How is God With Us?

by Rebekah Mays

I was about nineteen. There were blue and purple lights flashing around us, and chimes twinkled from the stage. People raised their hands in victorious surrender as we sang, “He loves us,” again and again. There was not a dry eye, as they say.

And then I had some sort of vision. I felt a warm hand on the back of my neck. A man’s chest was in front of me, his arm pulling me into an embrace. But no one was there.

A month later I stupidly tried recounting the experience to a friend of mine who had recently departed from her faith. “I’m not making this up,” I insisted. She looked at me sadly.

I’ve found myself at a few places along the Christian spectrum—Presbyterian, non-denominational, and now Catholic—and as such I’ve encountered a wide range of answers to the question: how do you know God? Once I thought I understood. I thought I could just reach out and grab God like some low-hanging fruit, or that I could sit with him at a bistro and chat over a latte, but now I’m not so sure.

I heard a story from one of my acquaintances that a voice told him to get off a train and, without any college education, simply ask for a job at the New York Times. He got it and worked there for twenty years. I’ve known someone who said she healed a stranger’s knee; she said the decayed cartilage suddenly reappeared and the man could walk again. I have many more friends with less extreme accounts who nonetheless swear by a voice, maybe audible, maybe not, that directs their paths.

Naturally, most people outside this evangelical bubble think these more dramatic stories are bogus or delusional, as my friend understandably did when I tried to tell her what I’d seen.

Others, even ones who believe in God and his enduring care for us, are hesitant to label something as “the voice of God.” They see “God-sightings” as an easy way out of responsibility—that waiting for a divine green light before taking action is simply cowardice or immaturity.

I suppose I see both sides.

 

Just a month or so after my strange “vision,” I spent some time at English L’Abri, a religious center started by the late reformed theologian Francis Schaeffer. At lunch one day we spoke about these kinds of dramatic voices and spectacles, and wondered what to make of them. Does God really speak to us this way?

One woman gave what I consider to be a thoughtful response. God can and does communicate to us however he wants, but just as how she wouldn’t go gossiping about some intimate moment with her husband, it’s indiscreet for us to broadcast our deepest and most tender spiritual moments to others.

I’m still learning myself, and I’m not about to prescribe one way of communing with the Almighty, but there’s something to be said for not waiting around for the Will of God to magically grace our heads while we sleep when we could be acting on what we already know he wishes us to do. Sometimes our religious fanfare keeps us from doing these things; loving one another, serving our communities, and doing our work ethically and faithfully. At the end of the day I don’t know how much God cares that I chose Barnard College over St. John’s. He would be with me either way.

At the same time, it’s all too easy to live as if what we see is all there is. There’s something very powerful about stopping, listening, and looking for the moments of wonder and mystery when so many of us board the train with our ear buds in, when we're the first ones out the door when it enters the station. And we do know from scripture that the Holy Spirit is with us, interceding for us and guiding us, even when we don’t ask for it. In the words of Francis Schaeffer, God is there, and He is not silent.

That’s one reason why regularly partaking in the sacraments is so important: the joining of the mundane with the magnificent. It lifts our eyes to the heavens, but reminds us that what’s around us—the kneeling people, the wooden benches, the flowers on the altar—they are good. When we spend our days anxious over whether that image was a heavenly vision or hallucination, our broken foot a plot of the devil or an unfortunate coincidence, we lose valuable time which we could be using to actually live.

So we should listen, marvel, and pause. We should move and pray and praise. We should sing when we can’t keep it in anymore and we should take responsibility for our choices. We need to live our sometimes painfully boring lives, taking joy in the fact that following the way of God is so much more wonderful than straining to hear a thin voice through a tin can.

Rebekah Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She currently works and writes in New York City. You can find more of her writing on her blog Iced Spiced Chai or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.

You can also follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

You might also like: 

• Remembering a Ragamuffin 
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Marriage and Chick-Fil-A

by Ben Howard

The following thoughts are still in progress.

Last week in an interview with Baptist Press Chick-Fil-A COO Dan Cathy confirmed that the company, based in the Southern Baptist roots of S. Truett Cathy, is “supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit.” This set off a firestorm of reports from major media outlets construing the statement as an attack on gay marriage.

