Hooray for Our Side

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," positive polytheism, practical parenting, and pestering parrots for peppy people! The world is a harsh place. None of us escape it alive. So do what you can to make your trip enjoyable for yourself and others. And don't sweat the big messes. You didn't cause them, so why beat yourself up?

Today I want to talk about one of my personal favorite Bible heroes, the prophet Daniel. Daniel is a big favorite with the Sunday school crowd because his story is so exciting. He gets dumped in a lion's den, but the lions don't eat him. His three pals spend the night in a fiery furnace and don't even get singed.

I think Daniel always appealed to my inner Celt. Because I was less interested in his lion-taming abilities than in his wizardry.

Yes. Wizardry. The prophet Daniel fits every qualification for a wizard. There's the lion's den bit that we all know and love, but it doesn't stop there. Daniel is gifted with divination. He interprets King Nebuchadnezzar's dream when the king can't even remember it himself! That's Merlinesque. Daniel also has visions of the future that would make Nostradamus proud. And confused. Prophets can be doggone confusing, can't they? Especially when their prophecies are stripped of historical context.

In the little book we've been reading, Deliver Us from Evil: Putting a Stop to the Occult Influences Invading Your Home and Community, author Cindy Jacobs calls all acts of divination the work of Satan. All, that is, except for our hero Daniel. After comparing herself to Daniel and noting that she has been called upon by our nation's government and business leaders for advice, she writes: "There will be prophets who will work with presidents and there will be kings with apostolic gifts to lead their nations."

Just so long as they're Christian prophets, let 'em trance, trance, trance. Know what we wind up with when they're through trancing? The war in Iraq.

We at "The Gods Are Bored" hereby propose a whole new way of looking at Tarot readers, psychics, wizards, astrologers, and prophets.

If your personal psychic is helping your life, she's a good psychic. If she's making matters worse, she's a bad psychic. Her religion has nothing to do with it.

Extra-sensory gifts are nearly universal through cultures, so it's just a little bit unfair to dump all non-Christian experiences of this sort into a file marked "BAD." For one thing, it would make for a very fat file. For another, you might have missed the wizard who predicted that the war in Iraq would be long, messy, and hazardous to human life -- just because that wizard was a traditional Apache shaman, and not a Christian.

As for Cindy Jacobs being called upon to prophesy to our government and business leaders, I just have one thing to say. Perhaps an overnight in the lion's den should be employed to test her worth.