FAITH
Apr 27, 2024
What Is The Great Deception In The Bible?
Usually, when people speak of the “great deception,” they refer to 2 Thessalonians 2:11, which predicts that God will, in an end-times judgment, send “a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie.” This great deception is associated with the satanic work of the Antichrist and his “displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie” (verse 9).
The same passage in 2 Thessalonians also speaks of a great apostasy that will take place before the man of lawlessness is revealed. Similar apostasies are predicted elsewhere: “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons” (1 Timothy 4:1). Of course, people are complicit in the deception, for they reject the truth and prefer lies: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3–4).
Jesus spoke about a time to come when the deception will be especially great when false messiahs and false prophets will appear. Even the people of God could be deceived if it were not for God’s providential protection: “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24, see also Mark 13:5–6, Luke 21:8).
All of these deceptions are instigated by the devil. However, 2 Thessalonians 2:11 also speaks of the deception as God’s punishment on people who refuse to believe the truth. The context seems to be similar to that of the gospel passages above and speaks of one to come who will be especially deceptive: “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:9–12, ESV).
In this passage, after people have refused the truth for so long, God causes them to believe what is false—a “strong delusion.” This is not an instance where God actively deceives people; rather, God is simply giving those who reject the truth what they really want.
We see a similar pattern in Romans 1:18–25 where people reject God’s truth for so long that He simply abandons them to their own sinfulness. They have, as it were, crossed the point of no return:
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”
Much the same thing happened to Pharaoh after he refused to let the Israelites leave Egypt, and God hardened his heart. It was not as though Pharaoh would have been an obedient follower of the Lord if God had not hardened his heart. Pharaoh set his heart against the Lord, and God simply confirmed for all time Pharaoh’s decision (see Exodus 8:15, 32; 9:34; 10:1).
The deception spoken of in the Gospels has to do with false prophets and/or messiahs who appear and seem to be authenticated by miracles. Taking the futurist position, we see the great deception spoken of in 2 Thessalonians 2 as a future event associated with the coming of the Antichrist after the rapture of the church. “Those who are perishing” will willingly embrace the imitation and follow the beast of the end times; they will perish “because they refused to love the truth and so be saved” (verse 10).
We don’t know exactly what the great deception will be, only that it will be a strong delusion capable of swaying the world’s allegiance toward the Antichrist. The Bible says that, in the time of the Antichrist and false prophet, there will be many signs to bolster their lies. The false prophet “performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth” (Revelation 13:13–14). It is hard to imagine, but the deception during the tribulation will be worse than all of Satan’s other deceptions. The Antichrist will have a deadly wound healed, his “image” will breathe and speak and give orders, etc. (Revelation 13:12, 15).
In the broader sense, anyone who rejects the truth of God is being deceived, and at some point, God may simply abandon him to the deception that he has willingly embraced. There are plenty of false teachers today who claim to teach God’s Word. Some claim to be Christians, and some claim to bring a word from God from outside of the Bible. It is vitally important that every Christian compare every teaching with what the Bible says and spend the time necessary to evaluate what is being taught. This is the mission of Got Questions, and in keeping with that mission, we would encourage every reader to compare what we say with Scripture as well. -Got Questions
How Long After Jesus' Death Were The Gospels Written?
By Kieran Sean Pierce
Scholars have studied the sources in great depth and generally accept them to be reasonably reliable for a variety of reasons. It was actually took a surprisingly short amount of time for them to be written down. Some pieces have undoubtedly been changed over time, but the overall ideas and main points remain intact.
This is an excellent question and will take some length to answer. It is a question that has been studied in depth by historians for hundreds of years as the gospels are our main sources on Jesus, and their reliability is very important. I will try to give a good summary, but please know that I cannot possibly include every detail.
Lets start with a historical timeline of how these 4 gospels came to be the ones canonized into our modern bible (credit to my college professor for this timeline):
This is to say, the Gospels were kept via oral tradition from roughly Jesus’ death to the 50s CE. They began to be written down in various pieces starting in the 40s CE until around the 70s CE (the Gospels were not the first time anything was written down. They got their sources from somewhere, explained more later). The Gospels were then written down as full complete narratives of Jesus’ life in the 60s CE to about 95CE. By about 150CE, the four gospels we read today were agreed to be included as the canon, but it was not until about 370CE that the full New Testament we read today was finally canonized.
