Last week was a heavy week.
We heard news of seven male Cornell students sexually assaulting a female classmate. On top of that, the Secretary of Education rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ students. She claimed that Title IX protections were never meant to address gender identity or sexual orientation.
Few were surprised and perhaps expected the repeal of Title IX protections for trans students. But many of us were shocked at the rollback of protections based on sexual orientation–which affects cisgender LGB students, too. That means, legally, they can be bullied by classmates and teammates for being gay with no way to report it.
When I saw LGB people respond to those headlines in shock, all I could do was sigh.
Queer folks have repeatedly said that an attack on one part of the community (like the disgusting campaign to remove trans student athletes from sports) is an attack on all members of the community. Conservative extremists won’t limit themselves to only targeting those they deem “most radical.”
We’ve all but begged cisgender gay, lesbian, and bi folks not to turn their backs on their trans, nonbinary, and otherwise queer siblings, as some liberal politicians have encouraged them to do. We’ve encouraged them to reject the false gospel of respectability politics and instead improve solidarity across the LGBTQ+ community, but to no avail.
I know the problem is the oppressor, not the oppressed. I also know I should respond more pastorally. But man, I’m so tired of people being surprised when the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party betrays them to eat their faces, too.
How did they not see it coming?
Prophets and Patterns
I wonder if the Hebrew prophets of old felt this exasperation. Did Isaiah and Jeremiah feel tempted to throw any pastoral pretense aside and shout from the rooftops, “I told you this would happen; but y’all refused to listen!”
That does seem to be a pattern in the Hebrew scriptures, doesn’t it?
God raises up someone to be a prophet and tells them what to say to the Israelites. Sometimes God tells them that if the Israelites do these good things, they will reap these rewards.
Other times, God tells them that if the Israelites do these bad things, they will reap ruin. The prophets faithfully relay these messages.
The misconception about prophets in the Bible is that they could accurately predict the future, that God blessed them with mystical knowledge of things that had not yet happened. But that’s not how prophecy was understood in the Hebrew scriptures. If we believe that’s what prophecy is, then we miss the point.
Prophets are highly-gifted pattern-recognizers. They know their history well enough to see old patterns repeating before their eyes. They catch on quickly enough to sound the alarm, to warn others, “If we keep going down this path, it will lead to these terrible consequences.”
When those consequences came true, some folks responded with the same surprise folks showed at the Title IX news. They exclaim, “How could anyone see this coming?” while prophets shake their heads.
Prophets are inconvenient to the broader society. They hold up a mirror, force us to look at ourselves, and challenge us to reckon with the reality that this is who we’ve always been.
Accepting that reality means we must change. And as it turns out, most people don’t want change; they just want to live their lives under the false pretense that what happens to other people doesn’t affect them at all. That’s how the Israelites ended up in mess after mess.
Prophets Still Speak
But prophets don’t exist only in the pages of the Bible. Prophets exist here and now, and they have not been quiet.
The historians telling us what we see across the United States is what happened in Germany before it descended into fascism ahead of World War II? Prophets.
The Indigenous Americans reminding us Hitler got his strategy from the U.S.’s treatment of Native Americans? Prophets.
The Black folks telling us the murders of young black people we’re witnessing now follow the beat of Jim Crow-era lynchings? Prophets.
And yes, the trans, nonbinary, and queer folks telling cisgender gay, lesbian, and bi folks that radical conservatism will not tolerate any of us? Prophets.
Modern-day prophets are sounding the alarms, beseeching all of us to break the pattern in order to build better outcomes. Will you listen to Amos and Micah? To Deborah and Miriam?
Will you heed their warnings so we can break this miserable cycle and finally create a world where everyone can flourish?
I know looking in the mirror is uncomfortable and changing your life to model more life-giving behaviors is even more so. But your comfort is not more valuable than someone’s life, beloved.
The hope in the prophet’s cry is that we still believe you’re capable of embracing that change. Don’t prove us wrong.
Instead, pray about how you can act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly, just like the prophets said you should. In that walking, we all find liberation.
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A bivocational pastor, writer and spiritual director based in Williamsburg, Virginia, she currently works as a Spiritual Director at Reclamation Theology. Cawthon-Freels is the author of Reclamation: A Queer Pastor’s Guide to Finding Spiritual Growth in the Passages Used to Harm Us (Nurturing Faith Books), and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.