Recognising myself as a contemporary unresigned denial-free thinker or prophet

I have been described as a prophet—for instance in 1987, biologist, Dr Ronald Strahan of the Australian Museum, commented about my book Free: The End Of The Human Condition: ‘I consider the book to be the work of a prophet’ (documented in the Reviews section of the WTM website). In an interview with Australian journalist Andrew Olle in April 1995, Professor John Morton, the Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the University of Auckland and fellow of St John’s Theological College, Auckland, said of my book Beyond The Human Condition, ‘This is prophesy I believe—a prophetic utterance’ (ABC Radio 2BL, 25 Apr. 1995). Earlier in the same month he had also told the WTM that ‘Griffith is not the first prophet to be persecuted’ (personal communication Apr. 1995). I also recognise myself as an unresigned, denial-free, unevasive thinker or prophet. The reason I do is simply because one of the important tasks of bringing understanding to the human condition is to demystify abstractly expressed concepts and in the course of doing that I need to recognise that ‘prophet’ is the term that has historically been given to someone who is able to confront and look into the human condition. To be able to wander around in the realm of the human condition as I have, I must necessarily be an unresigned, denial-free thinker or prophet, albeit a contemporary one. By ‘contemporary’ I mean a prophet whose one concern is to bring understanding to the human condition, unlike pre-science prophets who could only offer their soundness as a basis for people to associate with if they wanted to be ‘born-again’ to the soul’s world of soundness. Contemporary prophets have sought to bring rational understanding to the human condition, Page 454 of
Print Edition and by so doing obsolete the need for religion; traditional prophets could only create religions.

Acknowledging that I am a denial-free, unevasive thinker or prophet has led to accusations as that I am ‘immodest’, ‘arrogant’, ‘suffer from hubris on a grand scale’, have ‘delusions of grandeur’, seek ‘self-elevation’ and am ‘on a personal quest for power’, but to effectively look into the human condition, as I have done, a person must be secure in self, the opposite of deluded, egocentric and arrogant. An individual cannot be secure and sound enough to be an honest thinker and be an insecure, unsound, deluded, arrogant, egocentric person hungry for reinforcement.

Since unresigned prophets were not insecure from a lack of reinforcement during their upbringing, their self-worth or self-esteem was intact. This means they were the least egocentric of people. In fact they tended to be childlike in their lack of sophistication and invisible to resigned egocentric people with their lack of imposing, pretentious presence—as Samuel was advised when he was trying to identify the prophet David: ‘Do not consider his appearance…The Lord does not look at the things man looks at’ (Sam. 16:7). To be able to avoid becoming resigned an individual had to have had a secure upbringing.

To establish if someone is an unresigned prophet it was only necessary to establish their capacity to confront and look into the human condition. Being able to think truthfully, unresigned prophets were capable of making sense of all manner of mystery and in the process exposing all manner of delusion. They could not begin to do this if they were alienated, insecure, deluded, arrogant or egocentric. One state precludes the other. As Christ succinctly put it, ‘Satan can’t drive out Satan’ (Mark 3:23), and ‘a bad tree cannot bear good fruit’ (Matt. 7:18).