False Prophets

I read Jeremiah 23 today, and thought of this speech:

"You remember some time ago there were movements all around the country called take back the night? I want to start a new one called take back the Bible, or take back the Scriptures. (applause)

Whatever your holy text is...it is time to laid claim to those. We have allowed the Bible to be taken hostage, and it is being weilded by folks who would use it to hit us over the head. We have to take back those Scriptures. You know, those stories are our stories. I tell this to lesbian folk all the time, the story of freedom in Exodus is our story....That's my story, and
they can't have it. (loud applause)

We need to teach that the world is not black and white. This current administration notwithstanding, the world is not black and white. We need to teach people about nuance, about holding things in tension, that this can be true, and that can be true, and somewhere between is the right answer. It's a very adult way of living you know, and people don't like it. They're not entirely comfortable, and it is way more comfortable to know black and white, and to believe one is right and the other is wrong.

What an unimaginative God it would be if God only put one meaning in any verse of Scripture."

- Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual Episcopal Bishop in the U.S., to a Planned Parenthood "prayer breakfast" in D.C., April 15, 2005

I thought of this speech while reading the following verses:

Thus says the LORD of hosts: "Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. They say continually to those who despise the word of the LORD, 'It shall be well with you'; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, 'No disaster shall come upon you.'" (v. 16-17)

"Am I a God at hand, declares the LORD, and not a God afar off? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the LORD. I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, 'I have dreamed, I have dreamed!' How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart, who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal? Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the LORD. Is not my word like fire, declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, declares the LORD, who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the LORD, who use their tongues and declare, 'declares the LORD.' Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the LORD, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all, declares the LORD. (v. 23-32)