Believe Jeroboam? Why not? Probably he didn’t know the meaning of a lie; which means he had no solid concept of truth; he could be so sincere as to pass a lie detector test as he charmed the tech into spasms of euphoria. He was the politician’s politician in clerical garb; the preacher’s preacher in good pragmatic form: if it worked, it was true.

Understand that Jeroboam had not set out to challenge one concept of truth with another; he was not against supposed "true" religion at all; neither was he for false religion; it was just that to him truth was irrelevant. Keeping the people happy and coming back for more was for him the critical issue.

Now, he being the king this would have been the end of the story, perhaps, had it not been that in the ultimate scheme of things truth matters dearly. It matters to God. And to make this clear, God roused into action a pesky prophet.

The prophet cut to the chase with Jeroboam by striking at the core of all popularized religion—he challenged its authenticity; he exposed the supposed cornerstone of "This is as real as it gets folk," as, in fact, the Achilles heel of the seeker-friendly crowd.

"People, you’ve been snookered," the prophet declared, shattering the cornerstone with a prophecy of the ultimate destruction of their false religion followed by a literal, vivid, interruption of their convenience by turning their central worship site into a pile of rubble (1 Kings 13:3-5). The prophet included a graphic visual confirming what he had said. There was no fire from the sky wiping out the crowd; but a conscience-jolting message confirmed by a mind-blowing interjection clear enough that anyone with half a brain could figure out that their religious Rolex was not even a good Timex.

In just such a way pesky prophets are bound to get in the way of popularized religion sooner or later. It is not that they have anything against popular religion. But they get annoyed with religion made popular by being politically correct; that is, by avoiding anything making religion other than comfortable, convenient, affirming, and inclusive. In a prophet’s mind, being any of this as a matter of course is wonderful; being so to be politically correct so as to be seeker-friendly so as to be popular is disaster because it is to be false.

Prophets stand for truth which is anything but politically correct. Too often, truth is not all that popular. Think of it: if the guy purporting to know your Cartier necklace is a knockoff would have just kept quiet then even you wouldn’t know. Truth can be anything but likeable, or convenient; it can be downright annoying; it can make you mad. Like the fellow said, prophets may live loud but not long.

For this reason, when the prophet himself is popular, watch out! American conservative Christianity went through a phase where it was difficult to separate the supposed prophets from the politicians. We went to war against a so-called secularized culture by getting so close to a political party as to anoint it with oil from heaven. Preachers made names for themselves by assuming prophetic roles decrying cultural crimes committed by the uncivilized, non-sanitized liberal hordes. Masses of conservative Christians naively bought into the war, abandoning the church’s truly critical prophetic role, compromising the gospel as just another politician’s speech with religious overtones. Millions marched lockstep in stride with the all too-popular "propheticians." But stripped bare in the public square, its political allies turned out of office, and the cultural war crumbling as now a fourth state legitimizes gay marriage, and the District of Columbia (D.C.) moves to recognize gay marriage performed in any state, the movement turns out to be just another form of seeker-friendly religion without godly authenticity—wildly popular for awhile with a broad-base of conservative believers, it turns out to be a toothless tiger with little power to change the culture. If the "propheticians" garnered followers with a strange negative bad news affirming phobias with the false promise of a culture cleansed of all those we might hate, they fit right in with the preachers of a strange positive psycho-babble affirming phobias with the false promise of your best life now.

In fact, far from popular, the biblical model of a true prophet reveals an often isolated lonely profession filled with uncertainty; it comes many times with insecurity its only absolute, its only retirement plan being, literally, out of this world. So who wants to be one? No one; prophets are called not made. Responding to a calling is vastly different from making a career choice. As a result; prophets are, as a friend once said, as scarce as hen’s teeth or hair on a bowling ball; try to find one; you cannot.

Yet they will find you.

They appear suddenly in days of popularized, seeker-friendly religion passing itself off as the real deal; they appear because the authenticity of true religion as revealed by God is at stake which means the honor of God is at stake and upholding God’s honor is their highest calling. They appear in times of political turmoil and national upheaval because God intends to clearly guide his people, who in such times discover popularized, seeker-friendly religion to be what it is: a "Hail, fellow, well met" social gathering on the stern of the Titanic as the bow slips beneath the waves.

So where are the prophets now? We are in such times.

In the theocracy of Jeroboam’s day the prophet’s role was clear because it was as much cultural as religious because culture and religion were entwined; everyone knew who the prophet was even if he seldom spoke. In the democracy of our day culture is supposedly secular yet so smeared with religion that no role is clear. Anyone can be a prophet by commanding a microphone, camera, or computer and making a claim.

Yet, a true prophet’s voice rings clear by connecting with the past so as to encompass the present and thereby assess the future. In the light of God’s word, the prophet makes sense of the present by reminding us of the past so as to anticipate the future confidently, faithfully, and thus fruitfully. Fantastic visions are not the stuff of prophets; clear proclamations making known the direction of the flow of God’s work in history are. Prophets can tell you where we are going because they know where we are because they know where we have been.

Popularized religion, on the other hand, like politics, does not have a clue. Both must deal with the immediacy of popularity; with the precious fleeting seconds of seeker-friendliness; because their life span is no more than the fickle favor of fads, the vagaries of the current election cycle; they feed upon poll data, to know whether the crowd will applaud this or hiss at that; they must continually adjust their message because they are slaves to their own popularity as measured by the applause of the crowd. So rather than offer certain direction to the crowd, popularized religion like politics must take its own uncertain direction from crowd. It reminds one ever so much of the tail wagging the dog.

In fact, Jesus coined an idiom for it: the blind leading the blind. It does not take a prophet to predict the outcome.

So it turns out that like the rest of us, popularized religion and politics desperately need a prophet. Will anyone step up to the plate?

Be reminded that in doing so you risk the venom of rattlesnakes combined with the spell of cobras rolled into the coils of pythons; if it is a welcome you seek bow out. If the glory of God is your passion, however, the risk is well worth it.