Possibly a series "For the Honest Seeker."
Introduction
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1. I lived in England in the middle of the 1990s. While I was there, I read a book by John A. T. Robinson called Honest to God. [1] He had written the book in the 1960s, during a time when England was undergoing a sort of faith crisis in the decades after World War II. This was also around the time that some were beginning to talk about the "death of God" in America. In the book, Robinson recalled a time in seminary when he realized several students did not find prayer as eventful as they might have expected. That passage stood out to me.
Throughout my teens and twenties, I had constantly prayed for experiences of God like the ones I saw at church camps and heard preached throughout the sermons of my childhood. I grew up in what you might call a "revivalist" tradition. We had regular "altar calls" where people went forward to pray as they felt led by the Spirit. The impression I had was that God zapped us all the time, almost like how God talked to Moses.
But aside from occasional moments of peace, I did not have many dramatic, emotional religious experiences in my teens. I am not a particularly emotional person. Indeed, growing up, I identified strongly with Mr. Spock from Star Trek, who thoroughly suppressed any emotion deep inside himself. During those years, living a life of constant and deep introspection, I did not have many experiences I had been led to believe should be commonplace.
To be frank, my teens were a time of torture for me. I was constantly seeking God's forgiveness for sins I couldn't even identify. Most of the time I did not feel peace, but I didn't know what sins I needed to confess. My intention to do the right thing was almost on the spectrum, and I could list on one hand the times I had deliberately done something I knew was wrong. In some ways, I envied the rebellious young people whose rebellion was so obvious that they experienced incredible release when they finally surrendered themselves to God.
As I matured, I began to experience more and more peace. But the lack of dramatic religious experience continued to haunt me. In my mid-twenties, I would cry out to God (inside) both during prayer and church prayer times, begging God to speak to me in some direct and undeniable way. Sometimes, I even begged him to punish me for asking, just so that I would know he was there.
In the end, the biggest faith struggles of my late 20s were not ultimately intellectual, although that was clearly part of them. But on a more fundamental level, they were personal. Why doesn't God talk to me like God talked to Moses and the other people in the Bible? The Christians around me sure seemed to think he should.
2. At some point, it struck me that Moses didn't have any of those dramatic experiences of God until he was 80 years old (Acts 7:30). It also dawned on me that I was not Moses. Somehow, the preaching of my youth had normalized dramatic religious experiences. Maybe I wasn't as special as I had been led to believe.
When I lived in England, I knew a young man who felt a call to ministry. I could see in him some of the anticipation I grew up with. Over the years, I've known more than one young man (and a woman or two) training for ministry who somehow thought they were going to be the next Moses. Some have undergone faith struggles when it turned out their emotional highs weren't backed up with the divine encounters they expected.
I've always wondered if some had an inflated sense of their own calling. Some lost their faith, perhaps left empty at the realization of their normalcy. Then again, it seems to me that there are plenty of prominent leaders in the church who put on a good show, but you wonder how much spiritual substance they have. I've wondered if, when they hit a moment when they realized much of their spiritual life was hype, they just kept going.
On the other hand, I know other people who do experience God's voice regularly. Miracles seem to follow some of them around. Usually, they are not looking for followers or an audience. They are quietly going about their lives, and the world around them is always changing for the better.
Paul talks about spiritual gifts in some of his letters. For example, in 1 Corinthians 12:9, he talks about the gift of faith. I find this very helpful. We talk about being "justified" by faith, so everyone should have a certain baseline of faith. But there also seem to be some who have a gift of faith, the kind of faith that moves mountains.
3. What if some of us are more wired to have religious experiences than others? [2] I know this idea will get strong pushback from some of my friends in ministry. But I'm not writing for them. I'm writing for those of you who are puzzled because of what seems to be the silence of God.
Even the most devout experiential types can undergo something called "the dark night of the soul" where they may go through a long period without feeling God. [3]
But what if the "silence" is more normal for many than the dramatic? What if it is the striking prayer experiences that are more unusual? If that were true, then we may be unnecessarily setting up a certain personality type for faith crisis -- and another for regular hallucination.
I want to be very careful here. My goal is not in any way to discourage a sense that God speaks to you. But for some, it might be more healthy to see those divine moments as unexpected joys. Otherwise, we may be setting some people up for regular disappointment.
I might add my suspicion that some people put their trust in other people's experiences, and that works. They think, "If I were more holy, I'd have those experiences too." Or maybe they think, "I don't have that kind of relationship with God, but so and so does." And they bank their faith on that. In that way, they are not troubled by their own "silence" because they trust that other people are regularly hearing from God.
4. In my college years, as I was trying to have the kind of devotional life I had heard promoted so often, I had a strange thought. Maybe I would feel more like I was having an actual conversation with God if I pictured that I was really talking to someone. This is a strange thought because, surely, that's what prayer should have been for me all along.
But the thought revealed to me what I had been doing all along when I prayed. It had actually been a monolog. In other words, prayer for me had really been talking to myself. (Mind you, I'm sure God was listening.) Then it dawned on me. How many prayers had I heard in the church -- including many from the pulpit -- that had actually been self-talk or, in some cases, subtle sermons?
"Lord, we know that you hear our prayers when we call." Who are you talking to? Of course, the Lord hears. How many a pastoral prayer is actually a secret sermon to the congregation. "Lord, we know there are people out there who are asking whether they should come forward to the altar." Who are you talking to? God or the congregation?
I was also impressed at one time by David Seamands' book, The Healing of Memories. [4] As I continued to struggle with the lack of clear response from God in prayer, Seamands' claim was that some of us, often because of previous trauma, might have difficulty hearing directly from God. He talked about "damaged love receptors" and broken love antennae.
The idea is that God may be beaming the signal of his love to you, but you may not be able to receive it because your antenna is down. (Clearly this metaphor worked better before our current Wifi and Starlink.) In such cases, Seamands argued, God more typically works through other people to help fix your antennae. He doesn't usually fix it directly.
5. All these things may be true, and I've found them helpful. But I've come to think of God's presence much more as a peace and a "still, small voice" than the dramatic experiences I thought I was supposed to have as a boy.
For some of my friends, this will seem to undersell God. I can hear one friend as I write saying, "But Ken, God wants to give so much more!"
I hope so. But if you are having questions because that isn't you, it probably isn't what you need to hear right now. Maybe what you need is a recalibration of your expectations.
What if, for most people, the norm is what I call peaceful prayer -- without getting zapped back? This really isn't the silence of God because I've come to view peace as the presence of God. It wasn't what I was primed to experience growing up, but I wonder if it is more the norm.
You can of course see God's hand everywhere if you have faith that God is always working, always giving, always blessing. "In everything, give thanks," Paul says (1 Thess. 5:18).
To me, this is something different from expecting to be zapped with special messages from God all the time. It is a quiet thankfulness. It is a quiet conversation that doesn't expect an audible voice in return. It is an attitude of mystery and trust.
It is an attitude of faith that doesn't ask for return. And when the return comes, it is an attitude of gratitude.
[1] John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (SCM, 1963).
[2] I used to have a colleague in the psychology department whose research showed which part of the brain "lights up" when a person is having a religious experience. He was not suggesting that religious experiencces were merely psychological. But he did think it might be possible to "counterfeit" them biochemically. If he was right, then some religious experiences may be genuine, and others may be hallucinations.
[3] The phrase was coined in a poem by St. John of the Cross in the 1500s. He was a Spanish mystic.
[4] David Seamands, The Healing of Memories (David C. Cook, 1986).
