The Great Derangement - Matt Taibbi [51]
We started talking about the morning’s lessons. One of the things Sorensen had cautioned us about was people who come into the church claiming to be prophets and claiming to know the true Word of God. Sorensen said that all such comers to Cornerstone were traditionally told that they would be allowed to preach, so long as they went to “see Steve”—i.e., him—first. “Nobody ever comes,” Sorensen said contemptuously. Apparently no itinerant false prophet would be fool enough to try his wares under the withering eye of Pastor Sorensen.
I picked at my food with my chopsticks. In the pointy-headed northeastern America of my experience there were no legends of wandering prophets, no dinner-table discussions about personal salvation. But in the rest of the country you had this weird dichotomy, an advanced industrial economy confidently riding the superconductor and the microchip into the space age while most of its population hurtled backward away from the Enlightenment, living out a Canterbury Tales–type quest for revelation in a culture dominated by superstition and mystery.
I had wondered during the lesson just exactly how often strangers showed up in San Antonio megachurches claiming to be prophets. The group at the Chinese-food place now educated me. While the false-prophet thing did occasionally happen, the bigger problem, they said, was that there were people in Bible-study/cell meetings who would sometimes show up, claiming to “have a word.” “People will come and they’ll start saying, ‘I’ve got a word’ and such,” Miriam said. “It happens.”
“Course it’s different when somebody comes and says, ‘God talked to me the other day and said such and such,’” said Murray. “That’s different, that’s okay.”
“It’s just different when someone comes in and starts talking about how they’ve got a word,” added Miriam. “People’ll always have a word.”
At this we entered a danger area when Miriam and Murray mentioned that they were planning on being cell leaders in this church. We congratulated them, in response to which Miriam wondered if she and Murray might not have some of the same problems they’d had as cell leaders in their last church, when certain people talked out of turn and were forever claiming to “have a word,” which I guess meant claiming to have some kind of revelation from God. To be honest I didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about, and it kind of freaked me out.
“I mean, some people have problems,” she said.
“Well, everyone has problems,” said Janine, who always tried to offer a generous opinion about people.
“No, I don’t mean ordinary everyday problems,” Miriam said. “I mean submissiveness problems. Authority problems. And right away”—here she looked at Murray and rolled her eyes—“I know who we’re going to have problems with.”
Clearly she was talking about some third party I didn’t know. Janine and Laurie instantly hushed her up.
“Shhhh!” said Janine.
“Don’t say it!” said Laurie. “Curse! Curse!”
“I’m just saying,” said Miriam, shaking her head, “that there are certain people…”
“Don’t!” said Janine. “Don’t say it out loud! It’ll come true!”
“Shh!” Laurie hushed.
“Yes, that’s true, it is a curse if you say it,” mumbled Murray agreeably, munching his food. Soy sauce stuck to his mustache.
I leaned back in my chair. What the fuck was going on?
“I don’t understand,” I said. “She can’t say something out loud because that might be a curse?”
“That’s right, honey,” said Laurie.
“You see, Matthew,” said Janine, leaning over, “the Devil can’t hear your thoughts. He can only hear what you say out loud.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Of course. I forgot.”
“Thing is, there’s a fine line between saying a curse and telling the truth,” Miriam said. “I don’t see how we can talk about a problem that might happen if we can’t talk about a problem.”
“She’s got a point there,” I said.
“Well, let me tell you how we do it in our group,