Written by Bishop Andrew Gentry   

Beloved Friends,

Someone has rightly said that if you speak truth to power you had better be prepared to get slammed! I would also add that you may very well get crucified either literally or figuratively! The second reality that you had best understand before you take upon yourself this prophetic role and it is exactly that, no melodrama here real or intended, is never ever speak the truth to power with "your hat in your hand" for if you do your sacrifice is truly in vain and wasted like pearl before swine. The ancient Prophets knew this and so did Jesus. Indeed everyone who has dared to tell the emperor that he is naked knows this or soon learns the lesson very keenly and more often than not very painfully. Part of the problem with the modern day version of truth telling is a curious perversion of this reality. It is the notion that if I do not engage in calling evil, evil, then evil will not hurt me and indeed it will be converted by the sincerity of "my story"! It appears that the President embraces this version though he would call it "bipartisanship". "Liberals" or what passes for such these days are positively consumed by the idea of centrist practicality. But it is neither central or practical but it is self defeating.

Jesus, John the Baptist, the Prophet Amos, Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the Union organizers in West Virginia who paid for such activities with their lives, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, the patriots of the Irish Easter Rebellion, the Saxon nobles who opposed King John, Garibaldi and countless others regardless of nationality or religion who dared to stand and call the emperor, whomever or whatever that might have been, NAKED, was a threat to power and one which power ruthlessly tried to kill. So it is today though sometimes in less obvious ways.

Evil many times uses the craftiness of subtlety to kill rather than the drama of a public spectacle. It is called pragmatism or expediency or simple being centrist. Such craftiness has many weapons in its arsenal from capitulation in the guise of compromise to betrayal in the name of bipartisanship.

None of the people listed above did a step and fetch it dance to appease power but rather with boldness called evil, evil. It is only in the light of honesty can redemption take place and metonia begin.

Peace
Bishop Andrew Gentry