God speaks to us far more than we realize.
How can I make this
assertion when no matter where we look we don’t ‘see’ or ‘hear’ God anywhere? Clearly
I have to answer this question before I can even begin to explain how we can
hear God. Philosophy has a name for this problem. It is known as the problem of
Divine Hiddenness and it has certainly kept many people awake at night.
I think God wanted it to be a ‘problem’. He honestly wants it to be hard to see him, at least initially. Philosophy’s answer goes something like this: ‘If humans could see God they would always do the right thing. However, they would do the right thing for the wrong reason which is out of fear of punishment. Therefore, humans under this view must freely choose to do what is right and this requires God not be entirely obvious to our senses.’
This is not a bad answer. Indeed it gets very close to the heart of the matter. Yet, there is an even deeper truth. The truth that only the sufferers and mystical seekers dare to know. God is not hidden. Rather he screams his presence in silence, and glows brightly in physical shadows. He resides in the depths of darkness and lives at the heights of light.
The Psalmist practically laments his inability to escape God’s presence in Psalms 139. This Psalmist (who may have been David) realized something which few have internalized deep down beyond intellectual assent. God really is everywhere, and everything expresses his glory and presence. Humanity’s ‘original sin’ was losing the ability to see and hear him in everything. God speaks through his creation, but many times in ways we either ignore or refuse to accept. The path of prayer could be said to be the path of relearning this truth.
This relearning may not always be easy and can even require one to “pick up their cross” and follow Jesus’ example of accepting suffering. So how do we hear God’s voice? Well there are plenty of examples in the Bible that show God loudly announcing his presence. The God of the Old Testament is definitely into flare and pyrotechnics! Bushes that don’t burn, axes that float, cities that are destroyed, loud swirling whirl winds! Yet, in our own lives very few of us can claim to have experienced such magnificent spectacles. Indeed, when we read the Bible, we find ourselves begging God to give something to prove he is out there. And it seems that for the mass majority of us, God is nowhere to be found.
The New Testament has less of the flare but still holds enough miracles to keep our attention. Jesus is healing people left and right. Why do we see so few of those? The answer is twofold. We are too closed off to see them and we forgot who to imitate. The popular and perceptive New Testament scholar N.T. Wright gives us an answer to the first. He explains in his book Surprised by Scripture that our understanding of miracles has been influenced by a pagan understanding of God created by the philosopher Epicurus.
Epicurus claimed that no gods exist and that even if there are some they are certainly far removed from human experiences. Wright believes that this corrupted all of modern philosophy. He also asserts that it has confused us on the nature of miracles. Currently many people believe miracles are moments of radical insertions of God’s power. In this view God does not interact with the world until he wants a miracle. Immediately after the miracle, he is gone again. This, Wright believes, misses the Christian understanding of what a miracle is. Miracles are God’s working in the world and helping to shape this world. It is not something which simply happens randomly and then is gone. In a sense God is always working in the world so miracles are occurring all the time!
This is a truth which many mystics have come to learn. God created this world, and he isn’t going to leave it alone. Richard Rohr, a modern Catholic mystic, sums up this point beautifully when he states that there is no sacred versus profane. Rather, one could say that there is only realization and ignorance. The Christian process of becoming holy, sometimes known as sanctification, isn’t about becoming better at doing the right things. It is about realizing the amazing and wonderful truth that God is always loving and welcoming. Once we start on this path of becoming more and more aware of God’s constant presence in the world and all loving nature, we automatically come to have deeper and deeper trust and faith in his will and find ourselves doing the right thing even in spite of themselves.
So what does all of this have to do with hearing God? Once you realize these truths, the next step is to stop asking God to speak and start listening. One of the best ways to do this is to go into solitude. Quiet the mind which is constantly forgetting God’s goodness anyway. Enter into a deep peace.
After this point I can’t say how God will speak to you. The Bible is ripe with different ways God gives his message. But before you can hear God over your own egotistical thoughts follow the Bibles advice in the Psalms. “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) and enter into “the Peace which surpasses all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7).
In this state of remembrance and peace you will be more likely to actually hear what it is that God has been saying to you. You might hear the advice God has been trying to get through to you all along. Then you too will know.
