Where do we draw the line between prophet and lunatic?
by Jake Bouma
Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 1:10-18
For Sunday, October 31, 2010: Year C - Ordinary 31
Well, this is certainly a hell of a way to open a piece of prophetic literature. Isaiah wastes practically no time at all in convincing us that he's either a raving lunatic or a prophet with wordsmithing skills of hip-hopical proportions.
Instead of A Show
For two-thirds of our reading, Isaiah makes himself perfectly clear: God is pissed. “I do not delight,” he says, “my soul hates,” “I will not listen,” and so on. Isaiah the prophet bursts on to the scene with some really bizarre stuff. If it doesn’t seem strange to you, I suggest listening to a worship song called “Instead of A Show” by Jon Foreman, the lead singer of the Christian super-group Switchfoot. The first time I listened to the song, I remember thinking that Mr. Foreman must have an unbelievable amount of courage to have written this song for consumption by Christians (“You shine up your shoes for services,” he croons, “There's blood on your hands.”). Either that, or he’s lost his mind.
But “Instead of A Show” is clearly based on this text from Isaiah. Jon Foreman has translated Isaiah for our modern age, and if it seems strange to us, it surely must have to Isaiah’s audience as well. Wouldn’t the hearers of Isaiah’s message have questioned, “On whose authority do you say these hyperbolic statements?” or, more straightforwardly, “Are you serious!?”
A Prophet’s Mental Health
That Isaiah can issue such inflammatory statements and immediately follow them up with the words of verse 18 makes me genuinely wonder if Isaiah, had he been alive today, would be diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder. I ask this question not in jest; as someone with previous and ongoing mental health issues, I cannot help but see this text through that lens. Is Isaiah possibly exhibiting signs of bi-polar disorder? Could his own mind in any way be obfuscating the message of Yahweh?
I’m reminded of a post on The Hardest Question from earlier this year when Nadia Bolz-Weber asked:
But what separates the great heroes of the faith from those who got it wrong? Chance? Accident of history? Truth? The fact is that both Noah and David Koresh claimed that God had given them special instructions for the future of humankind. On this side of history one guy is a hero and one guy is a whacko.
Hers is a great question, to be sure, but one that, I think, is further complicated when we talk about a biblical author and not simply a character like Abraham or Noah. Orthodox belief would say it’s no accident that Isaiah’s prophecies are in the canon, so what’s the deal?
The Hardest Question
If Isaiah’s prophetic utterances really are as strange as they appear, it forces me to ask the question: Where do we draw the line between prophet and lunatic? How are we to know whether or not Isaiah is a hero or a whacko? And, after pursuing those questions, what are the implications for how we read (and preach) this text? For how we seek out modern-day prophets?
Jake Bouma is the Director of Youth Ministries at Faith Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in Clive, Iowa. His quest to be an autodidact recently ended with enrollment in a distance learning Master’s program at Luther Seminary. He’s a proud ENFP (Google it) who unashamedly named his cat after a dead theologian. He can be found tweeting and (occasionally) blogging.
