Does God Talk to Us?

I met a man recently who believes God speaks to him. Not in the way we have customarily believed God communicates with us, through the historic tenets of the Church, or through the Bible, or the witness of Jesus. He believes God speaks to him in a voice he can hear and comprehend, providing regular instruction and guidance as he goes about his day. Not just occasionally, but frequently, directing his every decision. Why among the 8.3 billion people alive today, God decided to speak to him, I don’t know and he didn’t say.

We know that hearing voices or believing God speaks to you can be a sign of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which I didn’t point out since he didn’t ask my opinion. And I didn’t say anything because many Quakers today believe God speaks to them through words and visions. In 1652, while standing atop Pendle Hill, our founder George Fox experienced a vision of “a great people to be gathered”. He saw a “people in white raiment, coming to the Lord.” As you know that vision inspired the founding of the Quaker movement. But you should also know that for every person who believed Fox’s vision, there were others who thought him insane and heretical, and so he was imprisoned, which was the common treatment for mentally ill persons in Fox’s time. They weren’t medicated, they didn’t undergo psychoanalysis. They were imprisoned because people were afraid of them. I must admit to being a bit unsettled by the man who told me God spoke to him.

When I pastored at Irvington Meeting a woman appeared one Sunday to tell us God spoke to her, then returned the next Sunday to tell us God wanted her to kill us. Fortunately, she said that within the hearing of a police officer who arrested her for a psychological evaluation. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a police officer within sight when I was talking with that man. But I’ve been wondering ever since whether God speaks to us, and if so, how?

When the first Quakers said God spoke directly to them, they were making a statement about the nature of God. Prior to this, people believed God spoke only to persons in power, to kings, priests, and popes. Then the kings, priests, and popes would convey God’s words to the unwashed masses. You won’t be surprised to learn that mostly what God told the kings, priests, and popes was that they were in charge and everyone should obey them.

So when George Fox and early Quakers said God spoke to them, it was an evolutionary leap in spirituality. God could teach his people himself, the early Quakers said. Though that hardly seems novel now, it was revolutionary then. Of course, once Quakers made that claim, others followed, believing God had spoken to them too. What God appeared to be telling them was to start their own denomination, which they cheerfully did, and are still doing. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimates there are now over 48,000 denominations.

But what if we were to view Fox’s claim as an evolutionary step in the history of revelation, from God speaking only to the politically and religiously powerful to God offering equal access to all? There is no denying that shift represents a significant leap forward in our understanding of the nature of God, the belief that God is just as likely to speak to a peasant as to a king, priest or pope. What a revolutionary thought!

I’ve used the word evolution purposefully, and want to remind you that evolution never stops until life stops. So if religion began with the premise that God only speaks to people in power, then came to believe God speaks to all, that is an evolutionary progression, which naturally causes us to wonder what the next logical step might be in our discernment of Truth, and I would say this: that truth is not revealed by disembodied voices speaking from heaven. Rather, it is revealed by the careful study of the universe, through the employment of reason, knowledge, and science. We might even say that as human knowledge increases, God speaks less. We don’t need shamans to tell us why God has made the sky darken at mid-day, now that we know about solar eclipses. We don’t need to pray to God for rain once we understood climate science. As human knowledge increases, God speaks less.

Religions that dismiss human knowledge die. It is the reason people no longer believe the sun is the guarantor of justice, as ancient people once believed. Democracy and the rule of law are the guarantors of justice.

As human knowledge increases, God speaks less. It is the reason people no longer believe Poseidon rules the oceans. Think how long it has been since you’ve seen the First Church of Poseidon. It’s gone now, because religions that dismiss human knowledge die.

So why bother with religion at all? Because one thing hasn’t died, and that is our need for community, our need for beauty, our need for awe, wonder, and love. How ugly and small our lives would be without those qualities. I don’t come here to get my weekly marching orders from a heavenly God. I am not a child in constant need of parental direction, and neither are you. I am a human being with a brain, with 65 years of life experience to draw upon, but also with a deep and abiding need for companionship. No amount of knowledge lessens my need for friendship and community.

In his letter to the Church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul described the evolution of our spiritual lives. “When we were children, we spoke like children, thought like children, and reasoned like children. When we became adults, we gave up our childish ways.” Do you hear the gradations, the stages in that? At one time we only knew what we were told by authority figures, because our intelligence and ability to reason were undeveloped. When we became adults, we developed the ability to think, reason, and discern. We still don’t know everything, but we know more than we used to. And the more we learn, the less God speaks.

Think of it this way. The Quaker writer Elton Trueblood said that the job of pastors is to work themselves out of a job. Perhaps it’s the same way with God, that the job of God is to work Himself/Herself out of a job.

Now, you know I’m not a member of the Apostle Paul fan club, but here I think he’s on to something. We grow. We become adults. We know what to do not because God tells us every minute what to do, but because we have the capacity to think and reason. Paul told the church at Philippi, “If you’re confused about the right thing to do, bear this in mind. If something is true, if something is honest, if something is just, if something is pure, if something is lovely, if something is reputable, that’s what you do.”

We don’t need to beg God to guide our every step. Those days are gone. We look for the truth; we do what is just. We choose purity over corruption, beauty over ugliness, and integrity over deceit. I have noticed, and perhaps you have too, that those who doggedly insist God speaks directly to them, often display a deficit of truth, purity, beauty, and integrity. All of those virtues are pushed aside as arrogance and certainty grow.

The French philosopher Blaise Pascal said this: “Reason is the slow and torturous method by which those who do not know the truth discover it.”

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Philip Gulley is the author of the popular Harmony series and Unlearning God: How Unbelieving Helped Me Believe.

Discover my books, stories, and more by visiting Books by Philip Gulley

Contact Philip directly at philiphgulley@gmail.com

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