A Latter Day Jeremiad is Called For

False Prophets of the Mid-West Put Themselves On Notice

We have just seen Jeremiah versus the False Prophets replayed before our eyes.  OK.  That's a bit of an exaggeration.  The person representing Jeremiah was a bit mealy mouthed as he went about his work.  But the false prophets of Yahweh were right on cue.

Jeremiah, of course, was the faithful, courageous prophet serving Yahweh in Judah right at the end of that kingdom, before the final exile in 586 BC.  He was bitterly opposed by the Establishment Prophets, who hated even the merest hint that the Lord was about to bring down the Babylonians to destroy the Temple and drive thousands upon thousands into exile.  This, said Jeremiah, was coming because of their sins.  "Traitorous snake", hissed the False Prophets, who were claiming to speak for God Himself.

History, naturally, vindicated Jeremiah as the Lord's true prophet.  At the same time it utterly damned the False Prophets as being, well, false.

In the United States recently the Midwest Society of Christian Philosophers (otherwise known as the Society of False Prophets) convened for a confabulation.

Richard Swinburne, the distinguished Oxford philosopher and Orthodox Christian, delivered a lecture over the weekend at a Midwest Society of Christian Philosophers conference. The topic? Christian sexual ethics. [Rod Dreher, The American Conservative.]

Swinburne apparently delivered a mealy-mouthed presentation on homosexuality.  He, sort of, vaguely condemned it.  In other words, he stood within the general vicinity of the Scripture's teaching.  Alas and alack.  His audience, the members of the Midwest Society of False Prophets, rose in spontaneous apoplexy.  They rushed into electronic print to denounce the horrible traitor in their midst.

Yesterday, I gave Richard Swinburne, the famous Oxford Christian philosopher, a piece of my mind. As one of the keynotes of the Midwest Meeting of Society of Christian Philosophers, he referred to homosexuality as a “disability” and a “incurable condition.” While Swinburne did not think homosexuality was intrinsically wrong in the same way that adultery was wrong, he argued (if that’s the right verb under some principle of charity) that homosexuality was extrinsically wrong. Homosexuality was a disability in the lacking of the ability to have children, and God’s commands of abstaining from homosexuality might prevent others from fostering this incurable condition in others.

Yeah. I know.

My response was mixture of abhorrence and overwhelming anger, and I tried as I might to encounter this idea calmly. I told him he medicalized being gay in the same way that phrenology medicalized racism. It was obnoxious to listen to Christians lay claim to sacrificial love at this conference, but at the same time not see the virtue of that same love as a possible quality underlying other configurations, yet I told others this is the reason why Christians should read Foucault. When you do, you start to notice how power manifests in local contexts in which those discourses occur. [Edward J. Hackett]

Yes, let's get this straight.  When self-important False Prophets get entranced by post-modernist prophet Foucualt anything and everything can be rationalised as good.  What will be captivating and entrancing at any given time will depend upon what the pagan world is celebrating as the cause celebre du jour.  In Jeremiah's day it was child sacrifice on the altars of Molech.  The False Prophets thought it was a "jolly interesting idea", a wonderful expression of the virtue of love.  In our day, it is the "fundamental human rights" of homosexuals--another wonderful expression of the virtue of love, to be celebrated by all.  False Prophets are consistent down through the centuries.

The False Prophets of Jeremiah's day were so incensed they called upon the king of Judah to execute a sentence of death upon him.  (Jeremiah 26: 11)  Little did they realize, let alone conceive, that their sentence of death was, in fact, a self-pronouncement.  They were the ones who died in the bitterness of their apostasy and rebellion against Yahweh.

Members of the Mid-West Society of False Prophets be warned.