Talk to me, God

By David Myers

Southwest Kansas Register

I stood upon the mountainside, gazed into the deep blue sky, and shouted, "God? Are you there, God? A sign is all I ask! Please, grant your lowly servant a quick ‘hello.’ I mean, what could it hurt? Are there rules about that sort of thing? Why don’t you respond, Lord? Should I come back later when you’re not so busy? Lord? Lord??"

When I was young, I would on occasion drive into the Rocky Mountains, amble up a hill, and quietly beg God for a sign, an acknowledgment that he knows I exist. As of yet, I have never heard God speak to me. Not verbally, anyway. While I’m no theologian, I just don’t think God works that way.

Some people would argue that assessment. Oral Roberts, for example, said in 1986 that God told him to raise $8 million in one year, or God would "call him home." The money would be used to offer full scholarships to his ORU medical school so that medical missionaries could be sent overseas. By 1987 he had raised $9.1 million, although not in the allotted time period, resulting not in his death as he predicted, but in a painful ingrown toenail, which he lamented was "much worse." In 1988 he canceled the school’s free tuition program, forcing students to repay scholarship funds at 18 percent annual interest.

Perhaps the unfortunate students would have thought twice about attending the school had they known that nine years earlier Oral actually said he was greeted by a 900-foot-tall Jesus who said if he didn’t do His bidding He’d hand over all Oral’s earthly possessions to his twin brother, Oral B.

Certainly there have been those who have clearly heard the voice of God, such as Moses and Noah. The difference, of course, is that Noah didn’t require his passengers to purchase flood insurance long after they were out to sea. Also, if the burning bush had been 900 feet in size, all those people would probably have been left searching for the Promised Land without eyebrows.

There are other people who, though they don’t receive an entire speech from God (as did Oral), nonetheless carry on as if they had been given a very clear and distinct message. I’ve heard ultra-fundamentalist Christians (not that anything’s wrong with being an ultra-fundamentalist Christian, mind you) define heaven as if they had visited there on vacation. How do they know that "Liberals are turned away at the gate," much less that heaven "don’t have them lousy gun control laws"?

I’ve determined that one sure way to tell whether or not a message actually came from God is to determine if said message contains any invitation to hate, or to commit violence or aggression. For example, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind behind many of the kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, does what he does, in part, because he believes it to be the will of God. I imagine that when Abu dies, God will send a message that even Abu can’t misinterpret. One involving a behemoth garbage disposal.

Simply put, acts of aggression and violence are not on God’s menu. He didn’t place the order, and he doesn’t want them brought to his table. In fact, violence done in God’s name is one of the greatest and gravest insults.

So, if God doesn’t speak to us outright, how does he get his message across? The other night as I turned off the highway to Spearville, someone sped by and shouted obscenities at me from his open window. Was this some inexplicable way of God giving me a message? Was this God’s wake-up call for me to assess my life? Of course not. It was just some nut who probably thought I was driving too slowly.

Last Saturday, I was at a large gathering when a gentleman told me he enjoyed my columns. Having struggled with them recently, I felt a renewed sense of energy. Was this the voice of God offering me a verbal pat on the back? Yeah, I think so. Kind people offer the voice of God. Mean people … well, you know what they say about mean people.