Do Victims of Disaster Need Prophecy?


In difficult times we seek meaning in "prophecy." But victims of disaster need aid and compassion, not vague predictions that seem to come true whenever something terrible happens.

Why do we find meaning in the ambiguous symbols of Nostradamus, or the end of the Mayan Calender in 2012? Don't all calenders end sometime? When we see a terrible earthquake in Japan, some of us dust off the hopelessly out-dated predictions of Edgar Cayce. Others insist that Biblical navi like Isaiah and Amos foresaw today's events. In fact, the concern of Old Testament "prophets" was not the future but the moral injustice of their own society.

"Prophecy" comforts us with the age-old illusion that somebody, somewhere, knows what will happen next. But faith is not knowing.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is an ancient pleasure for ego to say "I told you so!"