I think God wanted it to be a ‘problem’. He honestly wants it to be hard to see him, at least initially. Philosophy’s answer goes something like this: ‘If humans could see God they would always do the right thing. However, they would do the right thing for the wrong reason which is out of fear of punishment. Therefore, humans under this view must freely choose to do what is right and this requires God not be entirely obvious to our senses.’
This is not a bad answer. Indeed it gets very close to the heart of the matter. Yet, there is an even deeper truth. The truth that only the sufferers and mystical seekers dare to know. God is not hidden. Rather he screams his presence in silence, and glows brightly in physical shadows. He resides in the depths of darkness and lives at the heights of light.
The Psalmist practically laments his inability to escape God’s presence in Psalms 139. This Psalmist (who may have been David) realized something which few have internalized deep down beyond intellectual assent. God really is everywhere, and everything expresses his glory and presence. Humanity’s ‘original sin’ was losing the ability to see and hear him in everything. God speaks through his creation, but many times in ways we either ignore or refuse to accept. The path of prayer could be said to be the path of relearning this truth.
 |
| Over the centuries, Christians and Jews have found solace in the story of the prophet Elijah, who met God not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but in a "still, small voice." |
This relearning may not always be easy and can even require one to “pick up their cross” and follow Jesus’ example of accepting suffering. So how do we hear God’s voice? Well there are plenty of examples in the Bible that show God loudly announcing his presence. The God of the Old Testament is definitely into flare and pyrotechnics! Bushes that don’t burn, axes that float, cities that are destroyed, loud swirling whirl winds! Yet, in our own lives very few of us can claim to have experienced such magnificent spectacles. Indeed, when we read the Bible, we find ourselves begging God to give something to prove he is out there. And it seems that for the mass majority of us, God is nowhere to be found.
The New Testament has less of the flare but still holds enough miracles to keep our attention. Jesus is healing people left and right. Why do we see so few of those? The answer is twofold. We are too closed off to see them and we forgot who to imitate. The popular and perceptive New Testament scholar N.T. Wright gives us an answer to the first. He explains in his book Surprised by Scripture that our understanding of miracles has been influenced by a pagan understanding of God created by the philosopher Epicurus.
Epicurus claimed that no gods exist and that even if there are some they are certainly far removed from human experiences. Wright believes that this corrupted all of modern philosophy. He also asserts that it has confused us on the nature of miracles. Currently many people believe miracles are moments of radical insertions of God’s power. In this view God does not interact with the world until he wants a miracle. Immediately after the miracle, he is gone again. This, Wright believes, misses the Christian understanding of what a miracle is. Miracles are God’s working in the world and helping to shape this world. It is not something which simply happens randomly and then is gone. In a sense God is always working in the world so miracles are occurring all the time!
This is a truth which many mystics have come to learn. God created this world, and he isn’t going to leave it alone. Richard Rohr, a modern Catholic mystic, sums up this point beautifully when he states that there is no sacred versus profane. Rather, one could say that there is only realization and ignorance. The Christian process of becoming holy, sometimes known as sanctification, isn’t about becoming better at doing the right things. It is about realizing the amazing and wonderful truth that God is always loving and welcoming. Once we start on this path of becoming more and more aware of God’s constant presence in the world and all loving nature, we automatically come to have deeper and deeper trust and faith in his will and find ourselves doing the right thing even in spite of themselves.
So what does all of this have to do with hearing God? Once you realize these truths, the next step is to stop asking God to speak and start listening. One of the best ways to do this is to go into solitude. Quiet the mind which is constantly forgetting God’s goodness anyway. Enter into a deep peace.
After this point I can’t say how God will speak to you. The Bible is ripe with different ways God gives his message. But before you can hear God over your own egotistical thoughts follow the Bibles advice in the Psalms. “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) and enter into “the Peace which surpasses all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7).
In this state of remembrance and peace you will be more likely to actually hear what it is that God has been saying to you. You might hear the advice God has been trying to get through to you all along. Then you too will know.
God speaks to us far more than we ever realize.
Whuddup Reed? Fantastic write, I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to hear your thoughts about something. I was extremely interested in the portion where you explain Wright's attribution of our modern understanding of miracles in part to Epicurus and his teachings. To a non-academic who has neither heard the name Epicurus nor read any of Wright's works (*cough me) that makes tons of sense. I can even see how that thinking has been present in my own theology, and it has caused loads of issues as I've struggled with the idea of miracles today on my own.
