Has anyone noticed that after Jesus (or Mohammad), we seemed to stop getting prophets? Sure there have been learned scholars and even a scattering of holy men and saints, but no ones seen a bonafide prophet since the big boys of monotheism. Did God run out of messages? Did he decide that we’d reached perfect understanding of his ineffable will and didn’t need further guidance? The state of the world is all the counterargument you need for that one. Or did he decide that the human race just didn’t ‘get it’ and gave up on the whole shepherd to his flock angle as a bad idea?
In ages past the Word was never a static thing. Once in a while a new amendment would filter down from on-high to say that ‘this’ needed changing or ‘that’ had been misinterpreted. Occasionally there was a whole new segment added or something old overwritten by a new directive. If you’re a Christian then the whole arrival of Christ can be summarized as “well this has been working okay so far, you’ve gone forth and multiplied, but now its time to curb those destructive urges and become better people. Don’t throw away the commandments, but make sure you practice them within the overriding directive of Love thy Neighbour”.
It’s pretty obvious that we didn’t ‘get’ that bit.
Yet somehow all these wise men and updates stopped coming. Maybe we stopped listening to our wise and just followed the rich. Maybe we locked up the divinely touched along with the mentally imbalanced. Maybe the Word was sabotaged by the books that tried to encapsulate it. Maybe we were so caught up in our patriarchal struggles to notice the prophetess that passed unnoticed, so caught up in what is written that we failed to hear when something new was said. Mohammad basically said not to listen to anyone that came after him, and the monolithic church spent all those centuries all tied up in politics at the expense of its pastoral duties. I really hope that is the case and we simply missed the message, I’d hate to think that the Mormons were actually right, or that we’ve ignored David Suzuki’s divine message at our peril.
