The challenge for dreamers like me

I am an idealistic dreamer who loves to read. Reading has officially bypassed illustration as being one of my favorite pastimes. I enjoy immersing myself in the ideas, experiences and insights of the authors. I also enjoy reading both fictional and biographical accounts of individuals who choose to live out their convictions against all odds.

But I always find it challenging to ground the knowledge I have gleaned from books into meaningful applications relevant to the context in which I live. I have noticed that I often fail to relate abstract ideas to the concrete issues that the people around me are facing in their particular contexts. Living contextually is a demanding exercise that separates the dreamers from the doers. It demands realism and devalues escapism. The endeavor itself requires that an individual draw deeply from their own wells of wisdom, awareness, and creativity and employ resourcefulness in their attempts to resolve complicated, real-life situations.

Last fall, a graduate from the seminary I currently attend told me a story of an effective contextual approach. As he tells it, a few years ago, he was working as an associate minister in an 8,000-member Baptist congregation in Brooklyn, New York. In that context, there were thousands of members who were old in years and who had attended that church for almost half a century together. A lot of close, long-lasting relationships had been formed in that time. With such a large and aging population, many of them passed away and these deaths became so frequent that the church hosted funerals for elder members at least twice a week.

In this context where funerals were so common, the ministers came up with the idea that when Easter came around they would have "a funeral for Jesus" on Good Friday, complete with a casket and flowers- much like the ones their own friends were buried with. The idea was that since this congregation was very familiar with the pain of losing their friends, then maybe they could better identify with the pain that Jesus' friends and disciples must have felt when he was killed. The experiment was a resounding success and on Easter Sunday the congregation celebrated Jesus' resurrection like never before. This is a great example of how creativity, wisdom and resourcefulness was used to bring an abstract idea to life in a way that was relevant for a particular context.

History’s most admired figures are those who managed to incarnate their abstract ideas into concrete form. The storytellers of myth and history tell us inspiring accounts of how Jesus of Nazareth inspired those around him while challenging the religious and imperial authorities of 1st century Palestine; how radical philosophers like Voltaire introduced Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality into popular culture and challenged and the sanctified corruption of the French Catholic Church in the 18th century; how Mohandas K. Gandhi employed nonviolence in his mass protests of the oppression committed by the British Empire; how Harriett Tubman attained her freedom from slavery and risked her life to help others escape its clutches; how pastor and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr publicly challenged wealthy entrepreneur Henry Ford regarding the work conditions of Detroit’s auto factories; how Dorothy Day advocated for and fed hungry and poor people driven by her faith in a God who could provide enough for all; how John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s used music and their own superstardom to campaign for peace in a time of war and social unrest; how liberation theologians like Oscar Romero opposed the death squads in El Salvador with a message of love and humanization; how visionaries like Martin Luther King Jr. mobilized masses of committed individuals and worked tirelessly to exorcise the ideological demons of racism, militarism and materialism from America’s soul.

All of these are inspiring and meaningful stories for many of us today. But I think it would be foolish to assume that we need to replicate the exact efforts of those individuals in our modern struggles as we are facing personal and global situations which possess their own particular areas of complexity. The fact is that we live in cultural contexts with different dynamics and players and we have tools and resources that many of the aforementioned individuals did not have at their disposal.

The real question seems to me to be a matter of how we might adapt the insights from such stories and our own experiences into practical applications appropriate to the challenges of our contemporary contexts. We may have to remix, reinvent and revolutionize previous approaches and, in the process, learn entirely new ways of resolving our own complicated situations.

When I think of living contextually, an analogy that pops into my mind is that of mountaintop and valley experiences. Like the Pentateuch’s stories of Moses, a Hebrew prophet who would periodically leave the masses of his people in the valley and travel alone to mountaintops to receive instructions from The God of Israel. As it frequently played out, Moses would return from the mountaintop inspired by his mystical experiences only to be welcomed back by all of the thorny, frustrating and complicated issues that the people were dealing with back in the valley.