However, looking back at my experience, had I been asked the source of that understanding of miracles I would have immediately pointed to the Bible (or at least what I was taught about the Bible). I'm by no means a Biblical scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but I have lots of experience with it due to my upbringing and I fail to see how the Bible puts forth a message contrary to that of a watered-down version of Epicurus's teaching, at least at face value. From the random and fitful God of the Old Testament to the unpresent and spotty miracle-giver (not counting Jesus) of the New Testament, it seems God's actions in the Bible itself practically gave Epicurus foundation for what he said.
Now, I want to clarify I'm not arguing with you anywhere (I hope that was obvious), I'm wanting your thoughts on this. I also fully embrace my understanding of the Bible is slapshod at best, which is why I don't concern myself with Biblical matters very often. So the position I'm speaking from is not someone with an understanding or hermeneutic they're defending, but someone who has had a lot of painful experiences with Bible teaching and is trying to reconcile them with their current theology of an all-loving God.
I also feel that part of the answer has to do with the fact that the Old and New Testament examples I gave above were understandings based on taking both writings fairly literally and at face value, which even I know now is a poor idea. However, I stated those examples because those are the kinds of perceptions I would have kept had I never bothered further examination of theological matters past high school and the first parts of college (I always went to private, Christian schools) and perceptions I feel many people in the same place hold.
Perhaps this speaks to what Stanley Hauerwas was talking about when he said, "No individual should read the bible all by themselves... No task is more important than for the church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. The Bible is not and should not be accessible to merely anyone but rather it should only be made available to those who have undergone the hard discipline of existing as a part of God's people."
Fellow authors (and readers) please feel free to respond too.
A good part of the problem comes from either or thinking which could also be described as all-or-nothing thinking. Wright gives a great example of the pilot who landed his plane on the Hudson river. Yes, it is a miracle which God was involved in directing, but it was also due to the pilots years of training and experience. So, even in this example we move away from the either or and into the both and which is how Rohr usually likes to describe the needed shift in thinking. It is also necessary to look at the philosophical aspect. The laws of nature and the universe were established by God they are not in competition with God. So when God interacts with the natural laws he isn't really fighting them or anything like that. Rather, he is working inside of them. After all they are inside of his domain. It shouldn't really be a shock that an all knowing all powerful God who created the laws of nature couldn't also allow for his own changes when needed. In this model he is still radically involved in the world, rather than far away and uninterested. When he does not interact around the laws of nature it is because he has a greater purpose for withholding. Now for a Biblical analysis. I won't go into too many examples but I would like to focus on the question of exorcisms because I think these could help show some larger points. What would a 1st century second Temple Jew call a mental disorder like say schizophrenia? What would they call the healing of a chemical imbalance in the brain? Might they not claim that the person was possessed? Would they not describe the healing as an exorcism? We today wouldn't blame them for these assertions because they had no name for mental diseases but we have no reason to believe they didn't exist before we had a name for them. So Jesus in healing someone's mental illness is still participating in a miracle, and it is both supernatural and quite material at the same time. One last thought. Many theologians and philosophers believe that God is always sustaining the very existence of everything material. This means that every moment things continue to exist a miracle is occurring. I hope that helped clear up some problems.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to raise a further point that could result from strict either/or thinking:
ReplyDeleteVoltaire had a very famous objection to miracles. Based on a view of God that labels him as both omnipotent and omniscient (in the classical and strong sense of those terms), then a miracle would be a 'mistake.'
By this, Voltaire meant that if God was capable of pre-planning everything, then there should never be a need to violate the laws of nature in a radical way!
I think there is something instructive, as well as something objectionable about this. The big objection is that it does not allow for freewill, but I don't want to talk about that. The instructive aspect of it agrees with what I think is Reed's fundamental point, if we think God is in control, then why are we so shocked radical intrusions into the world are not common?
In a very real way miracles have been hijacked by people that demand shock and awe rather than the miracle being how intimate we can be with out creator daily. I don't demand constant shock and awe in my interpersonal relationships, why do I demand it from God?