The Hubris (and hatred) of False Prophets

(note: this piece was deleted and is being republished at request)

A couple of days ago, Koan Bremner of Multidimensional Me found this piece penned by Ambra Nykola regarding Kim Clement's "prophecy" about the New Orleans flood....

and it got my inner theologian up.

I wasn't going to post on it, esp. since I have to give Nykola a link, but having been both to the loony end of theoloy and back to the Truth of it, and given that I abhor hate speech, esp. when it is directed against the most vulnerable of our population, my inner theologian could not let this one pass...

Taking her suggestion, I went in and read a bit about Kim Clement. I was appalled that this man has so much power when he is, quite obviously, a Loony. Yes, with a capital "L"--Loony. In my travels I have met many a recovered addict who has claimed to have seen the light, who claims prophecy, who believes himself to be the second coming of Paul...and all are full of absolute crap. Not a one has ever subjected his "revelations" to stringent philosophical or theological analysis.

If the prophecies are true, if there is True Faith and the True Word of God behind the experiences, then there should be absolutely no fear in having them examined.

Sure, I can hear the naysayers right now: oh, academia knows nothing. They're all a bunch of (fill in the blank on this one)....

But, quite honestly, that's the voice of the conspiracy theorists who distrust not just academia but anyone who doesn't agree with their delusions. I have met many individuals who are part of established Seminaries, not from "AssHat Ministries," who understand the numiosity of religious revelation, and can spot a phony within the first ten words of their "revelation."

I have known them, too, to validate revelations that were, indeed, "revelations."

Yet the fact of the matter is, in our time, this modern time, this post-prophet time, God, if you so believe, doesn't give out huge revelations to nutballs like Clement. God doesn't have time for that. When God does speak, it is softly, to those who need to hear, not to those who will take the message and grandstand on it. God moves those who are inclined to improve the human condition, not those who want to make a name for themselves because they didn't make it as secular rock stars--not to those who want to give flashy yet simplistic answers to very difficult questions.

And in our time, God does not need to make war on God's own people. God does not need to dole out Divine Retribution. We have shown that we are more than adequately capable of doing that to and for ourselves.

And since we are so darned good at killing ourselves en masse, what God, more than anything, may want for us is to have compassion, to understand that human nature is flawed, that we are not omnipotent and cannot divine the future either thru Divine Revelation or Doppler Radar. Because we have developed a wonderfully nuanced understanding of the physical universe, God, more than likely, expects us to master nature with whatever knowledge/science we have, and adequately deal with the consequences when nature throws us a curveball like Katrina--because maybe it was something in the monkeying of our environment that made things worse than they might have been. We are expected to take care of the mess made by nature because we like to believe we are in control, and we're not supposed to beat the crap out of each other further by claiming some goofball "Divine Revelation" meted out by some nutball ex drug addict "predicted" this would happen because all our cities are just this side of Sodom and Gomorrah.

and if you are so darned naieve to believe that what we got going on right now is Sodom and Gomorrah, I'd like to introduce you to the writings of a dude names St. Jerome...who was so certain that he was living in the End Times...