[Vision2020] Worse than I anything I could imagine

[Paul Rumelhart]

I was underwhelmed by the amount of pornographic detail in the video on 
the web page linked below, frankly.  I was expecting something far 
worse.  The part in question, some details of a tryst he saw in his 
visions between a member of a past audience and a tall blond man, didn't 
seem over the top to me.  Maybe I'm just jaded, or have hung out too 
much on 4chan in the past.  It looked to me like the detail was added in 
an attempt to prove the truth of his visions to himself.  He described 
the encounter in a way that gave enough detail that the lady in the 
audience would know he saw what he saw and would have enough reason to 
object if it wasn't accurate.  This is an attempt to verify the accuracy 
of his visions, without being too graphic.  He describes the encounter 
in a way that gave detail without dwelling on the actual act.  He even 
tries to bring in detail about the hotel room ("a certain-colored 
bedspread") without naming the actual color in order to keep the exact 
hotel chain a mystery.

The problem is that he isn't taking into account the situation and his 
own status.  He is in danger of deluding himself into thinking that 
possibly untrue visions are true.  If the woman had had an affair with 
her husband's short dark-haired best friend, she's unlikely to correct 
him on this for fear that her husband will put two and two together and 
figure out who she really slept with.  There's also the problem with a 
person on stage who is in front of the faithful who is claiming to know 
specific things about members of their flock and who is in a position to 
claim to be speaking for God.  If the woman hadn't had an affair, she 
may not contradict him in front of a live audience for fear of coming 
across as being an unbeliever in the church.

As someone who has upon occasion seen things that I classify as 
supernatural, I'm familiar with the need to verify things.  The problem 
is that few people take those steps and can slip down the rabbit hole 
through a positive feedback self-deception loop.  I applaud him for 
attempting to verify things, if that is indeed what he is doing.  I'd 
suggest he take it further, though.  If it were me, I'd want to be damn 
sure, three times over, before I started claiming that people have 
abused others or been unfaithful to their spouses.  He may just be a 
good reader of people.  He may have noticed the lady's reaction on a 
subliminal level when he brought up the subject.  This may have clued 
him in to the fact that she was guilty about having an affair, and his 
mind might have supplied what detail it could with no relation to 
reality, similar to how a dream imparts information - a way for his 
subconscious to give him the info with little regard for exact detail.  
Your subconscious communicates with you via symbols, putting too much 
stock in details is foolish, unless you've done the groundwork to 
actually verify them.

In my mind, the real danger is that he claims to be speaking for Jesus.  
He looks to me like he believes that, and from there it's just a few 
small steps to a whole host of *really bad things*, if he's not 
careful.  He needs to take a step back and make sure he knows what he's 
doing.  He can do real harm here simply by not being distrusting 
enough.  It's a very seductive position he's in.  He is convinced 
(rightly or wrongly) that he's seeing truthful visions of others.  This 
gives him a power that most people would be hard-pressed not to use.  
People, for various reasons, don't want to contradict him and this feeds 
his desire to be a man seeing visions from God.  He's a potential 
time-bomb waiting to explode.  Right now, he may be accusing people of 
having affairs or attacking their wives when it's not true.  Tomorrow, 
who knows?  There are reasons events like Heaven's Gate happen.

I don't really have an opinion on the religious aspects of this, i.e., 
how biblically correct his being able to have visions is.

