Four Voices

In Genesis, we hear four voices: God’s, Adam’s, Eve’s, and the serpent’s:

Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” (Genesis 3:9-10)

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; (Genesis 3:17)

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” (Genesis 3:3)

When we hear a voice, a number of things must happen before we react. First, we must realize that we have heard it: Revelation. Second, we have to interpret it: Interpretation. And third, we have to implement an action: Implementation. We seek clarity in the voice of God. Although Jesus said (John 10) that the sheep hear and follow the shepherd’s voice, he does not elaborate; he does not tell us how the sheep authenticate the shepherd’s voice—how we authenticate the voice of God. Neither, then, is it explained how we are to interpret and react to the voice of God.

Many stories in scripture expose the peril involved in interpreting God’s voice. But Isaiah said we should judge the voice of God according to whether its content is in line with the law:

To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (Isaiah 8:20)

The problem is that there are innumerable stories that contradict this:

Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” (Genesis 22:1-2)

God’s instruction to sacrifice Isaac is both intuitively wrong and specifically forbidden in the law (Deuteronomy 18:9-12, Leviticus 18:21). God also deliberately gave Samuel a ruse, a deception… essentially, a lie:

Now the Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have selected a king for Myself among his sons.” But Samuel said, “How can I go? When Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ You shall invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for Me the one whom I designate to you.” So Samuel did what the Lord said, and came to Bethlehem. And the elders of the city came trembling to meet him and said, “Do you come in peace?” He said, “In peace; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Consecrate yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” He also consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. (1 Samuel 16:1-5)

God told Hosea to take a harlot for a wife, which is specifically prohibited (Leviticus 21:7). And Peter was told three times to contravene the law against eating meat considered unclean (Leviticus 11):

On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky. (Acts 10:9-16)

How confusing must this have seemed to Peter! He clearly recognized the instruction as coming from God (“By no means, Lord”). But when the devil tempted Jesus in the desert  (Matthew 4) by quoting the law—by quoting scripture—Jesus knew the voice was not God’s.

Hearing the voice of God seems complicated. Can content alone validate it? In an economy of grace, how important is our implementation—our reaction to what we perceive to be the revelation of god’s voice? I’m not suggesting we should be indifferent to our implementation of what we believe to be God’s directions to us—we are all eager to be in the service of God. But how does the voice of God scale our own free will? Is “the law and the testimony” too rigidly drawn? Is it a strict rule book, or does it amount (as Jesus seemed to regard it) as simply a call to love God and one’s neighbor? Can we in fact hear the voice of God, and if so can we even hope to understand it? Isaiah (55) has reminded us over and over that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways. Is it futile to try to understand?

One conclusion from scriptures is that when God speaks, it is usually to educate, to teach some important lesson. We tend to prefer specific instruction over general education—precept over concept, dogma over doctrine, but God seems to disregard our preference. To authenticate the voice of God, might it be necessary to abandon some of our preconceived ideas about what God will say and instead open our minds to some new and starting possibilities.

David: The Revelation-Interpretation-Implementation of God’s voice is similar to the “intelligence cycle” taught to budding spies: The Collection-Collation-Interpretation-Dissemination of information. That seems to me a human schema. The sheep had no schema, which is perhaps why Jesus did not provide one! The divine schema is inherent to the voice of God as the inner voice we all—sheep of every fold—have. It requires no authentication, no interpretation.

The Daoist believes that there is a Way (which I believe is tantamount to believing in the God of Abraham), that it cannot be understood—it can only be followed. It can be perceived simply by paying attention to it, as sheep merely need to pay attention to the shepherd’s voice—they don’t need to understand it it. When they hear it, they simply follow. The Way. God. They don’t need an education for that. They need to obey the will of God, which is simply to follow him, rather than ignore him and go their own way. A central tenet of Daoism is to Do Nothing (wu wei 無為) in the sense of don’t try to impose your will on the Way. This seems to me tantamount to “Thy will be done”.

