I am currently teaching through Jeremiah, and this passage caught my eye this morning. Jeremiah is struggling with his call, the judgment going on all around him, and the personal pain it has put him through. He complains in the passage preceding this one that he has separated himself from common society for God’s sake, and that he is feeling the effects of being alone. When God replies, he lays a mild rebuke at the feet of the prophet. Then in Jeremiah 15:19 God says:
“If you return, I will return to you,
and you shall stand before me.
If you utter what is precious, and not
what is worthless,
you shall be as my mouth.
They shall turn to you
but you shall not turn to them.”
That last phrase in the New Living Translation goes like this:
“Let your words change them. Don’t change your words to suit them.”
Jeremiah is struggling because he is different than the surrounding culture. God attempts to comfort and edify his prophet by telling him in essence, “and don’t let that change.”
I want to know your thoughts. What impact does a passage like this one have on our tendency to want to be “relevant”?
3 comments:
Assuming that by saying "relevant", you mean "culturally relevant", I'm not sure that this passage really goes where you might want it to.
Though I basically agree with the previous comment, I think that this passage is referring to Jeremiah's telling truth (first and foremost). God wants us to "be as my mouth" and not sway from the truth; ie we should not change the meaning of what we say to fit into society.
However, this does not necessarily refer to the way in which we communicate that truth. If this is the case, being "relevant" is still a concern (though I would temper this idea by noting that we should also be concerned in losing the truth in our search for relevance; relevance without truth is dead).
I hope these random thoughts can be of some use.
"How foolish it would be for us to take what generations preceding us have valued in coping with life's turbulence and cast it all aside because we are 'modern.'"
- http://www.rzim.org/publications/slicetran.php?sliceid=1019
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