From Prophecy to Proverb

By: Mark Charles

Yá’ át’ ééh. Mark Charles yinishyé. Tsin bikee dine’é nishłí. Dóótó’aheedlíinii bá shíshchíín. Tsin bikee’ dine’é dashicheii. Dóó tódích’ íi’nii dashinálí.

The summer of 2018, during the height of the immigration crisis with families being separated at our borders, I had the privilege of speaking at Calvin College to a couple hundred worship grant recipients from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. In a plenary session titled “Learning How to Talk in Proverbs” I was given a few minutes to “Propose a proverb about your prophetic insight using a ‘prophecy to proverb’ mode of speech.” Below is what I wrote and shared.

Wise is the church that refuses to buy into the trappings of partisan politics.

Remember my brothers and sisters, Jesus did not come to create a Christian Empire.

He came to make disciples.

He came to offer his body as a living sacrifice.

He came to plant a church.

When the church merely lobbies one political leader and protests the other.

When, for the sake of argument or political gain, the body of Christ turns a blind eye to one sin and magnifies another, we are not representing the headship of our body… who is Christ.

As vile, repulsive and urgent is the Trump administration’s separation of families at our border, it is not the first time.

Indian Removal, the slave trade, Boarding Schools, lynchings, Japanese Internment camps, mass incarceration, even the deportation numbers of the Obama administration: the list of ways the United States government has worked to destroy the family structure of people of color throughout our history is as long as it is depressing.

So let’s stop pretending that President Trump is the God ordained savior, or the ultimate demise of our union.

The same with President Obama.

What our nation needs is not for democrats to be better democrats.

Nor do we need Republicans to simply be better Republicans.

We don’t even need our nation to be more Christian.

My brothers and sisters, the United States of America is not, never has been, nor will it ever be Christian.

Jesus did not come to create a Christian Empire

He came to make disciples.

He came to offer his body as a living sacrifice.

He came to plant a church.

And wise is the church that refuses to buy into the trappings of partisan politics.

I agree with Kenneth Kaunda, the former president of Zambia, who said,

“What a nation needs more than anything else is not a Christian ruler in the palace but a Christian prophet within earshot.”
​
Mark Charles (Navajo)

-Originally published at www.wirelesshogan.com, June 22, 2018.

---

Mark Charles

is a dynamic and thought-provoking public speaker, writer, and consultant. The son of an American woman (of Dutch heritage) and a Navajo man, he teaches with insight into the complexities of American history regarding race, culture, and faith in order to help forge a path of healing and conciliation for the nation. He is one of the leading authorities on the 15th-century’s Doctrine of Discovery and its influence on US history and its intersection with modern-day society. Mark co-authored, along with Soong-Chan Rah, the new book entitled “​Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery”​ (IVP, 2019). Mark is also an independent candidate for the US Presidency in the 2020 election.