Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Kairos, Crisis, and Global ApartheidSpeaking Truth to the Tower: Kairos, Dissent, and Prophetic Speech

Kairos, Crisis, and Global Apartheid: Speaking Truth to the Tower: Kairos, Dissent, and Prophetic... [The gift of a kairos consciousness, I have argued above, is that it gives us the possibility to discern the signs of the times, to recognize a situation as a crisis that could be, or is in fact, devastating for the community. In many ways, the crisis is precipitated, created by the greed and indifference of the powerful. The crisis is to their benefit: they profit from it, hence they refuse to recognize it as a crisis. The prophet of God, on the other hand, recognizes the situation as a crisis because of her kairos consciousness, which allows her to see the situation through the eyes of the suffering, the weak, and the defenseless and as a result of her walking humbly with God. In this chapter the tower from the story of the Tower of Babel serves as a metaphor for the powers and principalities with which prophetic witness has to contend. The crisis presents itself in contradictory terms, such as T. Walter Herbert calls the Iraq war: a “catastrophic success,” a devastating crisis for the citizens of Iraq but hugely profitable for those who instigated and waged this war, yet with long-term moral consequences equally as devastating for them.1] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Kairos, Crisis, and Global ApartheidSpeaking Truth to the Tower: Kairos, Dissent, and Prophetic Speech

Download PDF
26 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/kairos-crisis-and-global-apartheid-speaking-truth-to-the-tower-kairos-V8NAXncjeb

References (2)

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2015
ISBN
978-1-137-50309-1
Pages
141 –167
DOI
10.1057/9781137495310_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The gift of a kairos consciousness, I have argued above, is that it gives us the possibility to discern the signs of the times, to recognize a situation as a crisis that could be, or is in fact, devastating for the community. In many ways, the crisis is precipitated, created by the greed and indifference of the powerful. The crisis is to their benefit: they profit from it, hence they refuse to recognize it as a crisis. The prophet of God, on the other hand, recognizes the situation as a crisis because of her kairos consciousness, which allows her to see the situation through the eyes of the suffering, the weak, and the defenseless and as a result of her walking humbly with God. In this chapter the tower from the story of the Tower of Babel serves as a metaphor for the powers and principalities with which prophetic witness has to contend. The crisis presents itself in contradictory terms, such as T. Walter Herbert calls the Iraq war: a “catastrophic success,” a devastating crisis for the citizens of Iraq but hugely profitable for those who instigated and waged this war, yet with long-term moral consequences equally as devastating for them.1]

Published: Dec 20, 2015

Keywords: International Criminal Justice; Religious Fervor; Respectable People; Desmond Tutu; Prosperity Gospel

There are no references for this article.