Paul

On 08/20/2011 10:26 AM, Art Deco wrote:
> Offering information relevant to Rose Huskey's initial post, I posted 
> the following link:
> http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2011/08/pornographic-divination.html
> The link offers from a religious group, many of whom are Reformed, the 
> sect that Douglas Wilson anoints himself as the leader of.  I posted 
> this information so that readers could see some of sexually 
> obsessed Reformed Pastor Mark Driscoll's remarks, and to see 
> the various reactions to it from within the Reformed Community.
> There are a number of issues discussed in this link in a sometimes 
> very lively and revealing manner.
> At least two are perhaps worth a short comment upon from an outsider's 
> point of view.
> *Cessationism v. Anti-Cessationism *
> Cessationists, of whom Douglas Wilson is an example, believe that the 
> Bible, at least in the form that Wilson uses, is the last word from 
> his alleged God.  There haven't been nor will there be anymore signs, 
> words, revelations, etc from this God until judgment day.
> The Anti-Cessationists believe that God still speaks and among the way 
> it speaks is through revelations, visions, signs, etc.
> This is what is curious:  Mark Driscoll claims his very sexually 
> charged, obsessive, explicit visions including visions of rape, 
> homosexuality, child molestation are visions from God.
> This is contrary to Wilson's position yet Wilson defends Driscoll's 
> use of these visions and has made him the feature attraction of 
> Wilson's upcoming Grace Sexinar.  If you read the comments found in 
> the above link, you will see how cleverly and not without the 
> /serrated edge/ Wilson's lame and illogical defense of this inclusion 
> of Driscoll is skewered by various members of the Reform Community.
> For of us that occasionally visit various religious commentary sites, 
> this latest double gaffe( inviting Driscoll, and then defending his 
> view) of Wilson's is one in a long line of declines in his national 
> prominence and influence.  His ersatz and not clearly thought through, 
> uneducated theology has come under increasing attack from many who 
> were at one time his allies.
> When someone like Wilson sets themselves up as the ultimate authority, 
> mistakes cannot be admitted without undermining that authority.  
> But Wilson's mistakes are sometimes so glaringly obvious that his 
> ultimate authority is undermined anyway.  It will be interesting to 
> see the amount of permanent damage Wilson has inflicted upon himself 
> with the Driscoll gaffes.
> *Catching On*
> There is another very interesting phenomenon found in the comments 
> section of the above link.
> Various apostates of Wilson's Christ Church Cult have commented upon 
> his unsuitability to be a pastor citing lack of his moral fitness, 
> dishonesty, intolerance, narrow, illogical interpretation of 
> scripture, narrowly proscribing the kind of music allowed in church, 
> glaring favoritism toward his family and others, defending the 
> indefensible (Sitler, Wight, et al), etc as reasons for their views.
> Among his current flock there are spouses, most of them women, who 
> hold similar views.
> I haven't read every dispute with Wilson on the web over Reform 
> matters, but the comments in this link are the first time I have seen 
> either directly or indirectly members of the Reform Movement 
> questioning Wilson's suitability to be a Reformed pastor.  If you read 
> closely the reasons are similar to some of the above including lack of 
> moral fitness and theological errancy and inadequacy.
> There is an old adage about adultery:  "The husband/wife is always the 
> last to know."
> Aside from the obvious very close-to-home implications, it appears 
> that Wilson's local flock is in the same position as a cuckold.  
> Perhaps if some of them read the comments in the above link from their 
> brothers and sisters in the Reform Movement, the might begin to catch 
> on to what a hypocritical, self-centered, bamboozling charlatan their 
> pastor is and decide it is time find a congregation with a leader of 
> more integrity.
> It probably has not escaped notice that besides Wilson, his son 
> Nathan and apparently permanently bewildered son-in-law Bennie Merkle 
> are speakers at the Grace Sexinar.  So the cash keeps flowing into The 
> *Wilson Family Cult and Cash Machine*, but if reports are accurate, 
> not flowing nearly so copiously as in past times.
> Almost everyone has sexual fantasies of various kinds and 
> intensities.  Mark Driscoll is entitled to his.  But for him to claim 
> they are visions from God is delusional, and to broadcast and to 
> celebrate them as such is beyond outré.  And when crackpots/con 
> artists like Wilson who intentionally and for profit promulgate such 
> delusions and celebrations, especially when contrary to their alleged 
> theological beliefs, in the name of their alleged God one can easily 
> see why Rose proclaims: "Worst than anything I could imagine."
> w.
> Wayne A. Fox
> wayne.a.fox at gmail.com <mailto:wayne.a.fox at gmail.com>
>
>
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