How God becomes real

This post has been in draft for several months. The problem is that I do not want to misrepresent others or myself or, if you like, I am not yet 100% convinced, and there does not even seem the possibility of ever becoming fully sure, about my subject. Which is: how and when and whether God speaks to us.

Since my previous post Hearing God speak I have been somewhat surprised to find serious investigation into this phenomenon. My title comes from the book by Tanya M. Luhrmann. You can listen to her 2015 TEDx talk. I challenge you to read her books and judge for yourself. In her Preface, and, as a taster, she writes: People don't (easily) have faith in gods and spirits. People do not, in fact, behave as if gods and spirits are real in the way that everyday objects are real... To have a sustained commitment to the reality of invisible agents... [e.g. God] someone must interpret the world through a special way of thinking, expecting, and remembering. I will call this a faith frame. That faith frame coexists alongside the ordinary ways people make sense of the world, and sometimes contradicts them. The priest says: this is my body, but it looks like a dry cracker. The sermon insists: my God can do anything, but God didn't stop the divorce. And so faith is hard - particularly when an invisible other is supposed to love you, care for you, and keep you safe. 

She goes on with six further points which form a roadmap to the following chapters, and then assures us that Nothing I say here speaks for or against the genuine reality of gods and spirits.

Luhrmann has done her homework. In her prequel "When God talks back" she writes: I found the church in my own backyard, a few blocks from where I lived in Chicago... I went in looking for a nondenominational church that taught people to hear God speak back, but I didn't go back for months after my first visit because nobody did anything to suggest they were much different from the people in the liberal mainstream churches I'd known as a child. Nobody spoke in tongues or fell over in spiritual bliss. The pastor... explained a book of the Bible chapter by chapter, as if he were lecturing to an undergraduate class... People were taking notes. Many of them had their Bibles out, and they were staring at the text as if they were trying to analyze a difficult poem. 

I finally went back for a second visit because I had done enough reading to figure out that this was in fact exactly the kind of church in which God was not a distant, abstract, principle but a person among persons. I stayed for two years. On a Sunday, the service in this church begins with music... at a church like the Vineyard, music is prayer. The church sets aside a full thirty minutes for the music at the beginning of the service, and they call this section of the service "worship?' There are no hymnals, just PowerPoint-projected lyrics of songs people know so well that many sing them with their eyes shut... The techies dim the lights. Some people stand, eyes closed, palms out and upward, swaying slightly, their cheeks sometimes wet with tears. Some sit and rest their foreheads on clasped hands. Some kneel in prayer. Occasionally someone lies prostrate or dances in the open space to the side of the seating area...

All this seems very familiar to me. Luhrmann goes on to say that what some claim as God speaking is in fact an artefact of the human brain - voices in the head or "self-talk" as described in Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow". But so saying she does not rule out the existence of God.

And neither do I. I am not an atheist. Yet. Indeed, how dare you or I question out of hand (as some do), and on not much more than a whim, the experience of others or even the Biblical record? But I do question the evidence I see (or fail to see) in myself; my lack of the calibre of faith that says "All things are possible for one who believes".  For I too have in the past reckoned that I have heard God speak only to become disillusioned by lack of corresponding action. Or maybe it is that action is on its way but I am just not patient enough.

I realise that I am repeating things I have alluded to in previous posts, like Orual's belligerent mantra: Did you ever remember whose the girl was? She was mine. Mine. Do you not know what the word means? Mine! You're thieves, seducers. That's my wrong. I'll not complain (not now) that you're blood-drinkers and man-eaters. I'm past that..."

"Enough," said the judge. 

There was utter silence all round me. And now for the first time I knew what I had been doing. While I was reading, it had, once and again, seemed strange to me that the reading took so long; for the book was a small one. Now I knew that I had been reading it over and over — perhaps a dozen times. I would have read it forever, quick as I could, starting the first word again almost before the last was out of my mouth, if the judge had not stopped me. And the voice I read it in was strange to my ears. There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice. There was silence in the dark assembly long enough for me to have read my book out yet again. At last the judge spoke. 

"Are you answered?" he said. 

"Yes," said I.  [Lewis "Till we have faces"]

My own mantra is relevant because (as I once intimated) upon it hangs, to a large degree, my ability to hear from God.  In that instance, looking back, I thought I had heard God; now I find that my judgment has shifted, that I am more inclined to admit that I may have deluded myself. And, oh, what freedom, what release comes with such acknowledgment!  And yet, and yet... there definitely was a need that my deluded self had cared so much about. Any freedom I gained was entirely selfish. The whole episode remains one of my most intense and poignant personal battles and contributes to my views expressed in this post. Perhaps one day in looking back it will all make more sense.

