God’s Work and Voice in Me, Part 7D: Voices Anyone? An immodest proposal,

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(82) Gods Work and Voice in Me Part 7D Voices Anyone – YouTube

A continuation from the series “You Are Not the One to Build.”  I will probably go back and redesignate all of Part 7 into this new series.

Slide 2.  The Proposal

1. Treat spiritual voices generally as real, not “imaginary,” “hallucinations” or “delusions.”
2. Learn to consciously distinguish the good voices from the bad ones.
3. Learn to follow the good voices, and consciously resist/reject the bad ones.
4. Teach children to do this!

Jesus told us that we would still be hearing from him.  He also said  we would still hear his voice. 

Jesus also warned us about competing voices.

It seems to me that the best way to handle all of this is not to deny the reality of all of those voices, but to learn to distinguish between them.

Slide 3. My Problem

Actually hearing God during conversation

My experience:

I’ve always, since I was very young, had some consciousness of God speaking.  Of course, I also heard as a child adults responding to my statements of what I had heard with things like:  “How cute.  But you know, Ian, that you really didn’t hear God. He doesn’t talk to us. Now it was just your imagination, wasn’t it?  Right? Of course I’m right.”  After a little of this, I learned to quit talking about what I was hearing.  I also learned that I should try to ignore the voice I thought—but really only “imagined”–was Jesus.  That voice was inconvenient and alarming to the adults in my life, and I was acutely sensitive to being shamed on account of my overactive imagination and a lot of other things.

But I never stopped hearing from God.  I just learned to try to ignore his voice for the convenience of others, and to quit talking about it.

Now, as I said the beginning of the “You Are Not the One to Build” series of presentations, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome as an adult.  I readily admit that it is possible that the vast majority of children who experience at very young ages what they believed at the time to have been talking to God actually do learn to completely suppress that voice as a result of subsequent adult and peer interactions.  It may well be that my continued consciousness of hearing God’s voice at a time when other children have learned to completely ignore it was only another example of defective socialization secondary to autism.  But listen on…

Slide 4: Topic of this section: About children and millstones.

The children you already know about. They are children who say they hear God speaking.

We will get to the millstones in a few slides.

Slide 5.  Don’t try to stop the little children.

But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and don’t try to stop them! People who are like these children belong to God’s kingdom.”  Matthew 19:14 (CEV)

Slide 6.  Preliminary Queries.

1. Do many-potentially all—young children hear “voices” which adults in our culture tell them are “imaginary,” and then tell the children they must ignore those voices and never admit to hearing them?
2. Do most children from religious backgrounds at some point think they have heard or conversed with God, or some deity?  Does this generally have the same result—draw the same adult reaction—as hearing any other non-physical “voice” would have in our culture?

Based on my reading, I would suggest that the answer to all of these questions is “yes.”  Even studies done in Western countries that frown on “hearing voices” consistently find over a third of young children have reported to someone hearing non-physical voices—and these studies are, for obvious reasons, subject to a significant degree of negative self-report bias.  In non-Western cultures the numbers are higher.  And there can be no doubt that American children who report hearing from God are usually told to bury that perception—and, in times more recent than my childhood, referred for psychological treatment if they don’t.

Slide 7.  Contrast with what Jesus said

Our culture’s response to God actually speaking is greatly at contrast with what Jesus said about the way to enter his kingdom:

Some people brought their children to Jesus so he could bless them by placing his hands on them.  But his disciples told the people to stop bothering him.  When Jesus saw this, he became angry and said, “let the children come to me!  Don’t try to stop them.  People who are like these little children belong to the kingdom of God.  I promise you that you cannot get into God’s kingdom unless you accept it the way a child does.” 

Mark 10:13-15 (CEV)

Jesus was angry that his disciples tried to stop little children from coming to him.

It is only those who receive his kingdom the same way a little child does who can enter it at all.

How is that?  Little children are trusting.  If the king speaks, they trust what he said.  They do not try to evade it.  Among other things, they do not try to evade the king’s words by denying that he said anything at all.  And, having trusted what the king said,  they are humble under his hand, generally letting him have his way, knowing that his way is best and he will not harm them.

Slide 8.  God communicating with us is an official symptom of mental illness.

Some of the more common delusion themes are:

• Delusion of control: False belief that another person, group of people, or external force controls one’s general thoughts, feelings, impulses, or behaviors…
•  Delusion of thought insertion: Belief that another thinks through the mind of the person…

Wikipedia. Delusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion.  Accessed  5 Sep. 2023.

