A friend shared the most liberating truth that helped me find freedom in letting my tears fall and my voice cry out. She said, “God can handle your angry words and tears even when other people cannot.” Hearing her gave me the permission I needed to try something new. I had been discipled and trained to stifle my words and hide my reality, but in that simple conversation, my friend showed me a fresh perspective that brought me further down the healing path. God is not afflicted with such a fragile ego that he can’t hear our words of righteous rage and sorrow. He’s not put off so that we have to bury the stress deep down within us… He wants the stress of the world out of our bodies.
If you are being discipled to not use your voice, it is so that those in power can keep you in bondage. The Latin word discipulus is the root word for English words like disciple, discipleship, and discipline. Discipulus means “student” or “one who studies.” Becoming a disciple of Christ does not mean conforming to a model of sameness. It means learning to be a student of Jesus. Effective models of learning (or discipleship) include relationship and participation. A good teacher meets students where they are and cultivates a conducive environment where the students can ask questions. Church leaders, pastors, and members are truly disciples of Christ when they encourage the voices of others. Disciples are not mindless followers. When Jesus called his disciples, he encouraged them to ask questions. He invited them to speak up not to make noise but to participate in the continuing revelation of truth. And he encouraged them to raise more students like them.
Some disciples find the heart of Jesus in the Scriptures. The more they learn of his life, the more able they are to speak to the harm of regimented discipleship models. As they read about Christ’s life, students can identify how Jesus cultivates connection and wholeness where the religious elite have sown destruction and devastation. When disciples use their voices to call out incongruence, they move into prophetic action. They are empowered to use the power given to them by God in the first place!
Empowering individuals and encouraging them to exercise their voices and choices are key components in the work of trauma healing. (4) This is particularly true for those healing from religious spaces where they were told they should be quiet and submissive. Part of repairing ruptures within ourselves and our communities is learning how God has given us power, voice, and choice.
Corrupt power makes noise, and it disciples others to be just as clamorous. Corrupt power has encouraged people to use their voices to yell, scream, and traumatize the meek and lowly. Good power, though, calls us to speak out. Good power gives pain a voice. Finding words to communicate the truth is a way to exercise autonomy, pick up the pen, and become a co-creator with God. Those wielding power well will teach their disciples to do the same.
In The Magician’s Nephew, C. S. Lewis includes a poetic retelling of the creation narrative in which the main characters witness Aslan singing Narnia into existence. As he sings, they hear more voices joining him in harmony. (5) Lewis imagines God creating the world through song and word, and as he creates the sun and moon, stars and planets, each newly fashioned being is invited to sing with him.
Because you are God’s image bearer, he invites you to sing with him. But when you’ve lived through chaos and conflict—when you’ve been made to bear the weight of unjust consequences—you might not want to sing for a while. Or you might want to but don’t know how. God’s invitation is still yours.
Many people throughout Scripture served as God’s mouthpiece to expose and oppose injustices being committed against the powerless within their society. They are called prophets. Like you and me, they used their God-given voice, just as they were discipled to do. And they were despised for it too.
The Old Testament prophets were committed to social action and shined a glaring light on the atrocities being committed by national leaders. They spoke not because their words were popular or well received. And they certainly didn’t speak to increase their platform or prestige. They spoke because God told them to. God called the prophets to action so the lowly would be seen and the proud would be humbled.
The minor prophets in the Old Testament spoke repeatedly to the corruption of earthly kingdoms and how leaders abused power. What gave these prophets the right to speak was their faithfulness to God, not their credentials, seminary education, or how high they were in the pecking order. The prophet Amos serves as a prime example. He was a shepherd, not a career prophet. He made a living by caring for the creatures of creation, but God called him to prophetic action. He lived in the southern kingdom of Judah, but his audience was the northern kingdom of Israel. Israel listened to the first of Amos’s proclamations against the nations surrounding Israel.
At first, Amos publicly dressed down every nation except Israel. Israel was itself enjoying a period of lavish peace. While nation fought against nation, Israel had expanded. They had hoarded power, comfort, and control. As all hoarding stories tend to go, the cost of Israel’s opulence was paid by those with less power. (11) Israel’s Have-Nots were being exploited so that the Haves could live in extravagance.
The story crescendoes in Amos 2:6 as Amos’s gaze lands on Israel and God speaks the truth of their transgressions directly. Israel’s leaders have sold the innocent for silver and the vulnerable for a pair of sandals. While the surrounding nations were guilty of international crimes and Judah’s sin was attributing their identity elsewhere, Israel’s crimes were different. The innocent, vulnerable, and oppressed were being exploited and ravaged by those who should have protected them. Israel othered and plundered their own people. Amos spoke the truth Israel was unwilling to acknowledge. Instead of hearing Amos and heeding the words God gave him, Israel’s priest Amaziah kicked Amos out of Bethel, telling him to do his prophesying elsewhere.
Many of us continue to live this story today.
The church often wants to raise spiritual soldiers in God’s army who carry out the mission. Others, though, are the disciples who look like Jesus, carrying scars inflicted upon them through abuse of power. When we ask our congregations to read their Bibles and the stories of our spiritual ancestors, it should come as no surprise that many students of Scripture become well-versed in distinguishing Christlikeness from the corrupt forms of faith that are often labeled good and right today. When these students see the schism between the character of Jesus and that of the church, when they ask questions and speak to disparity, they become prophets. They are those who have the boldness to say, “This is not the way of Jesus. This is not who we are.”
Like Amos, you are probably not a career prophet. (12) You may not even be a pastor or a pastor’s kid. Maybe you are a public-school teacher, an engineer, a retail worker, a custodian, or a freelancer. Like me, you might be the child of an immigrant who left an impoverished country to make a life elsewhere. No matter what your background is or how you make your living today, when you see the name of God being taken in vain in his churches due to abuse of power and you speak up, you are moving in prophetic action. You are proclaiming what the priests like Amaziah would rather cover up. When you voice the harm experienced within your faith community, you tell the truth in a way no one else can. When you speak of racism, ableism, xenophobia, homophobia, or violence of any kind in your church’s ranks, you speak the truth as prophets did before you.
Corrupt Christians have been plundering our own people, and it’s our calling to speak up in response.
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4. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, “Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services,” Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series 57, HHS Publication No. (SMA) 13-4801 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014), 22, https://store.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/d7/priv/sma14-4816.pdf.
5. C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 61.
11. I owe so much thanks to Beth Moore, as well as her daughter Melissa, who taught a live, in-person Bible study on the Minor Prophets (or the Book of the Twelve) in Houston for four weeks during the winter of 2023. Eschet chayil.
12. Frankly, I’d be wary of anyone working today as a professional prophet.
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Content taken from Othered by Jenai Auman, ©2024. Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Excerpt from Chapter 6 of Othered by Jenai Auman. P. 123-132
