The prophetic voice

Sometimes, I must confess, I rant.  Never, I think, about things that are just personal to me; but about injustices, especially towards the most vulnerable among us.  

Things like the abolition of the Independent Living Fund – a small pot of money which enables 19,000 of the most severely disabled people in Britain to pay personal assistants to enable them to go to work, have social lives, choose when to eat and when to bath, etc.  Now this Fund is to be closed, and by the government’s own admission, the vast majority of its users will not be compensated and their lives will change for the worse.

Things like the Charlie Hebdo murders.  Don’t these people realise that by claiming to do demonically-inspired acts of evil in the name of God they are committing the worst of all blasphemies and will have to answer to Him some day?

Things like outrage over certain atrocities being “fashionable” in the media while others go unreported because they are far away or the people have a different culture or colour of skin from the majority of us in this country.

Things like government ministers manipulating or even downright lying about statistics to try to pretend that their ill-judged policies are causing less harm to the weakest members of society than is actually the case.

I’m not a party political animal – I will give any government a fair chance and when an election comes round I will read all the manifestos and decide which one to vote for, based on policies.  But politics does stir me up, and sometimes I rant.

Sometimes this is not a good thing.  It’s me getting on my high horse and deluding myself that the world can’t see things in their true light without the benefit of my (ahem) wisdom.  But actually, sometimes I believe it’s the Spirit of God stirring me up to speak out on behalf of those who can’t speak for themselves, just as His word instructs us to.  (Proverbs 31.8)

As Christian writers I don’t believe we should apologise if there is a prophetic edge to our writing, challenging our country and its values when we see society departing from God’s values.  After all, isn’t that what the Old Testament prophets did?  Some of them really do read like rants.  I think it’s ok to rant occasionally as long as that’s not all we do.  We should pray, act and be prepared to hold dialogue with those we disagree with, and try to ensure that our motivation in all these activities is love.  It’s not a balance I get right all the time, but I do try, and I hope some at least of what I write is making a difference.

 Ros Bayes has been writing all her life, and has 6 published and 3 self-published books, as well as some 3 dozen magazine articles to her credit.  She is the mother of 3 daughters, one of whom has multiple complex disabilities, and she currently works for Through the Roof (www.throughtheroof.org) as their Training Resources Developer, and loves getting paid to write about disability all day.  You can find her blog at http://rosbunneywriting.wordpress.com and her author page at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ros-Bayes/e/B00JLRTNVA/.  Follow her on Twitter: @rosbwriting.