Justifiable Hysteria: Hebrew Prophets and Current Protests
“[The Hebrew prophets’] breathless impatience with injustice may strike us as hysteria. We ourselves witness continually acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage, misery, but we rarely grow indignant or overly excited. To the prophets even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions. […] The niggardliness of our moral comprehensions, the incapacity to sense the depth of misery caused by our own failures, is a fact which no subterfuge can elude. Our eyes are witness to the callousness and cruelty of man, but our heart tries to obliterate the memories, to calm the nerves, and to silence our conscience.”
— Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets [New York: HarperCollins Perennial Classics, 2002; original edition 1962], pp. 4-5
Thus says the Lord:
Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals
and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from the Lord.
They shall be like a shrub in the desert
and shall not see when relief comes.
They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.
The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse—
who can understand it?
— Jeremiah 17:5-9 (NRSVUE)
For a few months recently, California politics was interesting: with one senator and my congressional representative retiring, I realized that my vote could actually be potentially meaningful for once, and it’s my civic duty and blah blah blah. With that, I had marked a Town Hall to view via YouTube later to learn about the candidates. When viewing the debate VOD, I was surprised that a disruptive protest demanding cease-fire in Palestine popped up there, where organizers responded by calling the debate early. Admittedly, I was initially a bit annoyed as well: after all, I’m trying to figure out who’s on which side in the first place and I don’t want to throw my vote in a mistake or anything.
The other reason, though, was that my initially preferred candidate also responded to the protests in a very antagonistic manner. Having grown up around here, while I appreciated the singular candidate who supported Gazan peace unequivocally, I knew his campaign was a longshot and was willing to sacrifice some principle on world peace for a progressive campaign that, uh, actually stood a chance to win. But hearing said candidate state unequivocal support for Israel and totally dismiss said protests in a patronizing manner was jarring, to the point where I realized that my vote was actually open and that I start all over to figure out who I actually wanted to vote for (I’ll just say that my vote could have prevented this current recount effort and saved someone or some campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars).
And as this senseless war continues to linger while national politicians drag their feet, protests across the country have escalated, oftentimes with a high level of disruption in mind. Recent protests blocking highway traffic, for example, has left California governor Gavin Newsom, who is not exactly a Tom Cotton or Ron DeSantis figure, to urge new laws to criminalize such efforts. Unlike Cotton or DeSantis, however, who have the freedom to incite, Democratic politicians like Newsom typically has to walk a finer line. They typically state that there’s a right to protest, even disagreeable protest, but that it has to be exercised politely, that it can all be solved through the ballot box, and what have you. And that disruptive protests out in campuses, or highways, or town halls are bad because they’re too much: the people here care too much, are hysterical, and don’t value open and free discussion.
Politically, maybe there’s wisdom there. I’ll admit that my own natural conflict-avoidant instincts lead me often in that direction. And when it comes to reasonable church voices (so not the voices that my last writing series often referred to), I think there’s a similar note: that yes, this war is tragic and to strive for peace, and that we need to be extra-sensitive to all people who are hurting.
But as leaders’ responses debate strategy rather than goals, the general gist, to me, feels like it can be boiled down to this: Is this actually that important? Like, back when I was in elementary school and before people had cellphones, Mom and Dad had me memorize their work phone numbers so that I could call them in an emergency, but they also were very clear that I shouldn’t just call them at any sign of trouble. And similarly, yes, innocent lives are important, but climate change will kill us all in a century and that’s like billions of lives, so why not go take that energy in that (pro-Democrat) direction instead. And campus leaders in institutions across the country have often issued similar lines painting campus activists as hysterical to justify their strong-arm tactics to silence dissent and rebuild order.
In the Bible, however, I often find a very different wisdom: one that says that sometimes the burning voice within is actually a divine voice “like a fire shut up in my bones” that demands action. The part that few people stay on — the Hebrew Prophets, names like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah — center a “lone voice in the wilderness” crying out for justice in a society that bears way too many similarities with ours today. The world they decried, after all, was one where power triumphed over justice, where the rich had greater sway than the poor, where predators chased down prey. To these conditions, the Prophets state that this hysteria is justified: humanity pursuing power and greed rather than love, grace, and justice is something that should prick our consciences. A right-wing political regime, with a prime minister dependent on extended conflict to hang on to political power, picking fights and leading to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands: that’s something that I strongly believe is not God-blessed, and one I do not want my own national government subsidizing and abetting, regardless of context and regardless of whatever claims of national interest exist. Morally right is still right, even if it is inconvenient, even if it is disruptive, even if it clashes with the status quo.
Yet I’ve also always struggled when trying to make the Hebrew Prophets relatable in my youth ministry years: this message that it’s okay to care a lot is simply discordant from youth settings where they’re struggling to stay afloat over homework, extracurricular activities, exams, APs, and the ever-present pressure of achieving enough that they can get to the next chapter of their lives. Placing yet another challenge — this one, moreover, that is even harder than their already difficult path — seems, to be frank, mean. And similarly, for people in my own stage of life, trying to make sure that work continues, dependents are fed, critical appointments are made, and just living can already feel hard enough, without adding additional burdens heavy enough to make that delicate house of cards come crashing down. It’s hard to protest — it’s hard to risk academic status on a cause, it’s hard to face the threat of criminal charges for an abstract ideal, it’s hard to deal with the scorn of loved ones and to stir up conflict when it feels unnecessary. It’s even harder when you don’t have the Alliance Defending Freedom or the right-wing ecosystem that Tim Alberta describes that can make you a cause célèbre.
Which, in turn, leads me to this passage of Jeremiah. I often think of 17:9 (admittedly less so the other verses, though I offered them here for useful context) in response to worship lyrics declaring unbounded love for God or evangelical celebrities declaring that God is on their side. Right after Jeremiah gives the stock-standard religious comment that people should trust in God rather than themselves, he notes that our hearts, ultimately, tend to be wicked, perverse, devious: that few, indeed, are naturally good. While I believe that Christ’s resurrection brings with it grace and redemption, I also know from experience that life in the here and now is still a struggle and that I still continue to distrust God’s promises and to heed the still small voice that calls me to trust God even during moments of conflict and of challenge.
So rather than assume I live a blessed Christian life because I am saved, Biblical wisdom pushes me to figure out where God continues to challenge us to be today, to divine God’s will. The Prophets, in turn, remind me that God's direction often leads away from church walls or campus presidents’ boardrooms, but into the streets, highways, and plazas of the nation, calling for justice, peace, and morality in a world that still hears that as discordant. The challenge the Prophets leave behind to us today is to continue to care even when it’s hard.
Caveat: This isn’t a blanket endorsement of all protests. I still hold that violence is beyond the pale, and even peaceful protests can and should be evaluated for their messages so organizations like old-school Westboro Baptist Church are, uh, not great witnesses. But debates surrounding strategy make me often uncomfortable because it feels like a cop-out.