07.28.09
If There is No God, Why Do So Many Christians Claim the Lord Speaks to Them?
This is one part of a question that came in from someone in India. The whole thing read:
“If there is no God, then why do so many Christians claim that the Lord talks to them?
And what about faith healing? Many christian Iknow personallyare good people, yet
they also claim that God talks to them.
Because his very short question was so complex, I am going to reply to each part separately.
Question: If There is No God, Why Do So Many Christians Claim the Lord Speaks to Them?
Answer: This is the phenomenon of spiritual or mystical experience. Such experiences happen to people of all religions, not just Christians. In fact they even happen to non-believers. It is not always “the same” Lord who is speaking but as I understand this, people tend to interpret an experience like that in a way that fits in with their culture and beliefs.
It is even possible that the image that appears or the voice they hear is something shaped by their mind into an entity that person can recognize. Ken Wilber made an interesting contribution on this topic – I think it was in his book Integral Spirituality. He said people can have what he calls a “state change,” which is his word for a mystical experience, at any level of belief (or from any religion or from non-belief,) but the person will interpret the experience according to the stage he is at, or the particular religion he is.
Newberg and D’Aquili were two brain scientists (Newberg is still alive and still writing) who did a lot of research on this by studying people’s brains – Buddhists and Franciscans — as they were having experiences like this, trying to find out if there was a spot in the brain that caused mystical experience. I believe their results were inconclusive but their book “Why God Won’t Go Away” is a very interesting read.
Obviously, this is a very complicated topic and there are no black and white answers. The trouble comes along when someone has a mystical experience of some sort and then, without considering all the possibilities, (the complexities of the human brain, the similar experiences of people in different religions and people who don’t believe at all) concludes that the experience has proven their own beliefs. Sadly, this sometimes causes such people to go out and try to convert others on the basis of that experience.
Mystical experiences are obviously way broader than any one religion and are certainly not the sole province of Christianity. We are well-advised not to jump to any quick or easy conclusions about their meaning.
Jason Coe said,
September 29, 2009 at 1:01 am
I think the better question to ask is, “Why do so many people of VARIOUS religions claim to hear THEIR god(s) speak to them?”