Recall that the last part of this presentation presented a series of Scriptures in which God said he would continue to communicate with us, although all of those Scriptures could at least plausibly be read as ambiguous on the question whether God would speak to us with a voice.  Each of the Scriptures explained in that part could be read to promise only that either 1) God will guide our thoughts by his Spirit, or, in that, in an even more limited sense, 2) God will guide our understanding of the Scriptures by his Spirit.  What these Scriptures can’t possibly be read to say is that, now that the Bible is complete, God has left us on our own and will never directly communicate with us at all, not even by guiding our understanding of the Scriptures.  And I know of no Christian denomination that has gone so far as to assert God’s Spirit is no longer active in the “illumination” of the Scriptures.

Yet such a denial would be required to fully acquit the Church of promoting mental illness, according to the standard definitions of delusional thinking given on this slide.  God guiding our thoughts, or even God guiding our understanding of a written text, both posit either mild control of our thoughts and feelings (that is, “guidance”) or outright thought insertion on the part of the Holy Spirit.  And science assumes the Holy Spirit does not exist and is therefore incapable of doing these things. 

Of course, the completely transformed life, in which God actually controls everything I do and say, is completely out of the question.  It is a delusion of control gone to its absurd extreme!

Slide 9.  The insistence that communication be “public”

Of course, it remains possible to believe that God can communicate with us without being mentally ill, but only if he communicates with a “voice” everyone can hear.  Humans communicate through speech, and through speech reduced to writing, all the time.  But, for voiced communication to be believed, it is generally insisted that the communication be “public.”  I’ve put together my own definition, which seems to cover all of the possible loopholes:

Test for whether a communication is “public”

Assume: A computer with linguistic artificial intelligence and a very sensitive microphone can be trained to understand the objective meanings of all possible statements made in any language which the person claiming to hear a voice understands.

Test:  The person who reports hearing a voice not their own has had an hallucination or suffers from a delusion UNLESS the theoretical AI device, placed close enough to the person to detect any sound loud enough for the person to hear, both 1) reports a linguistic statement to have been made and 2) reports an objective meaning similar enough to what the person reports that any differences can be reasonably explained by normal variations in perception and/or language interpretation.

Ian Johnson

Slide 10.  Even a “public “ communication may be delusional if believed in too strongly

As this Wikipedia discussion of one psychiatric author’s position on delusions suggests, even a public communication may be the foundation of a delusion, and may be so even if the hearer is correct about its content, if it is believed too strongly. 

“Joseph Pierre, M.D. states that one factor that helps differentiate delusions from other kinds of beliefs is that anomalous subjective experiences are often used to justify delusional beliefs.  While idiosyncratic and self-referential content often make delusions impossible to share with others, Dr. Pierre suggests that it may be more helpful to emphasize the level of conviction, preoccupation, and extension of a belief rather than the content of the belief when considering whether a belief is delusional.”

Wikipedia. Delusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion.  Accessed 5 Sep 2023. 

So, maybe it’s okay to say God wants to transform my life, because the Bible (a book that actually exists) says that’s what he wants.  This conclusion would also be supported by the fact that many other people report holding a similar belief in the context of the religious practices of a well-characterized mass religion. So the content of the statement isn’t delusional in and of itself.   But if I believe it so strongly that I permit it to drastically change the way I live, and report to others that it is the Holy Spirit that is making these changes in my lifestyle, then the belief has become too much of a preoccupation and is delusional.   

Slide 11.  I reject all of this

As you may have guessed, I reject these conclusions.  I choose trust in a good God, even though others call this faith a delusion:

“Or who is there among you who, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Matthew 7:9-11 (WEB)

Slide 12.  An Additional Query

IF it is ASSUMED that some spiritual voices are REAL, isn’t teaching children to ignore them teaching a form of “denial,” in the sense that term is used in addiction recovery?

Well, yes, it is.  Teaching children to deny the reality of, and so “ignore,” the “voices” in their heads is teaching a form of denial.  Obviously, if some of these voices are real, spiritual voices not their own, this denial is likely to be dangerous.  Ignoring them won’t make their source go away, and it won’t keep the voices from affecting the children—or, later, the adolescents and adults they will become. It will only make them consciously unaware of the voices, ignorant of where some of the influences driving their beliefs and behaviors come from.  The influences will still be there, just hidden.