In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.
—(Dao De Jing, ch. 48)

Kiran: There are many contradictions. We read that God will kill the sinners on the day of judgment yet we also read that he forgives sinners. It is necessary therefore to generalize. If a voice tells us to kill our neighbor or to hate God then the general truth that God wants us not to do those things must cause us to reject the voice as being not of God.

Alice: I can’t explain why, but I know that if God were to talk to me, it would be clear that it was his voice.

Jay: Abraham, Hosea, and Samuel are all clear communications from God that break the rules, but they are man-made rules—our rigid interpretations of what we think God says. The scripture says God told Abraham to kill Isaac. If I addressed our church and said God had told me to kill my son, they would have me locked up! Scripture says God told Samuel to lie. The fact is, we cannot fathom God’s will. When we try to analyze and articulate God’s will, we commit the same error Adam and Eve committed: We try to play God, but it’s none of our business. We must simply have faith, follow God, and subordinate our will to his. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. We analyze by nature. We can easily believe that God loves us, but we have difficulty believing that we don’t need to know the causes and justifications of God’s will.

Don: Is it a true statement that we cannot validate the voice of God by its content?

Jay: The statement implies what I think is true: That we cannot understand God—we do not have the capacity. When an Adventist thinks they have heard the voice of God, there are tests to measure whether they are true prophets. If Abraham, Hosea, and Samuel were born again today as Adventists, they would fail the tests.

Alice: When God wants us to do something, he makes us do it—there is no discussion. It is only after the fact that we recognize God spoke to us.

Robin: Peter did not in fact have to kill and eat unclean meat. God only intended him (successfully) him to stop thinking of Gentiles as unclean. Abraham did not in fact have to kill Isaac: God provided a lamb instead. So we perhaps start to think that the scriptures are symbolic… until we come across passages like this:

“If your brother, your mother’s son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ (whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end), you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him. But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you. (Deuteronomy 13:6-11)

It seems that God specifically instructed that people—even your own children—be killed for “enticement to serve other gods.” Today we are horrified by, and prosecute, people who said that God told them to kill their children.

So some scripture is symbolic, and some is not. But how are we to tell the difference?

David: That is precisely the indictment of leading atheists such as Sam Harris, who interpreted that passage in Deuteronomy as instructing that if your daughter came home late from school one and waxed enthusiastic about her first yoga session—telling her mother she should come too because she would like it, then you should take your daughter out and stone her to death. There is no hint of symbolism in this scripture. It is a stark instruction clearly intended to be taken literally. It is a serious indictment of scripture. It is inherently dangerous.

To me, a much more clear and certain and compassionate source of God’s instruction is to be found in one’s conscience—in one’s inner voice. It is clearly not to be found in many passages of scripture. With free will, we are just as able to ignore our conscience as to ignore scripture, but I would argue that it is harder to ignore conscience because we all ultimately just know it is God’s word revealed and we just know how we should react.

Robin: Jesus said more than once, without explanation, that his sheep WILL hear and his voice. As Eb would say, “When will we believe what God says?”!

Charles: The fundamental change in the Garden was when the sin of pride entered—when Man thought he could get by without God—that he could be God. Separation from God was Man’s free-willed choice. The only rule in the Garden was to accept the will of God and as long as it was followed, all was provided for and there was fellowship with God. In the story of Abraham and Isaac, when Abraham was clearly prepared to submit to God’s will, God then provided the lamb. This was the message. It presaged the story of Christ (another lamb) and the persistent message of Christian scripture that to be saved, the only rule is to believe in Jesus. This is unambiguous and therefore neither warrants nor requires interpretation. Jesus himself said several times that he who believes in him—and his message of love, mercy, and grace—will have eternal life. The only choice we must make of our own free will is whether or not to believe. It is not an easy choice to make, but it is unequivocally clear.

