Faith Commons

This excerpt was originally published in The Dallas Morning News. You can access the full article here.

The Old Testament didn’t have a lot of time for people who took it upon themselves to speak for God. They were called false prophets, and their actions were punishable by death.

I called George Mason, recently retired senior pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, to see if he ever has similar qualms about culture war pronouncements of doom. He reminded me of a critical difference between our modern megachurch prophets and those of the Old Testament.

“It strikes me that part of a genuine prophetic witness is that you suffer the word. You bear it,” Mason said. “It doesn’t feel to me, at times, that those who are proclaiming the word of God have any interest in bearing it. Instead, there is an assumption of power and of blessing. I find that lacking in appropriate humility of the role.”

Biblical prophets were mistreated, misunderstood and outcast. Despite the culture war penchant for pretending to be persecuted, American Christians aren’t.