voice. His class had always worked for the highest bidder. Scripture finally, in the end, labeled him a false prophet.

The nameless ass with its merest animal resume was a lone creature but was faithful to God’s calling. It was never heard from again. I choose to follow the ass class. I hope only to speak and perchance to disappear. Except to my master.

Was Balaam's Ass a mindless creature?

The Story of Balaam's Donkey Numbers 22:21ff

21 Balaam got up in the morning, saddled his donkey and went with the princes of Moab.

22 But God was very angry when he went, and the angel of the LORD stood in the road to oppose him. Balaam was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him.

23 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand, she turned off the road into a field. Balaam beat her to get her back on the road.

24 Then the angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path between two vineyards, with walls on both sides.

25 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she pressed close to the wall, crushing Balaam's foot against it. So he beat her again.

26 Then the angel of the LORD moved on ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or to the left.

27 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat her with his staff.

28 Then the LORD opened the donkey's mouth, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?"

29 Balaam answered the donkey, "You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now."

30 The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?"
"No," he said.

31 Then the LORD opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown.

32 The angel of the LORD asked him, "Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me.

33 The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If she had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared her."

34 Balaam said to the angel of the LORD, "I have sinned. I did not realize you were standing in the road to oppose me. Now if you are displeased, I will go back."

35 The angel of the LORD said to Balaam, "Go with the men, but speak only what I tell you." So Balaam went with the princes of Balak.

36 When Balak heard that Balaam was coming, he went out to meet him at the Moabite town on the Arnon border, at the edge of his territory.

37 Balak said to Balaam, "Did I not send you an urgent summons? Why didn't you come to me? Am I really not able to reward you?"

38 "Well, I have come to you now," Balaam replied. "But can I say just anything? I must speak only what God puts in my mouth."