So lets go stage by stage:
Stage 1: Oral traditions
It is important to remember that literacy in the first century was nothing like it is today. Very few people could read or write, so writing something down was usually reserved for important documents or for a very specific purpose. Putting something in writing did very little for being able to spread it around— aside from it being extremely costly (no printing press, so everything written and copied by hand), the common masses could never read it. If you wanted to spread a story or idea, it was passed around orally. As such, passing a story orally was the standard, and people in this time period were absurdly good at it. For example, it was common for the entire Iliad to memorized and recited— this was how this work was given to the masses. Now i’m not saying there is concrete evidence that things Jesus said or his actions were memorized to this extent, but this is the general culture in which they occurred. This being said, 10–20 years of oral tradition before anything was written down is actually a very short amount of time. There was undoubtedly some “telephone” where bits and pieces were changed, but in general, the overall themes and meanings were left intact.
Stage 2: Written Traditions
A little while after Jesus’ death, his followers started to realize that when he said he would return, maybe he didn’t mean that he would return that year… or that decade. In order to preserve Jesus’ teachings and to avoid the issue of oral telephone described above, bits and pieces of Jesus’ teachings were informally written down. It is very difficult to say exactly what and when was written down because these have not been found. However, it is possible to reverse engineer what must have been written down on them by studying the gospels (describe below).
Stage 3: Written Narratives
For various different reasons, the entire narrative of Jesus life/ ministry was written down in the mid to late first century a few times. Here is the timeline of what was written down when:
Mark ~60–65CE
Matthew ~70–75CE
Luke ~75–85CE
John ~90CE
Mark, Matthew, and Luke are referred to as the “synoptic” Gospels because they are the most similar. John is very different than the other 3, discussed more below.
The Gospels show that there are multiple sources which tell the same narrative. This is so incredibly unlikely to be just coincidence that we can reasonably rely on these as sources for these events. However, the different authors did share some of the same sources. This Wikipedia page can give more details supporting this (Historical reliability of the Gospels - Wikipedia). Now let me explain how it was determined the Gospels were written:
It is called the Four Source Hypothesis. Wikipedia claims the Two Source Hypothesis is the most generally accepted hypothesis. I was taught by professors with Ph.Ds that the Four Source Hypothesis was the most generally accepted by scholars. Either way, they present a similar hypothesis, they just differ on the original number of sources. I will discuss the Four Source Hypothesis here, but the Two Source Hypothesis can be found here if you’re interested (Two-source hypothesis - Wikipedia).
I am going to present a simplified version of the Four Source Hypothesis as it is a little easier to explain, but the version with more of the details can be found here (Four-document hypothesis - Wikipedia). Here is a visual representation of the Four Source Hypothesis:
What this is saying is that Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source because they both have a lot in common with Mark. Additionally, Mark was written in extremely awkward Greek— as if the author knew how to write maybe receipts or brief messages, but not an entire narrative. This led to Mark being a very lengthy and detailed awkward narrative. Matthew and Luke took the liberty of shortening and cleaning up Mark’s version of events. Logically, if Matthew or Luke had been written first, it would be difficult for Mark to make up additional details to add in and also it wouldn’t make sense for him to take normal Greek and make it awkward. Therefore, scholars generally agree Mark came first and Matthew and Luke used Mark as a common source. (see this page for the events the three Gospels all have in common as there are many: Synoptic Gospels - Wikipedia).
However, both Matthew and Luke also have some events in common which are not in Mark. This means there was very likely another source they both used to write their narratives. Scholars call this source “Q”. This source is commonly believed to have been written down during the “Written Traditions” phase, but it has never been found. Only by reverse engineering what is common between Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark can scholars determine what was likely in this “Q” source (credit to my college professor for this list).
To further add to the sources, both Matthew and Luke have some things which are not found in Mark and are also unique to only their own Gospel. This then means there was very likely 2 more sources, which scholars call “M” and “L” (very creative right). Basically saying Matthew and Luke both had a unique source where they pulled information from. (chart below of things unique to Matthew and Luke— AKA “M” and “L” (credit to my college professor for this list))
In summary, this is how the Gospels overlap (this one pulled from Wikipedia):
Wikipedia claims the Two Source Hypothesis is the most generally accepted as it doesn’t make logical sense. If there are clearly things unique to only Luke and only Matthew, then there must be unique sources supplying that information; unless you want to claim that “Q” had all of the information and Luke and Matthew just decided to pick and choose what to include. But following that logic, Luke and Matthew both included the vast majority of Mark, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to then be choosy about “Q”. Anyhow, you get the point.
