{"id":16512,"date":"2018-02-15T20:32:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T04:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=16512"},"modified":"2018-02-16T06:15:25","modified_gmt":"2018-02-16T14:15:25","slug":"16512-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/16512-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bells, Ashes, and hearing the Voice of God"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"<\/a>Training<\/u><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m training my puppy how to jingle<\/em><\/p>\n

The tinkle bells<\/em><\/p>\n

to go outside.<\/em><\/p>\n

And I also strain to hear<\/em><\/p>\n

The voice of God<\/em><\/p>\n

Speaking to me,<\/em><\/p>\n

I wonder if<\/em><\/p>\n

perhaps,<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m losing my hearing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Or maybe God isn\u2019t even jingling the bells.<\/em><\/p>\n

But sometimes it might be like<\/em><\/p>\n

The confusion I have<\/em><\/p>\n

When our bird rings the bell in his cage<\/em><\/p>\n

And I think it\u2019s the puppy at the door.<\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s not even God\u2019s voice I think I hear,<\/em><\/p>\n

but a bird\u2019s bell.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think the first time I remember being frustrated with someone talk about hearing God speak to them, we were living in Kenya. More than one conversation was repeated that went something like this: \u201cGod is calling us back to the States to work.\u201d We heard that especially when things were challenging in the work. Or, \u201cGod wants to use this money to build this [fill in the blank] project; we can\u2019t not do it.\u201d We\u2019d hear that when a project didn\u2019t fit with our team\u2019s goals. My husband and I started thinking about comments such as these as \u201cplaying the God card.\u201d[1]<\/a> The \u201cGod card\u201d would get played in such a way as to shut down a conversation, suggesting that \u201cyou can\u2019t argue with God, so you might as well go along with what I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

I mention this in light of reading T.M. Luhrmann\u2019s When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God<\/em>, not to critique her thesis, but to recognize that we continually wrestle with how to understand the way God interacts with us in the present time. Luhrmann herself relates that common theme\u2014wrestling\u2014in the story of Jacob wrestling and being re-named: \u201cChristians of all ages have wrestled with the difficulty of believing that God is real for them in particular, for their own lives and every day, as if the promise of joy were true for other people\u2014but not for themselves.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m quite intrigued by this book, but admit I\u2019m not sure yet how I (personally, as well as our congregation) fit into her thesis. Luhrmann suggests that evangelical Christianity<\/p>\n

\u201csolves the problem of presence with specific faith practices. The problem of presence is that an immaterial God cannot be seen, heard, smelled or felt in an ordinary way, and so worshippers cannot know through their senses that God is real\u2026 a problem particularly acute for churches that encourage an intimate personal relationship with the divine. So churches like the Vineyard teach congregants to find God in their minds and to discern which thoughts, images, and sensations might be God\u2019s word.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I will be candid here: I just don\u2019t make a very good evangelical. I have never heard God speak to me. God never \u201ccalled\u201d us to or from Turkana. We went (and left) because we believed God could use our gifts in that place for the building up of the Kingdom of God. We were willing to go and sought to honor God with our service. We moved various places and took various jobs since then, not because God sent us places, or told us to go. We did not feel a peace (or lack thereof) in making these decisions. We went because we are willing servants who saw opportunities to serve God in those places. I have never heard or felt the voice or presence of God in my mind. And yet\u2026 do I believe God is present among us? Absolutely.<\/p>\n

Like the subjects Luhrmann observed, I love to imagine the richness of scriptural narratives. And recognizing that I cannot see the Holy Spirit among us, I often use the concept of the creative thinking process of imagination to consider the possible ways the Holy Spirit might be at work in this place. But like the leaders of the early church in Jerusalem, our only conclusion would be \u201cIt seemed good to us\u201d (Acts 15:28). Nicole Unice, author of \u201cPlaying the God Card,\u201d (see link in footnotes) put it this way: \u201cIt was not an audible voice or handwriting in stone [leading the Jerusalem council]. It was imperfect people working together to find a compromise, to move forward in unity so that the gospel could be preached effectively.\u201d I cannot discount the way that God works, especially in others. But neither can I presume to suggest that God speaks to me.<\/p>\n

At this point, I want to suggest that young people are ready to relate to God in a different way, no longer (simply) in the mind. Luhrmann writes that \u201ceach generation meets God in its own manner.\u201d[4]<\/a> Perhaps the pendulum is swinging in a new\/old way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For instance, last night, our low-church Christian Church observed Ash Wednesday for the first time. In a darkened chapel, candles were lit. We prayed Psalm 51 as a prayer of repentance together. We knelt and said a prayer of confession together. We stood to receive ashes on our foreheads, and then offered the bread and the cup of the Lord\u2019s Supper to one another. (For my mainline friends, I\u2019d guess this all seems very ordinary). Surprising to some of my colleagues\u2014we had double the number of attendees than expected, and the majority of them were young people, even dating couples who\u2019d skipped a fancy holiday dinner to consider their mortality. I suggest that the younger generation is looking for a relationship with God that is experiential (like the evangelicals in Luhrmann\u2019s tale); but they are looking for external signs, images, and stories to connect with God, rather than hearing him speak internally to them.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> I recognize we didn\u2019t coin the term, as others have used it as well: https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/women-leaders\/2010\/september\/playing-god-card.html?paging=off<\/a><\/p>\n

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

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 132.<\/p>\n

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

Training I\u2019m training my puppy how to jingle The tinkle bells to go outside. And I also strain to hear The voice of God Speaking to me, I wonder if perhaps, I\u2019m losing my hearing. Or maybe God isn\u2019t even jingling the bells. But sometimes it might be like The confusion I have When our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"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":[1145,628,1144,920],"class_list":["post-16512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ash-wednesday","tag-luhrmann","tag-rosie","tag-turkana","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16512","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\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16512"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16536,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16512\/revisions\/16536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}