---oOo---

You'll find plenty of other material on the internet dealing with "how to hear God" from slushy evangelical advice-columnists to die-hard atheist denial. I prefer to try to analyse what goes on inside me and what I reckon goes in inside those I interact with. Or to check out the Biblical record (for examples see here) where I find the Voice was often external to the subject. Whilst undeniably miraculous, it is hard to explain such accounts solely in terms of imagination. In some accounts the Voice was in a dream which, I grant, could be imagination. Even when the channel was not specified like "the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah...", in this case what follows is 14 chapters of verbiage plus a few visions which do not sound to me like self-talk. So I reckon that, should God actually speak to you, you ought not to be in any doubt. Gideon doubted his ability to fulfill what the angel said, but there is no suggestion that he doubted that he had heard.

The prevalence in evangelical or charismatic folk to expect God to speak inside their heads colours their concept of a "personal relationship" with God or Jesus. I can, if I choose, carry out a dialogue in my head. If I then associate one side with God speaking, my perceived relationship with God becomes more pally. Which sucks. For if God exists at all, He surely is all powerful, all knowing, far above anything my puny mind can imagine. Whereas inside my head I can dictate what this perceived "other" should say. If you don't believe me, try it!

I've already noted that Google and God not only start with the same letter. What if, when AI has reached maturity and has become ubiquitous, God is supplanted by something akin to Jane (who speaks to Ender via a jewel in his ear) who first found herself between the stars, her thoughts playing among the vibrations of the philotic strands of the ansible net. The computers of the Hundred Worlds were hands and feet, eyes and ears to her. She spoke every language that had ever been committed to computers and read every book in every library on every world [Orson Scott Card: Speaker for the Dead]?

Here's another web-identity "thoughtcontrol777" who questions how God is perceived to speak and writes: ...I began “searching” and became a born again Christian shortly thereafter. I remained in the church for twenty years, and it dramatically shaped who I was. There were many times as a Christian that I did not feel that I was myself, but rather just a poor version of trying to be someone else. But I was a fully committed and indoctrinated Christian: I was baptised in water, I spoke in tongues and I performed what I considered at the time to be the gifts of the spirit... I studied the Bible... Since leaving the church I have not missed it. I feel like I am me again and can attest that there is freedom outside of Christ Jesus. I am regretful of how much of my life was wasted in pointless church services, prayer meetings and administrative meetings for the church. 

And in their web page "The Voice of God" writes:

One of the most confusing aspects about living as a modern day Evangelical/Charismatic Christian is dealing with the issue of the voice of God. Many Evangelicals and basically all Pentecostals or Charismatics believe that God actually speaks to people personally. However, God does not typically speak in an audible voice but rather as a “still small voice” that a person hears only inside themselves. Literally, it is a voice inside their head. Many Christians claim to hear this voice, indeed I myself believed that I was hearing it for a number of years during my Christian life. But likewise other Christians, perhaps more discerning, acknowledge that they do not hear the voice of God.

During the latter part of my Christian experience I noticed that whenever I would ask God for advice on something important I would never get an answer. But I would hear “what I thought was” the voice of God in regards to other random unimportant things. This was baffling... So I began to put the voice to the test asking God to reveal certain things to me so that I knew that it was him who was actually speaking. Or, to show me signs. There were no occurrences in which the still small voice was able to accurately tell me anything about the future. And the signs were a no-show. This process took a number of years but at the end of it I stopped listening. If God was not going to accurately talk to me then why should I listen?

A sad conclusion. 

So, whilst I am done with the voice in my head being divine, I hope to remain open minded and unbiased enough to acknowledge God should He manifest, cognisant of those religious leaders who failed to recognise Jesus despite the miracles.

Alvin Maker

I am almost through reading Card's first book in the Alvin Maker series. In my last post I suggest that I might be more craftsman than artist. I like building stuff, putting things together, mending things, I cringe under the epitaph "everybody needs a (my name)", so now I am wondering if there is a bit of "maker" in me. Mind you, only about as much maker as Uncle Andrew was a true magician.

The Alvin Maker world is overtly laced with "folk magic". I am OK with this as fiction but it looks a bit too much like Card is proselyting Mormonism. In her excellent dissertation Alma Jean Porschet goes so far as to say "without Joseph Smith there could be no Seventh Son". She sees Alvin as a representation of Smith and identifies things that happen in the novels as suggestive of Mormon history and doctrines. Which begs the question - by continuing to read will I end up wanting to become a Mormon?