Now, the reason John is not considered a synoptic Gospel is because it is so different in so many ways. Rather than trying to tell a historical account, John reads like the author is trying to evangelize the world. It likely used Matthew, Mark, and Luke as sources but heavily edited them to fit its message. Also, John reads as if somebody accidentally dropped it and couldn’t figure out what order the pages were supposed to go. The timeline is confusing and drastically different from the Synoptics and the geography of where Jesus went in any given amount of time also makes no sense or is impossible. Here are some of the many reasons John is so different (credit to my college professor for this list):
Stage 4: Four Gospel Cannon
There were a multitude of Gospels written in the first and second centuries, so how did the 4 we have today wind up as our canon? Basically, as the New Testament was developing, what got included as the canon came down to these 5 criteria: 1) the narratives had to culminate in the death and resurrection of Jesus, 2) the narratives had to engage the Hebrew Bible (this was because at the time, Christianity was considered a new sect of Judaism— it wasn’t until later that the Gentiles (non-Jews) took over Christianity and Jews rejected it) 3) the narratives had to avoid theological extremes, 4) the narrative had to have a credible origins story (who wrote it/ where it came from), 5) the narrative had to be generally accepted by the people. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the 4 which hit all 5 of these criteria, so they were included.
Now, this probably makes you wonder, are there other gospels which we could read today which would give us more details on Jesus? Short answer is not really. Long answer is maybe. The Gospel of Thomas is the only other gospel which could also be a credible source on Jesus. However, there is a lot of debate around this. The Gospel of Thomas is also not really a narrative, it is more of a collection of short verses which are not really connected or related. There is another chart below with the names of many of the other gospels which have been found. However, these gospels are not credible sources of Jesus’ life. Usually they have a very strong agenda and no historical basis for their stories, or are literally just myths and stories made up for a variety of reasons. For example, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is about Jesus’ life as a child. According to this gospel, Jesus would throw tantrums and kill his neighborhood friends with his powers. It is rejected by scholars as being reliable, but can be studied to understand ideas, feelings, or developments around Jesus and his followers.
Stage 5: Final Full Canon
This stage is a little outside the scope of your question as it doesn’t deal with the Gospels. So lets just say that after the Gospels were canonized, it took several hundred years for various groups to finally decide what the final full version of the New Testament should look like. This means, when someone asks when the New Testament Bible was written, the answer can vary from “it was written down by ~65 CE” to “it was not finalized until the 4th century CE”.
Other miscellaneous things to note:
The question also asks about Jesus speaking Aramaic and the Gospels written in Greek. This is true and adds another element to take with a grain of salt when reading. However, these Gospels have been studied and debated by experts in such depth for so long that every possible translation from Greek to English has pretty much been exhausted. This being said though, the Gospels were actually written originally in Koine Greek, which is a version of Greek written in all caps with no spaces or punctuation. This should give some insight into the difficulty of trying to translate it. An example used in one of my classes is the following sentence: LASTNIGHTATDINNERWESAWABUNDANCEONTHETABLE. Now this is English, but you can break it up to say “Last night at dinner we saw abundance on the table” or “Last night at dinner we saw a bun dance on the table”. Now imagine how much more difficult it can get when the language is Greek. Here is a link for more info on Koine Greek (Koine Greek - Wikipedia). And here is a picture of how it looks written down (this is a picture of one of the earliest know fragments of the New Testament).
It is also worth noting each gospel has its own agenda for being written. This is really an answer for another question, but it should be noted that just because they have an agenda does not make them untrue— you should just understand the point of view while reading.
This answer has gotten really long, but it is a really good question which does not have an easy or quick answer. -Quora
Latest Book On Evangelical ‘Extremism’
Written as a travel journal-slash-pilgrimage, the book tracks how White American evangelicals have soiled their witness. In the process, they’ve stoked social division, promoted a would-be dictator, and driven millions away from the church. Especially young adults. A wonderful work of journalism, Alberta’s book also passes along one of Christianity’s most dangerous habits: a pernicious, albeit unintentional, anti-Judaism.