Chick-Fil-A tried to respond by saying they have no policy regarding gay marriage and that "going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena," and that its tradition is, "to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender."

Here's the rub. Neither side is spinning the truth. Dan Cathy was not making a statement opposing gay marriage, but also, he was. The problem, the real problem at the root of the gay marriage debate, the one that makes people on both sides feel slighted, abused, and insulted, has to do with the great unasked and unanswered question of the debate. What is marriage?

Is it a symbol? A sacrament? A contract? A societal construct? Does it mean anything at all?

I think at its core, at its richest, its all of these things. It's a creation of society to help us get along. It's a contract that means one stands beside the other through anything. It's a sacrament that helps us share, just a little bit, in the divine community of God's self. And it's a symbol, a symbol of love and devotion, and a symbol that creation is good, and that world should go on being good.

This is bigger than a rights issue. Marriage at its fullest is a grace and it's not something we can demand, its simply a gift we are given. It isn't something government's can hand down or make laws about or rule on or permit or prevent people from doing. Laws are flawed and staid and cannot encapsulate what “marriage” is even if they use the word.

On the other hand, while I feel marriage is a religious issue, I also believe the conservative understanding of marriage is weak. In a social and religious context where it has become increasingly difficult to explain the importance of symbols and ritual, the refuge of choice has been the literalization and legalization of the Bible. As a result, a once rich full view of marriage has been reduced to a cultural expectation and a legalization of sex.

The more I consider the issue, the more I belief that the conservative response to gay marriage is one of fear more than one of hate. With such a thin view of marriage it becomes increasingly difficult to articulate the value of such a commitment and in lieu of deconstructing this view in order to build a healthier richer understanding, the response has been to go on the defensive and to define marriage as its borders.

Eventually, this conversation will end with the government allowing same-sex marriage. It's a matter of time. This is the way history works. I hope that both sides can learn to talk to each other and understand each other, and hopefully this conversation will not be for nothing. I hope that out of this conversation we get a more vibrant, deeper view of marriage and the commitment it entails. Then again, that is not how history works.

Peace,

Ben

You can follow me on Twitter @BenHoward87 or leave a comment if you would like to contact me.

Sacraments at the Ryman

by Ben Howard

I don't know how to start this.

I don't know how to convey to you what I want to say.

I want to share an experience with you. I want to tell you about what I felt, both physically and deep in my soul. I want to explain to you how I could feel totally alone and special while at the same time feeling like I was in total communion with everyone around me.

I want to let you feel something so profound that....so profound that someone else who experienced it with me said it, “made me feel human again.”

I've heard sacraments being described as a time when heaven and earth overlap. When we are able to witness the beauty and peace of heaven, but only for a moment and only through a veil, darkly. Typically, we refer to sacraments in the traditional sense. Eucharist, baptism, perhaps marriage. But there are other moments, moments when beauty eclipses our surroundings, when the world becomes more than the sum of its parts and we can feel the vague shapes of a hope and a coming dawn.

The experience I'm referring to was not religious in nature, at least not in the traditional sense. It was a concert by a moderately well known band called Explosions in the Sky, but this night they were something else. They were a vessel through which I believe we who were present were able to experience a taste of heaven. Just for a second. Just enough to leave a faint impression.

Keats once wrote that “Truth is beauty and beauty is truth.” The essence of the Christian journey has often been called a search for truth, so why not a search for beauty as well. All too often we focus on the idea, the theology, the hierarchy, the meaning, the argument, the purpose and miss the mere beauty of the experience, the transcendence of the aesthetic.

This isn't to say that we should tailor our religious expression to artificially create a feeling. We aren't chasing a spiritual high. But we do need to make room for beauty for beauty's sake; room for organic moments of art and brilliance that move us in ways that we could not have realized.

Below is a video for an Explosions in the Sky song titled “Your Hand in Mine”. There are lyrics, the band is entirely instrumental, but I want you to listen to the song as a prayer. Just let the song wash over you.

This may sound ridiculous to you, and that's okay. It kind of feels ridiculous while I'm writing it, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

Peace,

Ben

You can contact me on Twitter @BenHoward87, via email, or feel free to comment. :)