If I saw Ezekiel on the street would I think he was crazy?

In the second half of chapter 3 God gives Ezekiel warnings about the consequences of not following though on God's warnings to His people. God clearly told Ezekiel that his responsibility was to warn the people whether they listened or not. He then indicates that this is going to cause such consternation among them that they will bind Ezekiel in his house. But first he is told to go and lock himself in his house. The result of these events seems to be that Ezekiel will himself become so stunned by the message and possibly by the treatment of his people that he will be unable to speak for some apparently lengthy period of time and will only be relieved from this when God gives him some specific warning for the people.

This part of the story amazes me because I am quite sure that if someone in the church did this today, that we would all assume that they were mentally ill and have them locked up. So, from that perspective, binding Ezekiel in his house does not seem to be a very different solution to what we would do in the 21st century.

So how do we evaluate the impact of our Christian message? God calls each Christian to be a radically transformed and radically transformational in the lives and society that we live in. Yet none of us want to be locked up as insane, so what do we do, or better, what should we do?

In reality, I think that we just do not evaluate the Christian message much at all. We do this in both meanings of evaluate. That is, we do not take the time to count up its profits and losses because we are terrified that if we do, we might just be evaluated by others as crazy. We also do not evaluate it in the sense of placing a value on it. Ezekiel did not have this luxury. God placed the value - if you obey you and the people may live; if you do not obey, you will both die. God also forced him to evaluate it in the more common meaning of evaluate, the first one above, that is to look at the profits and losses. In this case the losses exceed what I would want - that is to be judged to be a danger to society.

Lord, give me the grace to see the profit of following You to be so high that any consequence is more than worth the cost!