I am reminded of the late English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who came to believe in Jesus late in life. He wrote some powerful articles and sermons, among them the following, written in 1980, which shows how unifying and necessary Christ is:

“We look back upon history, and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counterrevolutions, wealth accumulated and wealth disbursed. Shakespeare has written of the rise and fall of great ones, that ebb and flow with the moon.

I look back upon my own fellow countrymen (Great Britain), once upon a time dominating a quarter of the world, most of them convinced, in the words of what is still a popular song, that ‘the God who made them mighty, shall make them mightier yet.’

I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian (Hitler) announce to the world the establishment of a Reich that would last a thousand years. I have seen an Italian clown (Mussolini) say he was going to stop and restart the calendar with his own ascension to power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin (Stalin), acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as being wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka.

I have seen America wealthier and, in terms of military weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together–so that had the American people so desired, they could have outdone a Caesar, or an Alexander in the range and scale of their conquests.

All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone! Gone with the wind!

England, now part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keeps their motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixote’s of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone! Gone with the wind!

Behind the debris of these solemn supermen, and self-styled imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of One: because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone, mankind may still have peace–the person of Jesus Christ.

I present him as the way, the truth, and the life. Do you know Him?”

“But Not of Christ,” Seeing Through the Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith,
ed. Cecil Kuhne. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005, 29-30.
Passage can be read online here.

Salvation is not something that Man can achieve, and if he tries he will only get into trouble. Only God can—and will—provide for everyone, as he did in the Garden. Only God can provide atonement for our sins, and all he asks is to believe in the one whom he sent. For this reason, I have to believe that the only way to salvation is through Jesus, even for those who may never have heard his name, to whom God will extend his grace. But there will be no grace for those who, knowing Jesus, reject him. God grants salvation to whomever he chooses, but scripture makes it very clear that the only way is through Christ.

David: It seems to me that what scripture calls for (if we must have scriptural approval, which I dispute) is not belief in the name Jesus or the word Christ, but in the Word of God. Jesus described himself as the Word. So one who believes in the Word automatically believes in Jesus, in Christ. If (as I believe) the Word is embodied inside each and every person born on Earth, then each and every person on earth can choose to believe (or not) the Word—in Jesus. Everyone will get to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Robin: Scripture agrees with that:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1:1-5)

There was a time when Jesus was not called Jesus. He was not called Emanuel until it was prophesied that he would come as a person to save his people. We don’t know how the Father referred to the Son, other than as the Word, the creative power.

Kiran: Trying to apply reason to work all this out is impossible. It’s all down to faith. I could go crazy trying to figure out what’s in God’s mind! I don’t have that much computing power.

Alice: The key word is: Believe. If you do, you will feel led, and that God is active in your life.

Charles: It certainly does simplify things, though it is still not necessarily easy. The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is the ultimate example of unity. The story of salvation is that God has provided “the Way” to it, and that way is through the son. It will not occur through our own acts. All we have to do is accept that the way is through Jesus, who himself said that his way was easy and his burden was light—he can take on all our troubles. A sense of peace accompanies acceptance, crossing the Rubicon from self-willed rejection and doubt to totally submissive faith.

The Muggeridge quote reminds us that there is no single person in the history of the world as permanent and lasting as Jesus Christ. And like him we are all created in the image and likeness of God. If we all tried to emulate his humility, love, compassion, and most importantly his complete submission to the will of the Father, how much better would this world be! In Him we are transformed to take on that image and likeness including eternal life. In Him we cast off our sinful (fallen) nature and take on the nature that God intended for man from the beginning. Through Him, God has provided the atonement for our sinful nature that justice and righteousness requires… and he provides it not as a result of anything we offer but rather because of who God is… Love, grace and mercy. In Him we have hope.

David: I agree it would be a better world. It strikes me that compared to ancient scripture, modern Muggeridge presents clean, clear, unambiguous testimony befitting the times.

Charles: Muggeridge wrote much more of great value and insight. Perhaps we can revisit him from time to time.

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