Anything but the Bible
/"Who's to say she's not talking with angels?" the guy said. He had just told me about his mother's conversations with people who are not there. Sadly, she's in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease and the stories are sad. The man, trying to justify her behavior in some way, made an argument that she might be able to engage in some kind of super spiritual behavior more advanced than you or I.
Over the years, I've heard my fair share of these stories. The argument typically includes an opinion of a spiritual possibility followed by the statement, "who is to say it's not true?" By no means does this surprise me. It's the driving force behind pantheistic paganism and there are many pantheistic pagans in America, especially in the West. What makes me batty is when I hear this argument from people who will not allow the possibility that anything written in the Bible might be true. 'Who's to say the single opinion of one person couldn't be true. . . but there's no way the Bible is true.' In other words, the person is saying, "I will not even consider the possibility that the Bible is true because it's not my idea."
And there's really more behind this than truth. It's really about submission. If I can create spiritual truth, I'm really just trying make myself a god. But if there is a spiritual truth that I don't create, it's more a matter of accepting that truth and then submitting by life to that truth. Now, for those that want to say no, I guess I could just ask, "who's to say it's not true. . ."