Alberta has composed a deeply personal lament. The son of an evangelical pastor who embraced radicalization, he sympathizes with evangelicals who’ve found the rug pulled out from under them. These include local pastors and denominational officials whose congregations suddenly demanded constant diets of political outrage, along with victims of sexual abuse whose Christian institutions muffled their complaints.
As a Protestant who lives outside evangelicalism, I’ve seen the same happen to Lutheran and Methodist pastors and Episcopal priests. The old model, in which pastors discerned when the gospel compelled them to address a given social issue, have found themselves subject to loyalty tests. Alberta is especially compelling when he interviews evangelical elites. Figures like David French and Russell Moore hold impeccable credentials as social conservatives, yet they’ve fled to new institutional contexts because they dared criticize the Orange Terror.
Alberta flashes the psychological insight and narrative finesse of an elite reporter, but his theological reflections can, at times, confuse the reader. Is he summarizing things he heard from someone else? Is he explaining their point of view? Presenting his own theological analysis? When it is clear that Alberta is offering his own theological commentary, he presents himself as coming from inside evangelicalism and holding pretty much the theological outlook of the communities that nurtured him.
For lots of Christians, that outlook involves denigrating Judaism in one way or another, a pattern prominent in Alberta’s book. Some claim that Jews failed to recognize Jesus as their messiah because they misunderstood their own scriptures. Some progressive Christians say Jesus liberated women, lepers, or disabled persons from a Judaism that marginalized them. Neither claim withstands scrutiny.
I often ask my students, many of whom are preparing for ministry, “Would you say that if the local rabbi were sitting in the front row?” The answer is often no, both because they understand how harmful their words would be and because they’re likely to be wrong. Few seminary graduates know enough about Judaism, ancient or modern, to speak about it with authority. One splendid resource for addressing this problem is the Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler.
I wish Alberta had consulted with scholars like Levine and Brettler. At one point, for example, Alberta declares that Jesus “finished” what began when God delivered Israel from slavery, a common belief in the church that Christians replaced or “superseded” Jews as God’s chosen, and one that implies that God has abandoned Israel. He goes on to say that the message about Jesus is for all people, while Israel’s election was limited. These slanders are way too common in the church.
At another point, discussing a pastor who rejects right-wing Christianity, Alberta uncritically includes the pastor’s claim that “the Jews couldn’t comprehend” that, when the Hebrew prophet Haggai commanded Jews to rebuild the temple, he wasn’t speaking of the temple in Jerusalem but of “Jesus and his eternal sovereignty.” Haggai, who would have lived 500 years before the birth of Jesus, was not. Later, the same preacher compares politicized right-wing preachers to the biblical Pharisees, described as “blind guides” in Matthew’s Gospel. This claim is both harmful and, even according to Christian scripture, unfounded. It’s harmful because many Christians imagine the Gospel caricatures of the Pharisees apply to Jews and Judaism in general. It’s unfounded because, while the New Testament Gospels and Acts inveigh against the Pharisees, other ancient sources, including the Apostle Paul, suggest that the Pharisees were widely admired and not an easy target for ridicule. Jesus and the Pharisees may well have conflicted sharply, but not because the Pharisees were villains in the ways Christians often imagine.
But Alberta’s most egregious take represents his own perspective, not a summary of someone else’s. Because Jesus “showered affection… [on] the broken and the shunned,” his behavior was “disgraceful to the Jewish authorities monitoring [his] activity.” Having written a book that deals with Jesus’s companionship with sinners, I agree that his behavior may have evoked criticism—but only to a point. If the authorities considered Jesus’s behavior disgraceful—mind you, we only have a few stories from Christian sources on the point—Jesus’s very Jewish neighbors apparently rejoiced to see it (e.g., Mark 1:45; 2:12; 5:42). Alberta, like so many before, would no doubt argue that he was speaking of Jewish authorities, not all Jews; but in failing to offer a more balanced picture of Jewish attitudes Alberta’s take perpetuates an old antisemitic stereotype of legalist Jewish opposition to Christian compassion.
