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Originally Posted by Petunia 100
How do you know that the "small voice" and "Eureka!" moments (which I might call intuition or clarity) are Divine in nature? (I'm not asking for proof, but for what makes you certain).
I appreciate your long, thoughtful responses. I am not all that wordy, so tend to write short posts.
Congrats on your son's sobriety. That is a happy event.
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I will counter with a question for you. What makes YOU certain that you love your son or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister. I'm sure it's not always what they do for you as you are probably as disappointed as the rest of us are at least on occasion. You can't point to any "evidence" that you love them. You can make a claim that you carry the same DNA, but don't parents love adopted children, too?
My point is that you cannot always "know," why you love someone else. There isn't an identifiable "love" gene. But you still KNOW that you love them.
I know that I love God. I certainly disappoint Him at times and He disappoints me as well--just like He did some of the biblical authors. There are three types of poems in Psalms.
1. Everything is fine. God is great. Stay the course.
2. Things are terribly wrong, and I'm at the end of my rope, but thank you Lord for coming to my rescue or (alternate ending) I know you'll come to rescue me eventually.
3. Things are terribly wrong. I'm at the end of my rope, and to make things worse, God, you re nowhere to be found.
The third set of poems are the fewest, but they still have a counter narrative to all the others.
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But I cry to you for help, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth I have suffered and been close to death; I have borne your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. You have taken from me friend and neighbor— darkness is my closest friend.
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Psalm 88:14-18
Psalm 89 is even more counter narrative, basically calling God a liar for not fulfilling all the promises He made to the Hebrews (the latter was written after the captivity into Babylon). It starts with the writer promising to declare God's steadfast love, then spends about 35 verses saying relating all God has promised and more importantly that God promised He would never renege on His steadfast love of His people. He had promised them that the House of David would rule forever and His people would live in peace and that even if the Hebrews sinned, He, God, would remain steadfast with his promise to David:
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But I will not withdraw My loving devotion from him, nor ever betray My faithfulness. I will not violate My covenant or alter the utterance of My lips. Once and for all I have sworn by My holiness—I will not lie to David—…
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Psalm 89: 33-35
The problem with this is that when the Psalm was written Jerusalem had already been sacked and the Temple destroyed (about 500 years after David). Many of its residents were in captivity. Moreover, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, took King Zedekiah prisoner and slew all of his sons---who were of the Davidic line. It appeared to the psalmist that God HAD broken His promise by allowing Babylon to conquer Jerusalem. He backs God into a corner:
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How long, O LORD? Will You hide Yourself forever? Will Your wrath keep burning like fire? Remember how short is my lifespan. For what futility You have created all men!…
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God had lied to a believer---and it's in the Bible.
But the point is this, the psalmist had enough trust in God not to react like men would and kill him outright. Trust (or in the case of CD, perhaps anonymity) is a necessary ingredient to speak honestly to someone you love. It's like a child who says to their parent "I hate you." If they thought the parent would beat the living daylights out of them they would never, ever say that. But they TRUST their parent. Even Jesus, in His final moments, cried out "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me," (another counter narrative in Psalm 22 that He quoted from).
So sometimes I argue with God, and am disappointed that He won't make it easier for me. I see the wicked people in many of our churches persevering in politics to stop school lunch programs, deny health coverage to the poor, demand tax breaks for "giving to God," and keep the homeless out of affluent neighborhoods or off downtown streets, just to name a few and skipping over the fact that so many of them wish to control other people's lives with regard to who they can love, or adopt, or health decisions about their own bodies.
Does anyone think an evangelical would ever stand up in church and say "I'm disappointed in God, today?" It's because the counter arguments in Scripture are ignored. They prefer to concentrate on the magic and the "feel good" passages that reinforces their chief sin which is the desire to be "right" about all things spiritual.
I apologize that I AM very wordy, but then I was a lay preacher for many year and was licensed as a minister by the Southern Baptist Convention which I later left as they, imo, became more and more restrictive and judgmental about women and gays. I've preached in about three or four score different churches, but have reached the conclusion that most churches are about as anti-Jesus as they get. They paint Jesus using the OT God brush, whereas I see the OT through the eyes of Jesus. Jesus isn't the One who needs to change in order to have a correct grasp of when and where God spoke in the OT. Those reading the OT are the ones who haven't had a transformational change that opens their eyes to spiritual "truth."
So can I provide you a definitive example of how I "know" God is speaking. I cannot. But I still know. Just like my father "knew" he saw a flying saucer (and incidentally there is now some more recent evidence including pilots of a U.S. naval task force that not only spotted a strange object but electronically recorded it). Do I believe in UFOs? Not really, but neither can I definitively refute the possibility of their existence since SO MANY HAVE SEEN THEM.
Isn't that what belief in God boils down to? SO MANY CLAIM TO HAVE MET GOD inside themselves. Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't justify a right to claim it to be pure nonsense.
Reason and intellect can take one far down the path to finding God, but ultimately it is a leap of "reasoned" faith. Not blind faith, that is just blind, but reasoned faith--which is what has grown inside me for over fifty years.
For me, you are one of those who is on the cusp of seeking spiritual answers. Like my son stated his AA instructor said, "Fake it till you make it!"
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If atheists behaved like the religious..."Science isn't enough..you have to be a dick to everyone who doesn't think like you..."
Yes. Like after the Tsunami, we experienced seeing Christians, Muslims and Jews standing together, shoulder to shoulder, to give a show of Solidarity against the rising wave of doubt that a god could have allowed such a thing.