IF YOU WANT TO BE KILLED, KEEP TELLING THE TRUTH

 

In those days, the princes said to the king: "Jeremiah ought to be put to death; he is demoralizing the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such things to them; he is not interested in the welfare of our people, but in their ruin." King Zedekiah answered: "He is in your power"; for the king could do nothing with them. And so they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of Prince Malchiah, which was in the quarters of the guard, letting him down with ropes. There was no water in the cistern, only mud, and Jeremiah sank into the mud.

Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10

Jeremiah was a “prophet” and this is what “prophets” do - they speak "inconvenient truth." Prophets are not so much people who predict the future as people who get up in your face and rub a present truth in your face and make you look at it.  Today, we would call them “whistle blowers,” people who drag the truth out into the light of day whether it is convenient or not! Like prophets of old, whistle blowers are often considered “nut cases” at first. Like prophets of old, whistle blowers often get themselves killed, either actually or figuratively, because most establishments do not like to have their boats rocked or their embarrassing truths to come out. Instead of heeding the truth, they usually turn on the truth-teller. If you have ever been involved in such an action, you know just how dangerous the truth can be. If you were not physically hurt, you could be labeled or blackballed for years and maybe even for life.  

 

We still kill prophets in a host of creative ways. We shun friends who will not go along with us when we do wrong.  We rage against "wokeness" when what it exposes is too painful to admit. We ridicule the teaching of the Church and those who teach what the Church teaches when they won’t bless the wrongs we want to do. We call evil good and good evil so that we can live with our inconvenient truths, even when we know in our guts that we are doing is wrong.     

 

All of us have a built-in “prophet” as well. That built-in “prophet” is called our “conscience.” Our conscience is constantly confronting us with truths that we would just as soon not look at. When our consciences keep accusing us of violating our principles, we have ways of “silencing” it temporarily and even “killing” it for good. We regularly silence our consciences with alcohol and drugs, so that we can do what we know is wrong.  If we do it regularly and consistently over the long haul, we can even kill our consciences, until one day we are capable of doing or believing horrendous things that no longer shock us!  As someone said, “When there is no faith, there is no conscience. When there is no conscience, there is no morality. When there is no morality, there is no humanity.”   If we don’t start listening to our prophets, inside and out, we will soon be in a dark place with no escape.  On the other hand, Jesus said this: “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free!” (John 8:31-32)  Our external prophets and our internal consciences make us wake up and face the truth because “people who tell us what we want to hear are not necessarily our friends and people who tell us what we don’t want to hear are not necessarily our enemies.”  Yes, the truth will set us free, but as President James A. Garfield said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” To relieve our misery when faced with unpleasant and unwanted truths, we tend to kill our prophets and numb our consciences!

 

In times like these, truth matters! We desperately need communal prophets and personal consciences to rub our noses in the truth no matter how painful it is to accept!