Christians often portray ancient Judaism in this way as a means to celebrate Jesus. Surely the gospel is not so weak that Christians must elevate our own faith by debasing someone else’s. Or, as my fellow progressive Christians sometimes do, we abuse Judaism to critique Christians with whom we disagree. These tropes are harmful to Jews who face enough threats already from Christian nationalists who have a greater tendency to hold negative attitudes toward Jews and other non-Christians. Meanwhile, I’ve recently experienced several conversations in which Jewish colleagues and friends report feeling personally unsafe during the current upsurge of antisemitism. Christians need to do better.
And Christians do have another option: we can stop reading ourselves as the heroes of every biblical story and instead turn the critical spotlight on ourselves. Alberta himself approaches this path when, referring to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), he writes, “Two thousand years after Jesus told that parable, religious leaders were still failing to tend to their own, and [religious] outsiders were still showing the type of neighborly compassion that God requires of us.” Healthy biblical interpretation tends to promote introspection. Rather than turn the Bible against religious and social others, Christians would do well to examine our own communities and practices. -Religion Dispatch
Major Cities On US East Coast Are Sinking
By Robert Lea
“Continuous unmitigated subsidence on the U.S. East Coast should cause concern."
Images collected by numerous satellites have shown that major cities and population centers across the U.S. East Coast are sinking.
Land sinking, or "subsidence," as seen by these satellites, is dangerous because it can undermine the foundations of buildings, potentially causing collapse. It can also damaging roads as well as gas and water lines. When coupled with rising sea levels caused by human-driven climate change, subsidence in coastal regions can increase the risk of flooding and worsen subsequent damage.
Among the particularly hard-hit areas are New York City, Long Island, Baltimore, Virginia Beach, and Norfolk, which are experiencing areas of rapid subsidence next to slower-sinking regions and even stable patches of land. This poses a risk to infrastructure like roads, building foundations, pipelines, rail lines and even airport runways.
The new research from Virginia Tech and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) shows that some areas of the U.S. East Coast are sinking as rapidly as 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) per year, a rate of subsidence at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean that outstrips global sea level rise.
"Continuous unmitigated subsidence on the U.S. East Coast should cause concern,” Leonard Ohenhen, research lead author and a graduate student at the Virginia Tech Earth Observation and Innovation Lab, said in a statement. "This is particularly in areas with a high population and property density and a historical complacency toward infrastructure maintenance."
A sinking feeling
Together with Virginia Tech Earth Observation and Innovation Lab Associate Professor Manoochehr Shirzaei, Ohenhen and colleagues collected a huge amount of data from space-based radar satellites to build digital maps of terrain.
They then measured millions of subsidence occurrences over many years, following up by constructing some of the first-ever high-resolution images of sinking land.
The team's maps showed that a large number of U.S. East Coast areas sinking by at least 2 mm (0.08 in) per year. Additionally, the scientists found areas along the mid-Atlantic coast, amounting to over 1,400 square miles (3,626 square kilometers), that are sinking by 5 mm (0.2 in) per year or more. The current rate of global sea-level rise, which is around 4 mm (0.16 in) per year.
"We measured subsidence rates of 2 millimeters per year affecting more than 2 million people and 800,000 properties on the East Coast," Shirzaei said. "We know to some extent that the land is sinking. Through this study, we highlight that sinking of the land is not an intangible threat. It affects you and I and everyone, it may be gradual, but the impacts are real."
Ohenhen pointed out how the problem with the subsidence mapped isn't just that land is sinking, but also that "hotspots" of subsidence are occurring in population hubs and around concentrations of infrastructure.
"For example, significant areas of critical infrastructure in New York, including JFK and LaGuardia airports and its runways, along with the railway systems, are affected by subsidence rates exceeding 2 mm per year," he added. "The effects of these right now and into the future are potential damage to infrastructure and increased flood risks."
"This information is needed. No one else is providing it," USGS research geologist and study co-author Patrick Barnard said in the statement. "Shirzaei and his Virginia Tech team stepped into that niche with his technical expertise and are providing something extremely valuable." -Space
The Psychology of 'God's Voice' Experiences
Making sense of the mystery.
