Walter Brueggemann in his book A Prophetic Imagination traces the lines from the radical of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Here he traces the broad sweep from Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus. He highlights that the prophetic vision not only embraces the ordinary world of the people but creates an energy and amazement (which he calls “imagination”) based on the new thing that God is doing. Bruggemann’s position is that the Kingship in Israel is a step backwards from the Mosaic “revolution” and that the Prophets and then later Jesus called Israel away from Kingship back to the original vision of Moses, the prophetic imagination. Bruggemann writes“to address the issue of a truth greatly reduced requires us to be poets that speak against a prose world. . . By prose I refer to a world that is organized in settled formulae… By poetry I mean language that moves, that jumps at the right moment, that breaks open old worlds with surprise, abrasion and pace. Poetic speech is the only proclamation worth doing in a situation of reductionism.” Bruggemann has his faults, but I think he says a few things that the 21st century evangelical community –especially my own community, the home school community–should incorporate into their vision. For one thing, we must maintain a prophetic, hopeful vision in a world that is embracing materialism and hopelessness. We must, at the same time, affirm objective truth in a postmodern world that is preaching subjectivity. We must not be post-modern hippies, wandering around spreading alternative communities, subversive narratives, and anti-secular sermons. Rather, as one social critic explains, “the Old Testament prophets came to announce to Israel their sin before God by going after other gods, playing the harlot to God-their-husband, revealing their liturgical and corruptions, and laying before them their sins. They were God’s covenantal lawyers bringing to bear upon Israel the lawsuit of the covenant.” Our social criticism must be purposeful and constructive, not destructive. For example, we disagree with post-modern morality that argues that morality should be based in one’s own subjective belief system, as long as that belief structure is sincerely held and harms no one. Our biblical, prophetic message must be that that is hog wash. Our feelings, our notions, of what is right is irrelevant unless it lines up with the Word of God. Finally, basking in the bright light of biblical truth, we must show post-modern culture that, in Christ, and in Christ alone, there is hope and joy and a prophetic imagination.

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