It had to be tempting to stay on that elevated sanctuary, but Moses was called to use what he gained from those inspiring moments in his engagement with those human complexities found in the valley. This is the challenging and tense place where inspiration meets reality and gives birth to progress.

How do you adapt what you have received in an inspiring moment into a meaningful application for others? This is and always will be the challenge for dreamers like me.

The need to revisit my personal credo

I am an explorer. I am one of those people who enjoys the “thoughtful consideration” of new possibilities, insights and potential truths as I try not to be too quick to discount the validity of an idea. This personality trait (in addition to my skepticism) doesn’t earn me a lot of fans in the circles of dogmatic individuals who seek to enforce doctrinal and ideological conformity. In most cases, it makes me a threat. But in my view, questions considered to be "threatening" often serve as invitations to a closer examination of both ourselves and our surroundings.

I have grown convinced that many contemporary scientific and philosophical insights about reality have rendered more traditional ways of thinking both irrelevant and obsolete. Therefore, I am primarily interested in researching and finding new ways to holistically integrate scientific insights and the complexities of reality with the insights of the world’s religious and non-religious traditions and philosophies in order to create a more meaningful, relevant, credible and practical ethic of life. This pursuit has consumed much of my time, energy and attention over the past few years.

But at this point in my life, I feel a growing need to clarify my personal views for both myself and those close to me. Knowing myself, I tend to leave people “in the dark” in regards to how I think about and connect various ideas (especially the more “radical” ones). Ironically, I work in the communications field but I find that I often under-communicate with those close to me and get frustrated when these same individuals don’t understand me. I haven’t been the clearest communicator with those whom I have personal relationships- especially when the topic is a “high-stake” issue like belief. But by neglecting to organize my thoughts I have found that it is possible to hold an intellectual position so long that you can forget the core reasons as to why you accepted and adopted such a viewpoint in the first place. It’s not that I have totally forgotten how I arrived at certain viewpoints, but if I were asked to explain “where I come down” at a moment’s notice, my reply would likely come out more nebulous than clear.

In such instances, I think it’s beneficial to regularly reexamine one’s views so that one can better articulate them when it is necessary. This is not easy. Admittedly, I have developed both mental and psychological fatigue in the process of assembling the “puzzle pieces” of my research. It seems that as soon as I add new a component, I forget an older one. The complexity of the task continues to overwhelm me as I have been going about it in a very disorganized and “scatter-brained” way.

Therefore, I have recently decided to organize my efforts so that I can be more effective and efficient. First, I will begin organizing my findings and reflections into compartmentalized folders. In these folders I will save pertinent materials (quotes, passages, statistics, findings, etc.) for quick reference. Second, I will then break my project down into smaller, more manageable bites where I will write several in-depth pieces exploring the systematic framing of my personal theological/philosophical/ethical outlook. I know organization is an elementary idea for some folks, but it is a revolutionary concept for me.

In the coming weeks, I will explore my personal philosophies about prayer, God, Jesus, the Bible, divine revelation, salvation, sin, supernaturalism, miracles, suffering, and evil. I will do so with the understanding that, in traditional Christianity, many of these issues are interconnected to the point that a shift of belief in one part will affect all other components. I also plan to touch on topics such as human nature, genetic diversity, evolution, human sexuality, justice and creativity. I will also do this with the understanding that my views will likely continue to develop over time.

Now I must clarify that in no way do I think I am exploring any uncharted territory here. For the past several centuries, many gifted philosophers, scientists and expert theologians have dedicated their lives to writing thick volumes about many of the topics I am interested in exploring. Rather, I am doing this to fulfill a personal need for clarity and understanding inspired by truth-seekers like Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. who were able to convert years of intense scholarship into lives of unselfish service. I hope such an in-depth period of self-examination and exploration of "the dark side of the moon" might result in the sharpening of my focus and the strengthening of my convictions.

It is also my hope that this process will serve as a sort of “time capsule” that can capture and articulate where my thoughts are at the present moment. All of this should result in the formation of a revised credo- a statement of beliefs, convictions and guiding principles. The result will by no means be exhaustive, but it is my hope that this process will draw me closer to some firm and well-reasoned conclusions on a variety of complicated matters. I hope this process will help me to see whether or not I really have firm ground on which my ideas stand.

I will try to visit at least one topic each week. The first topic I plan to visit is the issue of prayer. We'll see how it goes.

Am I Seeking Truth or Justification?

In my quest for knowledge I sometimes I have to stop and ask myself, “Am I seeking the truth or am I seeking justification for my opinions?” This question plagues me regularly and the doubt it invokes in my mind haunts me to humility. It seems that one can go so deep into one’s research that one loses the ability to distinguish between the hunger for truth and the desire for justification. But interestingly, there have been plenty of times in my life when my desire for justification has led me to “the truth” about something.

Sometimes I will have a hunch or a growing conviction that has yet to be supported by adequate evidence and, despite my lack of information, I hold on to such convictions because I think I might be on to something (a kind of “faith”- I suppose). In other words, I have a sneaking suspicion that- given adequate time and investigation- I could discover a new truth or way of understanding something.

A majority of my suspicions are driven by hints of an anomaly that is being ignored, suppressed or overlooked by popular opinion. Other times, my hunches and suspicions are aroused in response to condemnatory acts committed towards other people in the name of a political or religious ideology. Many times I have followed such hunches to some rather credible sources which have given adequate support for my unconventional views.

But I also realize how dangerous it is to seek justification for one’s opinions with no regard for the truth. Those individuals who follow that path are highly resistant to reasonable alternatives and will not allow themselves to entertain the validity of a different perspective. Instead, they operate with a narrow "tunnel-vision", focused only on their personal agendas. This is an easy trap to fall in and I pray that I can avoid succumbing to this temptation. Such an extreme desire for justification destroys the possibility for both honest investigation and authentic dialogue between concerned individuals. Convinced of the certainty of their claims, such dogmatic individuals evoke in my mind the image of a deaf megaphone shouting its proclamations at a high decibel level with no regard for the whispering voices of reason, doubt and humility- those age-old enemies of individuals who seek to justify themselves.

While some fundamentalists might view them as the qualities of inferior beings, I value reason, doubt and humility as I believe they are trustworthy guides in the sincere search for truth and discovery. I personally find no value in being irrational, certain and confident when one’s views are proven to be wrong.

But I don't mistake humility for silence. I truly believe there are those times in which we must fearlessly express both our concerns and the truth as we understand it. Here, I am reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s prophetic address at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 (exactly one year before his assassination) where he reinforced his much-criticized opposition to the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. King opened his speech with a stirring discussion about the difficulty of being a non-conformist driven by “the demands of inner truth” during a time of great uncertainty. King says:

Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on. And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.

King speaks of a desperate need to speak out against injustice with “the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision.” But he is not calling for a humility that is silenced or "mesmerized by uncertainty," but one that functions despite it.

I find that when I am surrounded by those whose opinions and conclusions I consider faulty or misinformed, I feel compelled and responsible to seek out a more intellectually credible alternative. In those times, it seems my desire for truth and justification merge into one. But maybe that’s not a bad thing. Perhaps we would never seek truth if we didn’t desire some degree of justification for our hunches. Maybe this is one process that leads to progress.

Now I recognize that every researcher is limited by their own humanity and selective in their reference materials. I am also aware of my own tendency to persist in a desperate hunt for a loophole in what I consider to be an inconvenient truth. I admire the irony that in many cases those who aggressively seek to discredit an idea often find themselves becoming converted to the claims of that same idea. This gives me hope in the human capacity to seek the truth and shows that truth may survive despite our best efforts to resist it or suppress it.

I find it much more noble to seek the truth despite our desire for justification. Here, I am reminded of a few things a close friend of mine and fellow seminarian once said. Once, while praying before his sermon, my friend- a young, liberal-minded African-American pastor and scholar- stood before a congregation of conservative Christians and in a gentle tone said, “May we have the courage to follow the truth wherever it leads us.” With this statement, he laid out the inherent risk that exists along the path towards the truth. Following this train of thought, one can conclude that the truth is often unsettling and will probably cost us our comfort- and that is a cost very few of us are willing to pay. Several months prior to that moment, I had a conversation with this same friend who told me, “It is not heresy to question the truth; it is only heresy to deny the truth once it has been made obvious to you.”

