Post date: Feb 5, 2017 9:26:19 PM
Since most people don't follow my train of thought or always understand my super specific references, I feel as if I should first explain my title. I believe Joan of Arc needs little introduction; a strong woman who heard the voice of God and helped the French fight England. On a drastically different note, I always enjoy making a good math reference whenever I can. John Nash studied economics and basically created the concept of game theory. More pertinent to this post, Nash suffered from schizophrenia and heard voices in his head. Both of these people accomplished great things but one heard voices for religious reasons in order to accomplish a religious goal and the other suffered from a mental illness but was still able to contribute to society. So this leaves me with a question: were the visions Margery Kempe received from God or just a delusion?
While I do believe this is an interesting question and a very witty post title, I am not so much concerned with the how she receives visions than the why. She makes a point to describe herself as a sinner which makes me beg the question: why her? Is this a story to tell sinners that God won't give up on you or to show that humans are flawed? Joan of Arc was an icon and used these voices she heard to do something great but Kempe is more just living life. Is she the more relatable Christian character we're supposed to look up to instead or is her life the beauty we're supposed to see as humans struggle not to sin? I know that during this time, the Catholic church was becoming less and less relatable as priests were getting richer and more and more flaws were being recognized in the running of the church. This could be their attempt to reaffirm their relatability or I could be completely wrong, just something to think about.