How Do You Know a Prophet? By Their Fruits …

My online correspondent, Jesse, moved from our discussion of the essential spiritual teachings of a faith to the difference between professing a belief system and actually practicing its principles.

He asked how I felt about the bloodshed that God had commanded the Hebrews to indulge in. 

According to the histories in the Old Testament, God insisted that they kill every man, woman, and child of some groups lest they be tempted to take these enemies into their bosom … which they might have done otherwise in obedience to God’s repeated commandment to treat the stranger as one of their own.

RELATED: Exploring the Multiple Ways the Prophets Speak to Us

This aspect of the Old Testament record had also raised cognitive dissonance in my mind and heart. It was during my investigation of the Baha’i Faith that a careful study of the Bible revealed something I had never noticed in my earlier piecemeal reading of these books. The so-called minor prophets — especially Ezekiel — had some very vivid commentary on this epic slaughter. 

While the Hebrews claimed to be under God’s command, Ezekiel made it clear that wiping out your neighbors, and then saying “God made us do it,” was not acceptable behavior. As recorded in Ezekiel 22:18 and 24-29, God gave Ezekiel some very harsh words to say:

Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me; they are all bronze, tin, iron, and lead, in the midst of a furnace … Son of man, say to her (Israel): You are a land that is not cleansed or rained on in the day of indignation. ’The conspiracy of her prophets in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing the prey; they have devoured people; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows in her midst. Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things … Her princes … shed blood, to destroy people, and to get dishonest gain. Her prophets plastered them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions, and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God,’ when the Lord had not spoken. The people of the land have used oppressions, committed robbery, and mistreated the poor and needy; and they wrongfully oppress the stranger.

A number of Christian sects teach that Adam and Eve were made perfect but fell from grace and that mankind is deteriorating from that nascent perfection. They believe that history will end in a day of judgment in which God will destroy the sinners and take the believers into heaven. 

This is not a universal doctrine, for many religious people — certainly Baha’is — understand that humanity is not deteriorating from a perfect prior creation but is evolving from the dominion of our animal condition toward being truly human. We are moving from a material understanding of the world to a spiritual one. We accomplish this through a sometimes painful process of acquiring self-knowledge and human virtues. Some of us are eager to do this; others wholeheartedly resist. 

So, when we look back from any distance in human history, it’s helpful to remember a couple of things: 

1. When the books of the Tanakh (Old Testament) were in the process of being written, humans were at an earlier stage of evolution intellectually, spiritually and socially. 
2. The abyss from which the teachings they were given were intended to raise them was so far below what we’d consider civilized today that it can seem unimaginable or even completely alien to our experience. 

When Moses proclaimed “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” he was speaking to a demoralized conglomerate of hostile tribal groups whose idea of justice was “you steal my sheep, I’ll slaughter your entire flock.” There were no jails in which to incarcerate people, no courts of law, none of what we consider the essential guardrails of a civilized society. No societal infrastructure existed, and a plethora of conflicting religious beliefs did exist. 

The second thing to bear in mind is that whatever tool human beings are given for their collective benefit, they will find ways to turn it to selfish ends — power over others being a favorite. While Jesse railed against practices and dogmas that were not part of the actual teachings of Christ, or Muhammad, he acknowledged that there is a difference between what was taught and what many professing believers think, say, and do. 

In Matthew 7:15-21, Christ offered some of the best advice on how to navigate this seeming paradox: Don’t look at what they say; look at what they do:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? … Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.

I offered Jesse a homely analogy: If a professing vegetarian eats meat in your presence, do you assume all vegetarians eat meat? Or that all vegetarians are liars? Or that vegetarianism is a hypocritical philosophy? Or that physicians and nutritionists who recommend a vegetarian lifestyle are quacks?

RELATED: Multiple Messiahship: Baha’u’llah as the Return of the Prophets

Probably not. You’d most likely think that this person’s behavior was hypocritical, or perhaps the result of a weak will, or that perhaps he didn’t understand what being a vegetarian meant. 

If you want to understand what Christianity is supposed to be, read what Christ taught and strive to understand it in context with the world he inhabited. Saying “Jesus is Lord” and practicing what he taught are not the same thing.

One fruit of the Faith of God is a standard for behavior. If that standard were adhered to, the world would be a far better place, as Christ said in Matthew 23:23:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.

And as Baha’u’llah revealed:

O son of man! If thine eyes be turned towards mercy, forsake the things that profit thee, and cleave unto that which will profit mankind. And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself.