Good News Quote #12

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.


Explaining things is its own kind of skill -- mainly a skill of putting things into words. [...] That's why the feeling that "I can't explain it" is not a sign that it's God working in our hearts. Most of the time what that feeling really means is: "I don't have the vocabulary I need to say this right" or "I'm not good at talking about this kind of thing." It's not mysterious. It's just the situation of someone who hasn't learned how to be very articulate about his perceptions. That's how it often goes with the habits of the heart. We learn the skills first, then we learn how to talk about them. And even when we do know how to explain them, having the intuition is very different from explaining it. The explanation comes second, if it's needed at all.

Good News Quote #11

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

Everybody has intuitions: you don't have to be a Christian, you don't even have to be a good person. You can intuitively come up with a brilliant plan to cheat somebody -- on the spur of the moment, without thinking it all out, without knowing where the idea came from. And you can "just know" the right thing to say to really hurt someone's feelings. The words come out spontaneously: you don't have to think about it but there they are, tumbling out of your mouth before you know it and aimed straight at the other person's heart. Anyone who's had much experience quarreling with family members has had a few intuitions like that. And they're obviously not God's doing. I think that sort of experience tells us that intuitions, whether for good or for evil, are part of the ordinary equipment of the human heart.

Good News Quote #10

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

Imagine what it was like hearing God's word in Old Testament times. You didn't go listening to your own heart; you listened to the words of the prophets. For the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit who speaks through the prophets. "Thus says the Lord!" the prophet would cry aloud, and what you heard next was God's word given to the people Israel. Things have not changed that much since then. The word of God still comes out of human mouths and resounds in the ears and hearts of his people. That's where you go to hear God -- you dwell in the community of his people, because that is where his word is. [...] God speaks to us like any real person, as someone outside our own hearts whom we love.

Good News Quote #9

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

This leads to the great irony of consumerist spirituality. The practice of inward listening is not an escape from external forces like mass media, social engineering, electronic technology, and statistics. On the contrary, it's promoted and supported by the marketing techniques of consumerist churches. There's an important lesson here. For good or ill, the heart is always shaped by outside forces -- by the gospel of Christ, by the influence of good friends, by bad company that corrupts good morals (1 Cor. 15:33), or by the forces of consumerism that train us to desire what others want us to desire. What really matters, of course, is which of the voices outside us we're listening to. And the problem is that listening to inner voices, without noticing how forces outside us are acting on us, means being subject to manipulation by those outside forces without knowing what's happening to us.

Good News Quote #8

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

One of the most important things to know about the voices of our hearts is that, like our hearts themselves, they are formed to a large degree by what comes from outside them. [...] And in the more consumerist side of American evangelicalism, there are all sorts of voices that also aim to manipulate you and tell you what God is saying in your heart. It's not all that different from the manipulative boyfriend. You maybe have heard more than one fundraising speech or stewardship sermon in which the speaker says something like this: "Just close your eyes and hear what God is saying your heart, and listen to what he's telling you to give. Maybe it's a little. But maybe it's a lot more than you thought. I'm not telling you how much to give. I'm just saying, listen to what God tells you. What is his Spirit saying in your heart today? What does he want you to give?"

Good News Quote #7

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

As a part of responsible thinking, it's also important for people to listen to their own feelings. Like thoughts, feelings are not always right, but they still often tell us something we need to hear. Labeling some of the feelings "God" or the voice of the Spirit gives young people an excuse to listen to them, which is something they really need sometimes. Unfortunately it also short-circuits the process of growing up. It reinforces their sense that their feelings are not really worth listening to -- as if they don't really have a right to pay attention to their feelings unless their feelings come directly from God. And this in turn makes it hard for a young woman to learn, for instance, that she has a right to stand up to her boyfriend when he's doing things that make her feel wrong, unsafe, or boxed in. And that's the sad thing. She doesn't believe that it's okay for her to be perceptive about her situation, that it's okay to realize that her boyfriend is bad for her and to do something about it -- for instance, to defend her integrity and well-being (and maybe her chastity) by telling him "No."

Good News Quote #6

From Chapter One, Why You Don't Have to Hear God's Voice in Your Heart: Or, How God Really Speaks Today.

The first time I realized how seriously anxious the new evangelical theology can make people, I was reading a student's paper [about revelation] [...] The problem with revelation, my student wrote, was that you can never really tell if it's the voice of God. For how do you know which voice you're hearing is really God's voice? And if you can't tell it's God's voice, then how can God reveal anything? I realized pretty soon that she wasn't talking about the word of God in holy Scripture. That's just not what the term "revelation" meant for her. It meant a voice she was supposed to listen for in her own heart. And her anguish was: how can you tell whether you're listening to the right voice? How can you be sure you're not mistaking your own voice for God's voice? How do you know?