We normal people must sometimes feel left out and inferior when we hear others saying that they know what God thinks.  Most of us have to make our own decisions and choices without the benefit of having some supernatural voice telling us what to do.  Since we're left out of this divine pipeline, you can't blame us too much for wondering whether these other folks are making it all up – as when, for example, some politician says that he or she has been called by God to run for a certain office.

Seriously, people with absolute certainty about what God wants and why God acts in a certain way drive me up the wall.  As I wrote in my Mudgelog on January 25, 2010, I am especially distressed when these individuals declare that God brought on some natural disaster that indiscriminately killed thousands of people because God wanted to punish us for our sins.  That's not just a nutty idea; it's also insufferable arrogance for these people to presume that they know all about God.  The divine may be all-knowing; they aren't.

Perhaps I am an inferior mortal, beset with doubts that I should not have and cut off from the Divine Internet because I sinfully disregard the Truth that these people alone possess.  However, it isn't that I'm ignorant of theology and ethics.  I know all about the seven deadly sins, and I understand that pride leads the procession.  Though, like most mere mortals, I have indulged in all of them – pride, greed, envy, anger, sloth, lust, and gluttony – I'm aware enough that none of these are admirable traits, so I've tried to avoid them.  This is especially true of overweening pride, which has been recognized as a particularly deadly sin since at least the time of the ancient Greeks, who called it hubris.

In my view, people who claim to have a direct pipeline to God have to be the most hubristic (arrogantly prideful) of all human beings.  It is not just that claim to be the exclusive confidants to the thoughts of an all-knowing deity.  This sense of superiority deprives them of all empathy, compassion, and understanding.  Very often, when they speak of this "special knowledge" that they have, they do not speak to other human being as equals but as inferiors who simply do not and cannot have the divine wisdom that they acquired by listening to God.

As I said in the above-noted article, we might write these people off as whackos, as we might people who claim to "hear voices."  What really troubles me is that thousands or tens of thousands of people believe what these people say.  If these people who "talk with God" are convincing or charismatic enough, otherwise sane individuals will believe what they say – and act accordingly.  That's frightening.