On Not Censoring or Silencing Those Who Think Differently - They Might Be Prophets.

I remember, in the years before Amazon and one click book-buying, ordering a book on Micah from a theologically conservative bookshop. It was local and I wanted to support it.

There was some breathing in through teeth, and shaking of the head, and I was asked if I really wanted to have a book by that particular publisher, and that even more particular writer.

The inward hissing breath and the melancholic headshake reminded me of the dodgy car mechanic preparing to deliver bad news about the repair estimate for that hard to trace rattle that only happened going round a corner.

"Yes", I said. "Is there a problem?" I asked mildly, despite being mildly irritated.

"Well we don't ususally order from them, but if you're sure,", spoken with the heavy pastoral concern of a parent anxious not to curb the child's development, or expose them to too much risk, and so heavily hinting at what would be the wise choice.

A week or two later I had a phone call that my book had arrived. When I went to collect it my pastorally burdened bookseller, suggested another title I might want to buy to counteract the potential hazards of reading this slippery slope, liberal taking liberty with the text stuff. I declined!

The book I ordered was Micah the Prophet, by Hans Walter Wolff. Yes indeed, a first class critical scholar, whose whole academic life was immersed in the Hebrew Bible, and whose critical commentaries on the prophets are amongst the intellectual high points of historical and form criticism. But the thing about this particular volume was, it is a potent exposition of what it sounds like when the prophet Micah is allowed to speak into the chaos, uncertainties, moral confusions and economic realities of each age and every age, and in particular our own age.

Out of deep scholarly study, and the intellectual wrestling required to listen to a text with the whole self, Wolff wrote a book aimed at addressing what he called the cul-de-sacs of our ailing culture, grasping and unjust, oppressive and extravagant, delusional of its own longevity and careless to the point of dismissive of the fundamentals that are the foundations of healthy human community. The last part of the book is three evenings of Bible Study on Micah, conducted in 1977, the year of Baader-Meinhoff threats, atrocities and on October 18th suicides in Stammheim Prison. This is how to do Bible Study - text in hand, television on, the words of the prophet competing with the news announcer, the first speaking words of life and words of judgement, the second struggling to speak such hard to live by words as mercy, justice and humble compassion.

I have a lot of books. Amongst them, books which have significance and value beyond the price paid for them. Wolff's theological and ethical exposition of Micah has been an important companion on the way when I have needed conversation with someone who loved and soaked in the text of the Hebrew Prophets. Immersion in those great oracles of "Thus saith the Lord..." is one of the required antidotes in our own age when mercy, justice and compassion and walking humbly are absent from the political lexicon, and from many a preacher's thesaurus of frequently used words.

Comments

[Dave Summers]

I'm assuming that "Micah the Prophet" was the dangerously liberal book you ordered, but your post could be read as if it was the antidote that the bookshop recommended. Which was it?
(I don't really care about labels - I'm just curious - but I wholeheartedly agree with your title and the importance of not censoring those who think differently.)

[Jim Gordon]

Thanks Dave. I can see what you mean so the post is edited to clarify. The book is not "dangerously liberal" - that was the perception of someone else who of course had never read either the book, or anything about the author. Hans Walter Wolff was a highly respected Christian scholar, deeply committed to the Church, and as able an expositor as he was an exegete. His love of the biblical text is everywhere apparent in his books.

[Dave Summers]

Thanks Jim. I understood that "dangerously liberal" was only the perception of the bookseller. Your appreciation of it was clear.