#466: What is a Prophet?

“The prophet is a person who suffers from a profound maladjustment to the spirit of society, with its conventional lies, with its concessions to man’s weakness. Compromise is an attitude the prophet abhors. This seems to be the implication of his thinking: Compromise has corrupted the human species. All elements within his soul are insurgent against indifference to aberrations. The prophet’s maladaptation to his environment may be characterized as moral madness (as distinguished from madness in a psychological sense).

“The mind of the prophet, like the mind of a psychotic, seems to live in a realm different from the world which most of us inhabit. Yet what distinguishes the two psychologically is most essential. The prophet claims to sense, to hear, and to see in a way totally removed from a normal perception, to pass from the actual world into a mysterious realm, and still be able to return properly oriented to reality and to apply the content of his perception to it. While his mode of perception may differ sharply from the perceptions of all other human beings, the ideas he brings back to reality become a source of illumination of supreme significance to all other human beings.”

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Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets (pp. 521-522). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Abraham Joshua Heschel  (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972) was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was a leader in the civil rights movement. |  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Joshua_Heschel

#465: Ever Liable to Abuse

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.*

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*Speech in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, 2 December 1829, The Writings of James Madison: 1819-1836 (1910), ed. Galliard Hunt, p. 361
Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison

James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751[b] – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, expansionist, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. He is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the United States Bill of Rights. He co-wroteThe Federalist Papers, co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party, and served as the fifth United States Secretary of State from 1801 to 1809. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison

#464: “Justice Is His Nature”

Reflection: A message for ideologues of mercy without regard to justice.

No single attribute can convey the nature of God’s relationship to man. Since justice is His nature, love, which would disregard the evil deeds of man, would contradict His nature. Because of His concern for man, His justice is tempered with mercy. Divine anger is not the antithesis of love, but its counterpart, a help to justice as demanded by true love.

The end [result] of sentimentality is the enfeeblement of truth and justice. It is divine anger that gives strength to God’s truth and justice. There are moments in history when anger alone can conquer evil. It is after mildness and kindness have failed that anger is proclaimed.

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Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets (pp. 380-381). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972) was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was a leader in the civil rights movement. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Joshua_Heschel

#463: “For Love to Function”?

Reflection: A message for ideologues of “affirm the feelings.”

“Nothing is so sweet to the heart of man as love. However, for love to function, the suppression of sympathy may be necessary. A surgeon would be a failure if he indulged his natural sympathy at the sight of a bleeding wound. He must suppress his emotion to save a life, he must hurt in order to heal. Genuine love, genuine mercy, must not be taken to be indulgence of mere feeling, excess of sensibility, which is commonly called sentimentality.”*

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*Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets (pp. 380-381). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972) was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was a leader in the civil rights movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Joshua_Heschel