This article is inspired by an exchange I had at Obama Release Your Records. It went like this:
Guest: GOD told me Kevin is going to hell. I can’t wait till Kevin calls GOD a liar.
Dr. Conspiracy: God is not [a] liar, but apparently you’re off your meds again.
Guest: Then your (sic) going to Hell. Your GOD is Obama, the son of Satan. Obama the community organizer, trained by Saul Alinsky who dedicated1 his book "Rules for Radicals’ (sic) to Lucifer.
Yes Kevin, you are known for the company you keep. Take a good look around you and you’ll see the flames of hell.2
GOD told me that is where you are going. For eternity.
Dr. Conspiracy: Call the psychiatric hot line, quick.
Our Pastor preached the sermon today with a Bluetooth headset in his ear, and partway through he said “I have to take this,” and touched the headset and then related his end of the phone call from Jesus. Since he had the headset on, this was obviously planned, and it was done to illustrate a point, not to make anyone think that God endorses T-Mobile. By the same token, I just assumed that “Guest” was saying what he said for effect, not because he was actually having the auditory hallucinations that would justify my “off your meds” response.
I assumed we were both kidding, but I suppose he could have been serious. Some of the birthers are a little strange.
The Mormons believe that any of the Mormon priesthood (and that’s pretty much every adult male in good standing with the Church) may receive revelations from God; however, they believe that the revelations received are appropriate. An individual receives revelations about what he should do; the First President of the Council of Elders is the “prophet, seer and revelator” for the entire church. For example, when birther plaintiff Cody Judy claims to have received a revelation that he should be leading the Latter-day Saints, that revelation was above his pay grade—it was not an “appropriate revelation.”
By the same token, birther beliefs in Constitutional interpretation are equally inappropriate when they say that judges in 200 lawsuits didn’t follow the law, and that legal scholars and historical authorities “don’t trump [their personal interpretation of] the Constitution.”
Whether of divine origin or ones own moral compass, a revelation, that “I’m right and you’re wrong” in the context of an argument that you’re losing on the facts and the evidence, is highly suspect.
I don’t get messages from God, but sometimes I have moments when the right thing to do becomes clear. What do to about the birthers is not that clear. So I just keep blogging and hope for a revelation.
1Just for the record, Rules for Radicals was dedicated to Jason Epstein, Cicely Nichols, Susan Rabiner, Georgia Harper and Irene. There is a quote about Lucifer, but it is not in the book’s dedication.
2I did have a vision of flames creeping up from the bottom of the TV screen below Jerry Falwell when he was hawking a book that said Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster, but I think I had just dozed off (true story).
Man, I admire you. And I do not say that very often.
I find it interesting that God always says exactly what the nutbags want Him to say….
I know a guy in Arizona who was convinced that God told him to open a Christian bookstore. He was warned by experts that independent Christian bookstores are lucky if they break even, but he was undeterred. The store failed (he couldn’t even get his own church to buy books and supplies from him) and he lost his house and his life savings.
“God revealed to me…” is a favorite refrain of televangelist hucksters – Pat Robertson, Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn, Peter Popoff, et al. Popoff once claimed that God has a radio frequency!
As a Southern Baptist, I often encounter fellow parishioners, and especially preachers, who pompously assert that “God told me” something or the other. My response is to ask: “Did he write it on the wall, or did he just send you a fax?”
I am not well-liked.
“People say, well, do you ever hear any other voices other than, like, a few people? Of course I do.” — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2008
Well, some birfers at long last got something right: only imminent Divine intervention can help their cause, which has lost all connection with reality,
God told me to get out and mow the himdamned lawn today. He reinforced the message by sending over some storm clouds and thunder.
I said “I can’t mow in the middle of a thunderstorm. You think I’m crazy?”
God was nonplussed.
I encounter this a lot from birthers Doc. There was this guy on Amazon that used to turn this into a religious debate. Everytime you pointed out the errors in his logic he claimed you were going to hell. Same thing happened to me the other day with another birther.
Come now, God keeps up with the latest communication devices, he txts. The other methods:
1. Fax – Too 80s.
2. Write it on the Wall – Too Babylonian,.
Soon will appear on Orly’s Facebook wall:
NADT
You can text God back now (from Ship of Fools):
I’m a geezer, either of those technologies are the cat’s-meow for me.
When the birthers meet the Devil (whom I picture looking like Rowan Atkinson from his famous sketch), won’t they be surprised when he directs them to the lake of molten sulphur.
I’ve always found the whole idea of the fax to be an affront to all that’s right and digitally holy, and only barely acceptable during a very brief period in tech history, approximately when Hunter Thompson was referring to it as the “mojo wire.”
So… I’ve got some data that exists on a piece of paper, and I need to convey that data somewhere. So I’ll create a digital image of it, cool. Then I’ll convert that to analog noise — what, what? Wait! It’s digital now! Stop! …*sigh*, OK. Beeps and boops and krrrrsh over the phone, and we reconstitute it as digital data. AND YOU’RE TURNING IT BACK INTO ANALOG FORM YET AGAIN BY PRINTING IT? GAHH, DON’T YOU KNOW THAT PRINT IS DEAD?
Oh, and let’s make sure that it’s invariably a really crappy thermal printer you’re immutably consigned to print it with. (And someone is probably then going to need to take that piece of greasy paper and scan it… .)
So I’m both pleased that faxing continues to wither away, and appalled at how long it’s taken for people to use the lovely digital networks we’ve had in place for a few decades.
…other than the occasional lapse where someone is compelled to get on a bloody airplane to tote a couple of pieces of paper a few thousand miles. I mean, can’t we just post things on web sites, so that everyone can see the data? It’s the data that’s the important part, after all.
an explaination of the voice of god……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTOeAcGHKms
a bit of bad language, but most amusing
😀
Will he be physically and emotionally abusive to them, and refer to each of them as Baldric? 🙂
Love that movie…!
I would agree with you, except that I figure that God is “old-school.” His kind of messagery and destruction is pretty much spelled out: engraving stones with Commandments and bombing people with plagues, floods, pestilence, and so on.