Into the Wilderness
Rebecca Brothers
Day 1 of 4
"All the prophets were prophesying the same and saying, 'Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.' The messenger who had gone to summon Micaiah said to him, 'Look, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king; let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably.' But Micaiah said, 'As the Lord lives, whatever the Lord says to me, that I will speak.'"
1 Kings 22:12-14 (NRSV)In the opening text, the king of Israel and the king of Judah are trying to decide whether to wage war against a territory called Ramoth-gilead, so they call in four hundred prophets and ask what God's will is. Those prophets all say the same thing: "Do it! God will give you victory."
So far, so good. Then the king of Judah asks if there are any prophets missing from the crowd. It turns out there is: Micaiah, son of Imlah. The messenger who goes to get Micaiah tells him he'd better go with the majority opinion, and at first, Micaiah does. The king asks him whether the battle plans should go forward, and Micaiah says, "Absolutely. You'll be victorious."
But then the king says, "How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?" (v. 16).
Then Micaiah completely changes his tune. He prophesies doom and gloom, disaster and diaspora. He tells a story about God assembling the hosts of heaven and asking them how God can lure the king into disaster at Ramoth-gilead. One spirit says, "I have an idea. I'll go down and be a lying spirit in the mouths of the prophets" (v. 22). This, Micaiah explains, is why all those other prophets foretold victory: They were deceived by a lying spirit, with God's permission.
I used to worry over this story as a teenager. I had enough trouble trying to hear God's voice for myself, and now I was being told that God sometimes gives a lying spirit permission to inhabit the mouths of those who profess to speak for God. Who could I trust?
Over time, I cobbled together a litmus test that drew from Christ's distillation of the Law: "Love God, and love your neighbor." When new information comes my way, or a decision is placed in front of me, I try to ask two questions of the situation:
What kind of God should I worship?
How does this prompt me to treat my neighbors?
For example, when I'm presented with a theology that says women don't deserve the same rights and opportunities as men, or LGBTQ+ folks' identities are inherently sinful, or Black lives don't matter, I can hold that theology up to the light and ask how it wants me to characterize God, and how it wants me to treat my neighbors.
I'm telling you this because when we enter a new wilderness—whether that's a change in relationship status, a career switch, a new iteration of faith, or something else—it can be easy to feel unmoored. The process of deconstructing our identities and affiliations can lead us to think that nothing really matters. The death of an old identity—X's wife, Y's employee, Z's church member—can make us feel like there's no hope for future growth.
But when Jesus entered the wilderness to fast for forty days, He took some essentials with Him. He had his knowledge of the overarching themes of Scripture—themes that nudge us to forgo proof-texting and focus on the broader arc of God's plans for humanity. Christ had confidence that He wasn't there to prove Himself to the devil. He had His eye on playing a long game centered on love, rather than using shortcuts to feed Himself or get the earth's kingdoms on His side.
What would happen if we packed the same essentials as we enter our own private wildernesses?
We might find ourselves centering every decision on love—love for God and love for our neighbors. We might feel less unmoored, more grounded in the knowledge that our wilderness journeys will probably test our convictions and force us to examine what we really believe, why it's important to us, and how it affects our relationships with God and one another.
I'd like to close with one of my favorite prayers—a prayer of penitence from the Church of England. It reads: "In your mercy, forgive what we have been, help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be."
As you go throughout your day, I encourage you to think on the three parts of that prayer:
What have you been?
What are you now?
What do you desire to become?
Rebecca Brothers