I think those are encouraging words for any truth-seeker. May we follow the truth wherever it leads us and may we both recognize and accept it in all of its unsettling forms.

My Issues with Interpretation (Parts I, II & III)

“You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
- Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983).

Part I: Thus Saith the Lord or Thus Saith the Preacher?
Last Sunday morning, I observed yet another pastor claim that they were speaking and preaching “What Thus Saith the Lord.” The expectation is that preachers are to present to the people “The Word of God” (understood as the Bible itself) and not their own personal opinion. In the process of preaching, this particular pastor offered a bold critique of scholars, theologians and philosophers who he considers as being too critical and analytical in discussing issues that seem “above and beyond” what he considers the Bible’s “simple” message. He accused these individuals of promoting their own personalities and philosophies of who Jesus was instead of preaching who the Bible says Jesus was. His concerns were apparently shared by many in the congregation who nodded, clapped and shouted to communicate their agreement.

I sat silently as such statements sparked a multitude of thoughts in my mind. For one thing, I think the act of interpretation is far more complicated than he claims. From my own research and experience in seminary, I have grown to be convinced that “nobody is neutral” and that we humans can’t help but form our own philosophical approaches to help us make sense of reality. I am persuaded that every human’s perspective is constantly responding to and being informed by their particular background, social standing, experience, culture, biases, prejudices and concerns. If every human authority is steeped in a particular perspective and bias, then I would deduce that the human authors of the Bible’s contents were also affected by human limitations, tendencies and cultural conditions. Add to that the fact that, a few millennia later, we are trying to interpret those ancient documents and one can see how the limits of humanity only serve to compound the complexities of the interpretive process.

Perhaps it is this difficulty that intimidates many of those who claim to accept certain ideas “by faith,” choosing not to dwell on the complex matters. But what is reality and how do we respond to this reality?

As humans, there are plenty of things that we hope to be true about ourselves and the universe. Many of us hope that there is someone listening to (and answering) our prayers, that our loved ones will be safe from harm, and that we are correct in our understanding of those things that provide our lives with a sense of meaning and purpose. Some of us even hope in a glorious afterlife and a warm reception into an otherworldly realm following the unavoidable moment when our last breath leaves our physical bodies. We humans seem to need something to hope for in order to function.

But if we are honest in facing reality we may discover that a large amount of what we had hoped to be true about ourselves and the universe may prove to be the result of flawed information, mistaken assumptions or grave misunderstandings. What do we do then?

In regards to perceiving reality, I think it is often the case that we humans tend to see what we want to see. We (including myself) rationalize and justify those things we hope to be true despite compelling arguments and evidence to the contrary. It seems that we devise ideas, theories, and meanings to help us understand the complexities and mysteries of reality. Considering this tendency, I deduce that it is unrealistic to expect that we humans can be anything but subjective in our understanding of reality.

By subjective, I am describing our own biased outlooks- perspectives which may not be immediately obvious or apparent to the perceptions of others. The opposite of subjectivity is objectivity. An objective observation is neutral, unbiased and impartial; it is based on facts rather than bias, prejudice, emotion or opinion. The social sciences testify that we humans can never be objective in our assessments because- no matter how hard we try to avoid it- we humans remain confined to our subjectivity.

Retired Episcopal Bishop and author John Shelby Spong offers a similar thought in an article he wrote for http://www.beliefnet.com/ almost 10 years ago.

No human being, no hierarchy, and no church can ever tell anyone who God is or what God is...All anyone can ever tell another person is how he or she or a particular institution believes it has experienced God. All God talk--including all scriptures, all creeds, all theology--is subjective, not objective.

Oh, how refreshing it would be if people would admit to the limits of their own humanity! I think that such honesty and humility would greatly add to the credibility of those who claim to offer us "the truth."

Part II: Attempts to Grasp the Ungraspable
In their book, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief authors and neuroscientists, Andrew Newberg, M.D., Eugene D’Aquili, M.D., Ph.D., and Vince Rause observe that “We interpret and funnel that which our brain tells us is real through our subjective self-awareness” (p. 143).

The authors, relying heavily on the results of their own research experiments and the testimonies of mystics from the world’s major religious traditions (especially contemplative Catholics and Buddhists engaging in meditation), seem to embrace the idea of an unknowable God (or Ultimate Reality) as opposed to a personal (or personalized) God. The authors perceive that the contemplative mystics of various religious traditions typically understand God as being “beyond all comprehension and description, and that all literal interpretations of [this] unknowable nature can never be more than symbols pointing toward a deeper, more mysterious truth” (p. 158).

The authors say a lot about a mysterious neurobiological state of transcendence they call “Absolute Unitary Being” describing it as “a state of pure awareness, a clear and vivid consciousness of no-thing…a sudden, vivid consciousness of everything as an undifferentiated whole” (p. 147). They claim that “[i]n Absolute Unitary Being, nothing is experienced but the pure and complete unity of all things, or of no-things. One thing cannot stand apart from another, so individual beings and objects cannot be perceived. The egotistical self cannot exist because it has no non-self against which to define itself. In the same fashion, God cannot be set apart from this ultimate oneness as an identifiable, personalized being- to do so would be to conceive of a God who is less than absolutely real” (p. 160-161).

They continue, “The perception of an absolute reality therefore, would demand that God be more than a knowable being, and make it clear that all personifications of God are symbolic attempts to grasp the ungraspable…the state of Absolute Unitary Being impresses upon anyone who experiences it, the realization that the God we can know is only a glimmer of a higher spiritual reality, in the same way, perhaps, that a single beam of light implies the glory of the sun…” (p. 161).

They conclude one of their points by saying, “If we are right, if religions and the literal Gods they define are in fact interpretations of transcendent experience, then all interpretations of God are rooted, ultimately, in the same experience of transcendent unity. This holds true whether this ultimate reality actually exists, or is only a neurological perception generated by an unusual brain state. All religions, therefore, are kin. None of them can exclusively own the realist reality, but all of them, at their best steer the heart and mind in the right direction.” (p. 160-162)

I think these authors are really on to something here when it comes to reality and the human attempts to understand that reality.

Part III: The Implications of Interpretation
It seems to me that it is often the case that an observable event occurs and we- the observers- are left to interpret and make sense of the objective facts by creating an understanding born from our subjective viewpoints and the selective evidence available to us. In other words, objective events happen and we come up with subjective explanations to make sense of those events.

One example of this is a simple as a dream. The other day I found myself thinking about the subjective nature of dream interpretation. I have known people (including myself) who have had dreams or visions of bizarre happenings and have understood these as “messages from God.” The interesting thing I began to note in myself is that when I awake from a dream, I immediately attempt to piece together the memorable details. It becomes a strange exercise when I try to identify the fuzzy figures from my dream by linking them to familiar faces and names of those I have known or seen before.

But how trustworthy is this process of interpretation? How do we know when a dream-like vision is an important message or the result of some unsettling neurobiological activity? Living in a country where many subscribe to a biblical worldview, it becomes relevant for us to consider reconsider those Bible stories where characters in the stories receive messages and directions from a dream which serve to warn or to inform them of a future event. Based on such stories, many throughout history have been led to believe that they too are capable of receiving and understanding such messages by interpreting their own dreams and visions.

But this is where I think things can get really nebulous. While I think that one could derive meaning from one’s subjective perception of reality, I take issue when others are expected to accept another’s subjective perception of reality- lest they be condemned by rejecting it.

I have spoken with several people who claim they have had dreams and visions where religious figures such as Jesus, Mary the mother of Jesus, or the Prophet Muhammad have appeared to them. When I hear such reports, questions begin to race through my mind, such as: “Did that really happen?” and “How do they know what Jesus, Mary or Muhammad looked like in order to identify them?” I am not denying that mystical experiences happen, but I wonder how accurate we are in reporting what we experience. Do we just see what we want to see?

Another example of human subjectivity in the face of an observable event is the crucifixion of the 1st century Palestinian Jew known to history as Jesus of Nazareth. Some would claim that history bears witness to this man’s death by torture on a wooden cross. (NOTE: Others would be more skeptical when they consider the sources of most of our information about Jesus’ crucifixion come from the records of his devoted followers who were already convinced that he was the Jewish Messiah and "The Savior of the World." Regardless, these sources indicate that Jesus died within hours of his crucifixion).

The death of Jesus would seem to describe both an objective and a measurable event. But the tricky part arises when those who observe such an event begin to attach meaning, value, or significance to the “cold, hard fact” of the matter. Adherents to a classic and popular form of Christianity would later come to believe that the physical death of Jesus of Nazareth carried a meaning and significance of cosmic and metaphysical proportions in which a sinless being (a divine-human hybrid) willingly and knowingly sacrificed themselves to atone for the sins of humanity and to reconcile humans to a personal God who required such a sacrifice. Many others would deny the attaching of any such significance to the death of Jesus and count this event as they would the untimely death of any other human being who is victimized by human violence. Over the last two millennia, scores of theologians and philosophers have tried to make sense of this event- trying to interpret and understand objective reality through their subjective human explanations and understandings.

This is a prime example that adds grayscale complexity to a reality that was already complicated to begin with. One event with an endless variety of explanations and thus the root of many conflicts and controversies in our modern world.

What is at stake here? I believe that issues of interpretation lead directly into corresponding issues of authority and trust. What sources of information are worthy of our trust? What authorities are we basing our conclusions upon? What are the implications of accepting such authorities? What is our responsibility as humans with the means to think for ourselves? The way I see it, the authorities we trust will have an inevitable effect on our view of reality. In the same manner, our views of reality will have an inescapable effect on our behaviors. And because of this, issues of interpretation carry both constructive and destructive potential.

For example, if I believe that my next door neighbor is subhuman and inferior to me then it is likely that I will not value their life as much as I value my own. Therefore, my actions toward them will inevitably serve as expressions of that belief. On the other hand, if I believe that my next door neighbor is a human of equal worth and deserving of fair treatment and mutual respect, then that belief will also find expression through my actions and interactions with them. Hence, one’s behavior is a natural consequence of one’s beliefs. That’s precisely why this business of interpretation is so risky and scary.

Imagine how helpful it would be if we could bring a biblical author from 2,500 years ago onto Book TV to discuss and answer questions about what they were thinking about and experiencing when they were writing their passages, poems, and psalms. It’s fun to imagine what such a Q&A would be like. I’d like to think that such an exchange would help to resolve a lot of the speculation fueling many of our modern-day debates regarding biblical interpretation. But until such an unlikely possibility becomes possible all we have to work with are fragments of an ancient world and our own opinionated and selectively informed viewpoints about what those fragments meant to the ancients then and what they mean for us in the present day.

I realize that my perspective is limited and I am willing to consider that I may be in error, but I am interested in dealing with reality, not avoiding it. I believe that only by confronting the complexities of reality can we hope to make any progress in this thing called life.

"Welcome to the confusion."- Carmelo Alvarez

Callings & Convictions

Are we following God's calling or are we following our own convictions?

Throughout the past several years, I have heard numerous religious people make bold claims about what they believe God has “called” them to do. Throughout human history there have been countless individuals from various faith traditions who were utterly convinced that they heard a direct word from the Creator of the Universe that commanded them to perform a particular action. All of this sounds inspiring until it hits close to home and you start hearing conflicting reports between two well intentioned people who both claim that God has spoken to them.

I have grown skeptical of such claims. I now realize that humans can’t help but be somewhat subjective when it comes to interpreting an objective fact. Just because a person claims that they heard from God doesn’t mean that what they are claiming is true. This is why it is so difficult to trust people who make bold claims of divine sanction and absolute authority.

Sometimes, I think people use the phrases “God told me” and/or “God called me” as the ultimate trump cards to simultaneously silence their critics and stamp divine authority onto their viewpoints. In fact, it makes my skin crawl when I hear phrases like this. I have said similar things before and I regret having done so, but because this irritates me so, I have stopped making such claims. There are many psychological factors that influence our perception of things.

Oftentimes, I think our perceptions are determined when we see what we were already looking for, instead of seeing what is really there. Here, I recall serving on a jury last Fall when the prosecutor challenged us with a test of our observation skills. He asked us to take one minute to look around the courtroom and to memorize as many red-colored objects as we could. A minute later he asked us to close our eyes and keep them closed as we told him about all the red-colored objects we saw. We mentioned dozens of objects including the ear-rings of one juror, the slender second-hand on the courtroom clock, and the fire alarm in the back of the room. We felt secure that we were keen observers. Our eyes were still shut when he asked us if we could recall any objects that were blue. We sat in silence with our closed eyes racking our memories for images of blue objects. After an extended period of awkward silence, the prosecutor asked us to open our eyes. We were shocked at how many blue objects we failed to notice even though many of them were right in front of our faces. That exercise reinforced my belief that we often see what we want to see. We are all guilty of this.

I have been in conversations where a group of people are trying to make a controversial decision. Many of us want to make wise decisions and so we trust the counsel of those we respect. These might be our friends, our families, our elders, our favorite authors, our heroes or those who agree with us.

I have found that in some cases, people won’t trust you unless you can make a claim that God gave you the stamp of approval. Such claims of authority give power to words that would otherwise have fallen on deaf ears. You probably won’t gain much of a hearing if say, “Hello, I have some ideas and opinions I wanted to share with you based on what I’ve read and experienced.” People who use phrases like that just don’t command attention and authority like the special person who can say, “Behold, God came to me in a vision and told me to tell you this!” and end it with a “…Thus saith the Lord!”

A classmate of mine recently told me about a young lady who attended our seminary who also grew skeptical of all the “God told me” talk. During the years she was working on her Master’s of Divinity she had brief courtships with four different gentlemen who each told her that God told them to marry her. Needless to say, she didn’t marry any of them. Put off by their comments and the implications of what their comments said about the nature of God, truth, and revelation…she grew skeptical and eventually stopped believing in this kind of God altogether.

This kind of “God told me” talk, while meaningful for many, has begun to sound like madness to me. We can’t be careless with our words and I hope that I am not being careless with mine.

I have come to believe that while many of us act off of claims of having a divine calling, I believe our actions are driven by the fact we have a human conviction. We may have a conviction about what our experience has led us to believe is right or pleasing to God, but this does not mean that God called us to do anything.

I wonder if it is less of an issue of God “calling” us to do something and more of an issue that we want to do something that we believe is important. Is it really just a matter of making a commitment in response to what we perceive as the needs of the world? Some want to feed the starving masses. Others want to save souls. Others will seek to defend the oppressed. Others will seek to liberate others through education.

Is it a coincidence that those who have seen the suffering of starving children often go into a life of humanitarian aid while those who think the world is dark and fallen and in need of a savior consider “soul-saving” to be the highest priority?

I have several friends who have accepted their “call” into the pastoral ministry. They tell me that they went into the ministry because they had a heart for "lost souls." I believe that they are passionate about what they believe. These are some of the most loving guys I’ve ever met. But I can't help but wonder if they are responding to a divine calling or if they are operating out of their own convictions as to what they should commit their lives to.

Ultimately, while I still remain skeptical of the “God told me” talk, I think that people who truly believe that God communicated a particular message directly to them should instead say “I believe God told me” something. I’ve heard it said recently, “Be careful about telling people what God said, because someone might believe you.”

I look at myself and realize that, for better or for worse, I am driven mostly by my personal convictions. One of my convictions is the idea that oftentimes the callings that we really need to respond to are as simple as the voiced needs of our neighbors.