Lost boys

I have just finished reading Lost boys by Orson Scott Card. Incidentally I was struck by similarities between Card's description of the Mormon faith and our own church beliefs. And yet we would not in any way align ourselves with Mormonism. The plot is, of course, infinitely sad with eight boys mutilated and murdered by a seemingly harmless and neighbourly old man. Card manages to cut right through the inhibitions which prevent most of us even voicing things associated with sexual perversion, exposing the weakness of our bodily appetites at the same time as upholding common decency and the strength of character required to control the same. Card's blunt descriptions are the opposite of euphemisms and that is a main reason why I like his writing style, why I was drawn to Ender's Game even though the bluntness almost offended me. We do much harm in covering things up, in not being willing to talk openly when open talking is needed. And I point the finger at myself - I suppose I am frightened of doing so because of what people might think. Indeed one raison d'être for this blog is so that I can try to express things that I find hard to talk about.

After setting the book down we are left agreeing, of course, that the old man must never be allowed to molest again, but not hating and condemning him so much as beginning to understand what drove him to do those terrible things. We are left feeling sadder for him than for his eight victims. Because the same 'Boy', or alter ego, that controlled him, or at least similar weakness, is found in each one of us. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

I don't like your music

It is not that music by Bruckner is the only music I like, nor that I like all music by Bruckner. But it is true that I have rather definite musical preferences and that they seem to be very different from those of anyone else I know. To a degree I have chosen to make Bruckner my "favourite composer" rather as yellow is my "favourite colour" but it goes a lot deeper than that. Generally I am not offended by the music other people like but recently I chose to don ear-defenders because what a colleague was playing was driving me up the wall. I can only suppose that this person liked his music, just as some like sushi, but how is it that music attracts such vehement emotions as hate or love?

Although my parents disapproved of "pop" music, which has left me feel guilty about listening to some pop music I happen to like, I do not think they were responsible for my musical tastes.  I didn't find Bruckner - he found me. As I may have said elsewhere, when I bought my reel-to-reel tape recorder (a purchase akin to buying an iPod now) I searched the radio-waves for music and recorded anything I liked. In this way I happened to record Bruckner's seventh and only much later found out what it was and that there was more and better.

Professor North reckons that musical taste is connected to personality. He does not resolve down as far as Bruckner but he does at least claim that Classical fans "have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease" which I reckon fits me reasonably well (though I say it myself). If he is right then it has little or nothing to do with one's parents or upbringing except so far as our personality is so formed.

But the category "classical" is far to wide to describe my likes - there is plenty of music that would be regarded as "classical" that I dislike.

It has been said that you either love or hate Bruckner (meaning his music) - rather as Orson Scott Card suggested that you will either love or hate his Ender's Game. In each case I think those hate do so because they fail to identify. Card says:

"I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself."

That resonates with me - for me a "good book" or film is one that I can in some way identify with - usually but not necessarily with one of the characters in the book. When I listen to (some) of Bruckner's music I identify or, if you like, I feel "at home".

Is Google God?

Google was conceived in 1997 - today it is powered by over one million computer servers and processes over one billion search results daily. I remember the very first time I used Google - how much better it was that AltaVista at the time (having just checked out the latter I find it now comparable in speed and relevance).

“Nowadays, where do you go to ask questions? The answer starts with ‘G-o’, and it’s not God” (Steve Wozniak November 2012).

“People always make the assumption that we’re done with search. That’s very far from the case. We’re probably only 5% of the way there. We want to create the ultimate search engine that can understand anything. Some people could call that Artificial Intelligence.” (Larry Page, 2006).

And then there is Google-X Lab and who knows what secrets they have under wraps?

Good sci-fi is prophetic - with Google's vision and terms like "in the cloud" and "big data" in common usage can we be that far from Orson Scott Card's Jane?

Google search is limited by the repository of public human knowledge contained in the internet. Although it has become an almost assumed part of many of our lives, and although is invaluable in my electronics work, it does not do so well in answering questions of the soul. Try asking it about alternative medicine or biblical interpretation and you will get every view under the sun because, of course, just about every possible view exists under the sun. Typically you will then filter the results in your mind according to your personal beliefs and, hey presto, you find that Google supports your argument! Not very helpful.

When I was first introduced to the TTL Data Book, long, long ago, I was impressed by the common TTL standard that enables an arbitrary selection of chips to be connected together. Thus using only TTL MSI chips I was able to create a simple computer that calculated standard deviations and correlation coefficient between two channels of electronic data. At the time it reminded me, how much more now, of "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them."

Back then these guys apparently didn't get to finish their edifice...