The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the role of prophetic ministry in fostering a new awareness that contrasts with mainstream societal views.
Walter Brueggemann articulates that prophetic ministry goes beyond mere prediction; it serves to cultivate and uplift a consciousness that challenges and stands apart from the prevailing cultural norms. This perspective encourages individuals to critically reflect on their values and beliefs in relation to the dominant narratives that shape society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a sermon to inspire a congregation towards social justice and awareness.
People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done.
And when we take ourselves too seriously, we are grim about the brothers and sisters, especially the dissenting ones, and there will be no health in us and no healing humor.
Imagination is a danger thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination to keep on conjouring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.
The power of the future lies not in the hands of those who believe in scarcity but of those who trust God's abundance.
It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.
The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands β and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference.
How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth?
It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God.
Religion is a feature of cultural evolution that, among other things, addresses anxieties created by cultural evolution; it helps keep social change safe from itself.
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