{"id":12295,"date":"2017-03-09T20:21:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T04:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=12295"},"modified":"2017-03-09T20:21:24","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T04:21:24","slug":"to-hear-or-not-to-hear-and-to-be-or-not-to-be-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/to-hear-or-not-to-hear-and-to-be-or-not-to-be-that-is-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"To Hear or Not to Hear and To Be or Not to Be; That is the Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tanya Luhrmann\u2019s work, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, <\/em>is one woman\u2019s perspective and premise on, \u201cHow can sensible, educated people in an invisible being who has a real effect on their lives?\u201d[1]<\/a> \u00a0My first objection is her broad use of the \u201cAmerican Evangelical\u201d Church when her reality her book reflects her personal interactions with the Vineyard Church which only a subcategory of the Evangelical church in America.<\/p>\n

Of great concern was her ending of the book, \u201cAnd there is another factor that shapes the way the individual experiences God.\u00a0 That is the real presence of the divine.\u00a0 I have said that I do not presume to know ultimate reality.\u00a0 But it is also true that through the process of this journey, in my own way I have come to know God.\u00a0 I do not know what to make of this knowing.\u00a0 I would not call myself a Christian, but I find myself defending Christianity.\u201d[2<\/a><\/p>\n

I entered the book with great interest.\u00a0 I read the book with a question mark in mind.\u00a0 I finished with a deep concern how someone could be around \u201chearing\u201d and \u201cbelieving\u201d and walk away saying that she would not call herself a Christian.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/strong>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Luhrmann\u2019s journey in and around the Vineyard Church is what gave her an anthropological view of her search for how people\u00a0discover and believe in God.\u00a0 Luhrmann focuses on her Vineyard experiences and the semantics and practices that are common to the Vineyard churches that she attended. Her book is a collection of various people and their stories of their miracles, interaction, and miracles that they had received When God Talks Back.<\/em><\/p>\n

Luhrmann introduces us to potheads, mothers, and intellectuals who experience God in their own personal way.\u00a0 \u201cIn fact, what I saw was that coming to a committed belief in God was more like learning to do<\/em> something than to think <\/em>something.\u00a0 I would describe what I saw as a theory of attentional learning \u2013 that the way you learn to pay attention determines your experience of God.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Her ethnographic and psychological background, seem to present a detailed, yet tainted view of some of the experiences.\u00a0 \u201cIn effect, people train the mind in such a way that they experience part of their mind as the presence of God.\u00a0 They learn to reinterpret the familiar experiences of their own minds and bodies as not being their own at all\u2014but God\u2019s.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n

This may sound a bit crass, but I got more from the Preface, than I did the book.\u00a0 At times, I couldn\u2019t distinguish if it was \u201ctongue in cheek\u201d or an outright distaste for the supernatural that she saw\/heard.\u00a0 Some of Luhrmann\u2019s experiences were not new or over the top from the myriad of experiences that I have observed over the years.<\/p>\n

In Luhrmann\u2019s chapter, \u201cThe Skill of Prayer\u201d, I found myself a bit taken back with her experience in London.\u00a0 Her premise was that, \u201cWe have seen that in the kind of prayer taught in evangelical churches, those praying focus on what they think, feel, and imagine.\u00a0 And we have also seen that prayer traditions presume that these practices alter spiritual experiences.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

I followed some of Luhrmann\u2019s skepticism; at times, I have asked questions about legitimacy and experiential environments that caused questioning of faith and reality.\u00a0 Where I have some pause is when we mentally attempt to presuppose or analyze a transcendent God that performs and behaves in ways that are totally foreign to us.<\/p>\n

Luhrmann, on page 190, says the following: \u201cI thought I could figure out whether the mental changes they reported really did take place\u201d (this was about prayer and understanding God), \u201cI was curious about how magic come to seem real to modern people\u201d, \u201cWhen I set out to understand\u2026\u201d, and \u201cFor the most part, I found, the rituals depend on techniques of the imagination.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 She \"\"<\/a>then tells of reading, \u201c\u2026Arthurian Britain and Celtic Isles (it was written by a magician), I allowed myself to get deeply involved with the story\u2026.allowing it to grip my feelings to fill my mind.\u00a0 I read late into the night.\u00a0 And as I woke the next morning, I saw six druids standing against the window, above the stirring London street below.\u00a0 I saw them and they beckoned to me.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

Shakespeare begins Hamlet <\/em>with the following words, \u201cTo be or not to be.\u00a0 That is the question.\u201d \u00a0These words from the early 1600\u2019s seem to reflect Luhrmann.\u00a0 My question is what did she truly resolve in her pursuits? \u00a0Did she hear?\u00a0\u00a0 Did she believe?<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> T. M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, <\/em>(New York:\u00a0 Vintage Books, 2012), 300.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 325.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., xxi.<\/em><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., xxi.<\/em><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 189.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 190.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid., 191.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction Tanya Luhrmann\u2019s work, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, is one woman\u2019s perspective and premise on, \u201cHow can sensible, educated people in an invisible being who has a real effect on their lives?\u201d[1] \u00a0My first objection is her broad use of the \u201cAmerican Evangelical\u201d Church when her reality her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[863,865],"class_list":["post-12295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-luhrmann-dminlgp-6","tag-to-be-or-not-to-be","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}