Ubud, Bali, language training week 1 of 12…

So I was having trouble falling asleep the other night – something was bugging the dog next door, and he decided to share those concerns with us by barking intermittently for a few hours while I tossed and turned.

Now, I readily admit that this might be a rather strange phenomenon, but I find that the twilight sleep zone (probably not its technical name) often becomes a time of theological reflection for me.  (Some of you are nodding at this point and thinking, ‘aha, the reason for his wacked theology suddenly appears…’)

So theology and barking dogs.  I figured that a good way of getting to sleep while Barky did his thing was to somehow make the yapping fade into the background noise filtering into my room; the humming of the fan, the croaking of the frogs in the rice paddy over the wall; the whirr-tick-tick-whirr-tick-whirr-tick-tick of the leaking pressure pump; the motorbike wandering past.  If I could somehow fade the barking into that part of the evening’s soundtrack, it might even lull me to sleep.  The trick is to not focus on it, and before long, the barking is just white noise.

[Start strange theological reflection].  Leap with me here from barking dogs to the prophetic role of the Church: I’m convinced that a lot of the time we use the dog-bark-to-white-noise conversion on those who argue that we should stand against injustice; who say that those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus must not remain silent when injustice occurs; those who keep yapping on about refugees and world peace without violence and corporate tax dodging and rising inequality and ethical investing and climate change and yap-yap-yap-bark-whirr-tick-tick-brmmmm-[snore].

We fade their voices into background noise, morph them with the croaking of the hippies in the forest over the wall, write them off as ‘leftist’ or utopian or lump them with our political opponents.

Because if we can do that, we can maintain the comfortable, knowable, boundaried walls of the status quo.

But if we do that – as followers of Jesus – we also need to ignore or (at very least) significantly play down the ‘utopian’ ideology and practice of Jesus who drew from and perfected the tradition of the Old Testament prophets.

I believe much of the Australian Christian community has lost its prophetic voice.  We don’t just ignore the barking of those mentioned above – we’ve forgotten how to bark ourselves.  And so for my final paper of the MTD, I wrote a paper on those Abraham Heschel dubbed ‘some of the most disturbing people around’.  If you are interested in how the prophetic tradition in the Bible might shape the way in which Christians address issues of injustice, you might appreciate this one; if you think Christians should always honour the law of the land, stay out of politics and keep their heads low, let me tempt you with pages and pages of cannon fodder for the next time we meet (honestly, I’d be particularly keen to hear your thoughts if and where you think I’m off the rails).

Have a read of it here.  I’d be super keen to hear any critiques large or small; it is very helpful for me to hear differing opinions as I learn and grow in my walk with Jesus.

Doggedly and prophetically yours,

Clint.