Is God speaking now only to right-wing Republicans of dubious intellect, or have too many of the rest of us gotten too intellectual to listen? When I was a child God used to speak to me all the time. In fact God said specifically for me to become a preacher, which meant simply that I had a natural affinity for a certain kind of thinking; and I was born the son of a preacher; and I had a great ability to recall word-for-word the Scriptures read on Sunday.
We are all, hopefully, called to do the thing that we are best at. If we hear and heed the call God has spoken then we find ourselves in a walk of life compatible with who we are. If we come from a family of teachers this process might be called finding our highest aptitude. If we come from a blue collar family it might be referred to as finding what we are cut out for, or what we feel comfortable doing, or enjoy.
We sometimes call it following in our mother's or father's footsteps. Or if we do it on our own it's called finding our own way. But even though I am not a right-wing Republican I must admit that getting a call from God is more complex than that. The call comes from the invisibles, indiscernible, un-manifested dimensions of the universe.
In our Christian tradition these dimensions are called heaven, and heaven is the Kingdom of God, and according to Luke 21: 17 "the kingdom of God is within you." The call from God comes from inside, okay, Sarah? Don't get too wild-eyed. It's nothing very exotic. Don't do that thing you do with your eyes.
If you are to understand God, God must speak in a language and idiom that you've been taught, unless God speaks to you "in tongues." There is nothing all that exotic about speaking "in tongues." That happens when what God says is so complex that it cannot be put into words. Words are finite and God is infinite. Speaking "in tongues" seems to result from the passion and emotional frenzy to express the infinite in the finite, so calm down Michele. It can all be explained scientifically.
If a Quantum physicist tells you, Michele, that the universe is infinite, as in Unified Field Theory, listen because the physicist can tell you things about the un-manifested, invisible, intangible, infinite, eternal dimensions of the universe that your Christian spiritual tradition cannot.
And, yes the Christian spiritual tradition can tell you how we as humans can live in face of the unknown (unknown because the truths of it are yet to be manifested). Right, Sarah, Michele, and Michael, Unified Field Theory cannot do that.
As I said my father was a Christian minister, a loving man; and so he spoke to me, out of the African American spiritual tradition, of a God of infinite love and infinite compassion, but all he had were finite words. So I would imagine that's why God speaks to me in words of love that only suggest boundless love.
With brutality forever lurking around our African American life in the South, my mother taught of God as protector. That must have been a powerful God because protection came to her husband, her self, and all five of her "dirty-faced" boys, as she used to call us. My mother was something of a spiritual elitist. Of those who she felt had lost their connection to, and faith, in a God of infinite compassion, protection, and love, Michael, she'd say "poor lost souls, lost in the wilderness of the world."
Mom, Dad, and the African American churches that Daddy pastored, never spoke to us of a God of retribution, vindictiveness, hellfire, and brimstone. So God never speaks to me of this either. In fact God had a lot of fun in his voice, and a swallow-tail coat, as in James Weldon Johnson's "The Creation."
I worry about people who have been spoken to about God in a certain way. Does God now speak to them in that same manner? As to Palin, for example, up there in the Wasilla Assembly of God church --did they speak to her of the rapture? During the rapture "all believers who have died will rise from their graves and will meet the Lord in the air, and Christians who are alive will be caught up with them, to be with the Lord forever," according to one of four cardinal doctrines of the Assemblies of God.
"... those who have rejected Christ. They will be judged for their sin and consigned to eternal punishment in a punishing lake of fire," so says the "nonnegotiable tenets of faith that all Assemblies of God churches adhere to."
I used to think of this during the run up to 2008 Presidential election. Supposed Sarah Palin becomes Vice President. With John McCain as President she'd be one 72-year old heart beat away from the trigger to half the world's "nucular" weapons, as Palin calls them.
In June of 2008 Palin said that "our national leaders,are sending [our military] out on a task that is from God." Did God tell her that? Listening to her TV interview with Charlie Gibson she engaged in dangerous saber rattling toward Russia, I started thinking of self-fulfilling prophecies. A self-fulfilling prophecy is something that is not true when you say it but your belief in it changes your behavior to make it true. look into Sarah Palin's eyes I do wonder what God is saying to her, even if only in a subliminal whisper.
If you don't "believe" in a particular deity, does your brain not receive their messages? Like if you switch to FM on a radio, you won't hear AM stations, even though they're there.
I'd like to say that my ideas came from God. I think that'd gain me a bigger audience. Do I need proof, or do I just say so?
These are honest questions. I look forward to reading answers.
(PS - I don't mind when people say God talks to them. I DO mind when they then try to interfere in MY life because of messages they say are from a deity)
Is Sarah Palin a prophet of her own words? Did the words of a true god put her on the campaign trail to make it possible for Obama to win? Now she’ll speak her message on FOX. What additional wonders now will the god of say-anything-for-money (the God of Beck and Limbaugh) have her perform?
My younger brother is a Methodist minister and we frequently discuss the dangers of presuming to have a "special" connection to God. One of the points he often makes is that it was Jesus who first separated church and state. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar, has somehow been forgotten by those who would impose their interpretation of belief on others.
Palin, and others of her kind pose a threat to freedom because they lie out of ignorance, the lust for power, or in the belief that they are justified in doing God's work. In any case they are still liars and God has nothing to do with it.
So I find Professor Davis and his blogging to be very timely in thoughtfully bringing up what our taught belief systems, program us to believe about the world and God and what it is we try (and lie) to communicate about the intangible, unseen and unknown. I sense he has a deeper knowing of these unknowns from a Source which relies not on news, computers, cell phones, google, iPods, television, blogs or anything else the collective "WE" is plugged into. I don't know about Sarah, but I am listening...
I wish to compliment you on your most thoughtful article.
If there is a God, I like yours. I don't think I could ever make friends with Mrs. P*al*n's god. Does her god serve any good purpose?
Looking into Sarah's eyes is obscured a bit by the unnecessary glasses she wears to deflect attention from the fact that her eyes don't track together. The left eye has a mind of it's own, looking out in a different direction...where she must see the "up is down" world that she speaks from.
Suppose her brain is wired the same way her eyes are, that part with a vacuum where there ought to be conscience is crowded each day with fantabulous money making schemes, some of which put her onto FOX news channel.
God must have told her to ask NBC for a show too, she and Glenn Beck suggested they would co-host a hilarious mocking of themselves...call us they said...we'll do it better than the pros.
Now she and Beck have a fantasy that she is the "new George Washington" that will come and save us from...whatevah...also. So many identities and only one body, what is Sarah to do?
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in the whole US as it is in Wasilla.
Give us this day our common-sense solutions and forgive us our hypocrisy and we will never forgive those who create Death Panels against us.
And lead us not into socialism, but deliver us from reason.
For Thine are the hillbillies and the GOP and the Faux News Channel forever.
YouBetcha!
I'm a person of faith and a person who is rather queasy at what these people do with it. I'm tired of the voices in their heads and the voices in their ears being miraculously transformed into a message from on high. I'd say that the source of that voice is coming from some place much further south if you know what I mean. ;-)
Thank you for a very interesting article Rev. Davis. I enjoyed reading it.