But it isn’t necessary to assume the spiritual reality of the voices in our minds to recognize this danger.  There are many voices in our world.  Most of them are put there by other people, who think they know what they are doing, to serve their own ends.   Commercial advertisers, entertainment scriptwriters, politicians, preachers, and propagandists of all types rely on the fact that we have been trained to consciously suppress our awareness of these voices—their voices.  This conscious suppression of voices is necessary so that in the end we will think that the voice that told us to buy their product, support their candidate, or take some other action we wouldn’t otherwise have taken was our own voice, when really it was theirs.  And our own social friends and acquaintances also influence us through suggestions which we come to accept as our own voice. 

A spirit, in the New Testament Greek  pneuma or rhema, is nothing but a wind or a voice.  The thing said has a life of its own.

It is better to acknowledge God’s voice—along with all of the others—than it is to suppress consciousness of the influence they all have.

Slide 13:  An Observation and Another Question:

Observation:  Most cultures historically have taken some variation of the treat non-physical voices as REAL and teach children to filter them approach.  This is still the predominant approach of most non-Western cultures that haven’t been sufficiently influenced by Western culture that they have abandoned it.

Question: Is the overall mental health of the population in cultures that have taken the ancient “the voices are real” approach any worse that that found in modern Western society? (At least if the question isn’t begged by including “hearing voices” in itself, as opposed to acting out in response to bad voices, as defining a countable “mental illness?”)

I don’t know that anyone has ever answered this question. But the quotation on the next slide shows I am not the only person who has ever asked it:

Slide 14.  Leudar and Thomas, pathologized hearing of voices

“In Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity, Leudar and Thomas review nearly 3,000 years of voice-hearing history.  They argue that the Western World has moved the experience of hearing voices from a socially valued context to a pathologized and denigrated one. Foucault has argued that this process can generally arise when a minority perspective is at odds with dominant social norma and beliefs.”

Wikipedia.  Hearing Voices Movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_Voices_Movement . Accessed 5 Sep 2023.

Recall my previous observation that hearing God’s voice was initially limited  to bishops and princes in the West at the insistence of the official Church organization and the princes who sponsored it.  This led, post-Reformation, to its denial even to bishops and princes, and to its almost total denigration, as reflected in current Western psychology and popular thinking.  Recall also that the early “heretical” movements that challenged the limitation on God’s voice—for instance, the the Montanists (who called themselves the “New Prophecy”) and the Donatists—challenged it precisely because it denied God’s voice to specific social and ethnic minority groups in favor of members of the ruling class.

Slide 16. The Warning of the Millstone

“In that hour the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is the greatest in the Kingdom of [the] Heaven[s]?” Jesus called a little child to himself, and set him in the middle of them and said, “Most certainly I tell you, unless you turn and become as little children, you will in no way enter into the Kingdom of [the] Heaven[s].  Whoever therefore humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of [the] Heaven[s].  Whoever receives one such little child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a huge millstone were hung around his neck and that he were sunk in the depths of the sea.”

Matthew 18:1-6 (WEB).

 I quote this passage with the modified translation suggested by Dallas Willard—the Kingdom of the Heavens is stated in the plural in the Greek, “the heavens.”  It does not refer to an ideal place now very distant from us that we enter only when we die, but is God’s rule in the heavens all around us, from the very air we breathe all the way on up to what we usually call “Heaven.”  Young children sense this, though they do not intellectually understand it.  They trust the God who is there, and—yes—hear from him. And for those who “help” children to stop sensing and trusting in the God all around them, Jesus has harsh words.  It would be better for them if a heavy millstone were tied around their necks and they were thrown into the sea.   We should take warning!

Slide 17. The Effect of God Speaking Without Reference to Persons Spoken To

God has spoken very publicly in the past, and continues to speak, to things rather than people, with effect:

Slide 18.  The Creation.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was barren, with no form of life; it was under a roaring ocean covered with darkness.  But the Spirit of God was moving over the water.  God said, “I command light to shine!” And light started shining.  God looked at the light, and saw that it was good.”

Genesis 1:1-4 (CEV).

Another translation says that God said, “Light be!”, and it was.  For God, it was that simple: He said it, and it was.  Everything else that was created, except humanity, was created just this simply.

Slide 19.  The whole universe was framed by the word of God.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  For by this, the elders obtained testimony.  By faith, we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things that are visible.”

Hebrews 11:1-3 (WEB)

Because the entire universe was created and everything in it put in its properly place by God simply saying it would be so, we can also trust that everything in our lives is also under his command,  He speaks, and things are.  He speaks, and things take their proper places.   

