Prophetic crisis

We are, for the most part, double-minded. There is hidden deep within most of us, I suspect, a profound tension between these narratives, knowing better than to trust the dominant narrative but having a huge stake in its being true, wanting the gospel narrative to be true but reluctant to speak another language about the world other than the one in which we are palpably invested.... Prophetic preaching does not put people in crisis. Rather it names and makes palpable the crisis already pulsing among us. It is for that reason that we have such energy for resistance and denial. The hard work of adjudicating between these narratives is itself energizing. The hard work, in fact, is to keep the tension hidden, work that keeps us exhausted.

Walter Brueggemann

The Practice of Prophetic Imagination