I am grateful to California-based journalist Ian Lecklitner for asking recently, "What are people really hearing when they say, 'God told me to do it'?" It's complicated and I had to really think. Ian explained that some people give this reason after committing horrible acts. This does not seem right to me, so I decided to reply to the question in terms of authentic spiritual experiences, of which "hearing the voice of God" might be one.
Spiritual experiences are more likely to be authentic if they happen to a relatively stable personality and are of benefit in some way to them, to others and/or to humanity at large, especially to the extent that these experiences can be called 'transformative', that's to say making a permanent difference for the better. By definition, then, 'horrible deeds' can not be considered the result of authentic spiritual experiences. Others, though, thinking in terms of demons, devils, djinns and Satan himself, might disagree; but this is not a psychological interpretation, and I prefer to think that such an experience is unlikely to be authentic (although it still could be) whenever it occurs under conditions of stress or anxiety, of depression and other forms of mental ill health (notably as a hallucination during an episode of psychosis), under conditions of sickness and deprivation (hunger, thirst, fever, withdrawal syndrome, etc.), or through intoxication with alcohol or some other form of mind-altering substance, except perhaps when used strictly according to certain types of traditional ritual or other form of disciplined protocol.
On the other hand, spiritual experiences that are genuine and positive, resulting in wholesome thoughts, words, and deeds, may seem out of character, such that the person experiences the impulse as coming from somewhere other than who they normally think of as "me." I refer to this familiar locus as the "everyday ego." As a person grows in terms of wisdom and spiritual maturity, the less familiar source, what I call the "spiritual self" (sometimes also called the "true" or "higher" self, or even "the soul") becomes increasingly influential. The spiritual self can be thought of as somehow permanently attuned to the seamless greater whole of the universe, the sacred unity, which some people might choose to refer to as "God." A range of spiritual exercises or wisdom practices (notably including meditation, mindfulness practice, or "silent prayer") help a person gradually improve the shift from the mainly self-centered "everyday ego" towards the wiser, more compassionate and loving 'spiritual self'. Whether they think of their experiences as coming through "God's voice" or in some other way (for example, "My conscience told me"), with time and familiarity, people grow to trust what is happening to them. They feel better generally, more contented, usually less regretful about the past and less anxious about the future, and more engaged with life in their community and with nature. Others benefit too as the kindness and wisdom of such people flows ever outwards.
I think this kind of experience is fairly common, and perhaps especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic when folk are increasingly finding themselves behaving unexpectedly with acts of generosity and compassion towards strangers. It's the kind of reaction to be expected when people wake up to the various needs, both practical and emotional, we all have, and the shared suffering that we all encounter on a daily basis.
There's something more to say about all this, too. Ian's question, "What are people really hearing when they say, 'God told me to do it'?" made me think at first of brief, individual acts of apparent obedience to "God's voice," but soon I was also thinking about the notion of "vocation," which speaks of a more enduring spiritual influence directing a person's life, for example towards becoming a doctor, nurse or teacher. Such an impulse has the characteristic of being "incontrovertible." You may not immediately take to it, but it persists and ultimately cannot be denied as a guiding force in your life. The holistic nature of the experience also means it is a healthy one, and one that permits no 'either/or' duality, therefore no doubt or uncertainty, and this often provides the strength of character and courage to see it through, despite inevitable setbacks from time to time. It also often seems subjectively that providence or fate steps in to assist someone in achieving the goals that have been set. Each vocation then seems to come with a kind of promise that the mission is possible, and that help will arrive when required.
Ian's straightforward question, it seems, opens up the possibility of a grand personal search for spiritual truth, prompting a quest to last a lifetime. It's big and complicated, so I will finish with just a few final thoughts. If human beings can hear and respond to God's voice, the experience will necessarily be full of contradictions. For instance, the voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, as if both inside the head and outside at the same time. It also arrives with perfect timing, and from a source that represents the totality of the universe, but not a closed totality, one that is paradoxically endless, infinite in time and space. The voice emerges out of silence and so, because nothing else impinges on the ears at that moment, it can seem extremely loud. And finally, some say the "Voice of God" is never silent... That it can be heard in the bleat of a young goat, the rustle of leaves stirred by the wind, and the babbling sound of a mountain stream. All we have to do, once we turn off the intrusive technology surrounding us, and quieten our ego-driven inner chatter, is listen. -Psychology Today
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