Slide 20. God also created humanity by speaking, though the process was more complex.

 God also created humanity by speaking, though the process was more complex in that God first spoke to himself, then spoke to the human, male and female, that he had made:

“God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness.  Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in his own image.  In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.  God blessed them.  God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.  Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” God said, “Behold, I have  given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed.  It will be your food. To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food;” and it was so.”

Genesis 1:26-30 (WEB)

The point here is that God created humanity, male and female—neither is his complete image without the other—gave them dominion and gave them his instruction, all by speaking, publicly. 

Slide 21.  Moses

God has spoken in a terrifyingly public manner at some times in the past.  I will now give two examples, both out of the ministry of Moses, but there are quite a few others.

Slide 22. At Sinai:

“Yahweh our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Yahweh didn’t make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive today.  Yahweh spoke with you face to face on the mountain out of the middle of the fire, (I stood between Yahweh and you at the time, to show you Yahweh’s word; for you were afraid because of the fire and didn’t go up on the mountain)…”

Deuteronomy 5:2-5 (WEB)

Moses goes on to recount that God spoke the Ten Commandments directly to all of the assembled children of Israel.  There is no plausible way to make this account into anything other than God speaking with a voice and being understood by his hearers, because, after the list of the Ten Commandments, Moses recounts:

Slide 23.  At Sinai, the people’s response to the Ten Commandments

“Yahweh spoke these words to all your assembly on the mountain out of the middle of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice.  He added no more.  He then wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me.  When you heard the voice out of the middle of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders, and you said, “Behold, Yahweh our God has shown us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the middle of the fire.  We have seen today that God does speak with man, and he lives.  Now, therefore, why should we die?  For this great fire will consume us.  If we hear Yahweh our God’s voice any more, then we shall die.  For who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the middle of the fire, as we have, and lived?  Go near, and hear all that Yahweh our God shall say, and tell us all that Yahweh our God tells you; and we will hear it and do it.”

Deuteronomy 5:22-27 (WEB)

In another place, I have written at length about Israel’s failure to recognize God’s loving purpose, their unfounded dread that his voice would kill them, and their rejection of a direct relationship with God because of it.  But my main point here is simply that God spoke to all of the people with an audible voice, they heard him, and they understood what he was saying.  Both the people’s leaders and Moses testified to all of these things, repeatedly.

Slide 24.  Another instance.

Later, when Moses’ authority was questioned, God spoke directly to the people again:

 “Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?” they asked.  “Hasn’t he also spoken through us?”  And the Lord heard this.  (Now Moses was a very humble man. More humble than anyone else on the earth.)  At once the Lord said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, “Come out to the tent of meeting, all three of you.”… When the two of them stepped forward, he said, “Listen to my words: When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams.  But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house.  With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.  Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” 

Numbers 12:2-8 (NIV)

 So, after the people asked God not to speak to them anymore, God continued to speak to Moses face to face, and, on rare occasions like the one in this passage, he also appeared to all the people together to give them urgent correction.  But otherwise he only gave prophets among the people dreams and visions, which revealed him in riddles.  However, when God came in the flesh in the person of His Son, Jesus, all this would change:

Slide 25.  What Jesus Said About Speaking to Us With a Voice

After his death, resurrection, and visible physical departure from our presence:

Slide 26.  MY Sheep hear MY Voice

“Most certainly, I tell you, one who doesn’t enter by the door into the sheep fold, but climbs up some other way, is a thief and a robber.  But one who enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.  The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.  Whenever he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.  They will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him; for they don’t know the voice of strangers.”

John 10:1-5 (WEB)

Slide 27.  The sheep know their shepherd’s voice when he calls them, another translation

Jesus said: I tell you for certain only thieves and robbers climb over the fence instead of going in through the gate to the sheep pen. But the gatekeeper opens the gate for the shepherd, and he goes in through it. The sheep know their shepherd’s voice. He calls each of them by name and leads them out.  When he has led out all of his sheep, he walks in front of them, and they follow, because they know his voice.  The sheep will not follow strangers. They don’t recognize a stranger’s voice, and they run away.”

John 10:1-5 (CEV)

Yes, this is a parable—it says so in the next verse. It is figurative language.  But it is impossible to take the “voice” out of it.  We know our shepherd’s voice.  We who follow Christ know when our shepherd is calling because we recognize his voice.  It’s what we hear.

Slide 28.  I am the good shepherd

John 10:14-16 (WEB)