When does hearing God constitute insanity?

[Sampiro]

I just finished Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385509510/qid=1060013280/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-7482432-4792835?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) , an often flawed but consistently fascinating account of the Fundamentalist (aka polygamous) subcultures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (which is, as almost everybody familiar knows, a group in no way affiliated with the mainstream LDS church).

The following is not a spoiler because it's located in the foreward to the book: In July 1984, brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty brutally murdered Brenda Lafferty, the wife of their youngest brother, as well as her 15 month old daughter. They considered the murders a "removal" based on a direct order from God. (Ron blamed Brenda and several other people for the break-up of his marriage and received, via computer, not just permission from God but a direct order to kill 4 people, including the baby, that he considered enemies to his cause.) There is almost no doubt that the Lafferty brothers truly believed they were executing God's will when they slaughtered Brenda and her baby.

There are parallels between the Laffertys and Andrea Yates, who murdered her children because she also heard voices from God. (Then there's the movie FRAILTY, but we'll let that one pass since it's fiction...)

Attorneys for the Lafferty brothers and attorneys for Andrea Yates all tried to have their clients declared insane for trial. All failed because they were told that merely hearing the voice of God is not synonymous with insanity. A direct and personal relationship with God, including talking to and receiving answers from Him, is a keystone of Judeo-Christian dogma as practiced by the vast majority of Americans. As for the violence, there are certainly precedents in the Bible and the Book of Mormon for God ordering people killed.

So- in your opinion, when, if ever, should a person hearing the literal audible (or in the case of Lafferty, legible) word of God constitute insanity?

[greck]

When it causes clinically significant impairment in social emotional or occupational functioning.

Killing people -definitely an impairment in social functioning.

[TVAA]

Abolutionists often faced serious problems with social function in the 19th century. Clearly, a desire to abolish slavery was a symptom of mental illness.

[godzillatemple]

When the voice tells you something contrary to what the majority of the population believes, it is insanity. When the voice tells you something that agrees with what the majority of the population believes, it is divine revelation.

If, however, society later comes to believe what the person hearing voices claimed to have heard, he or she will retroactively be declared a saint. Similarly, if society later comes to find out that their previous beliefs were just plain wrong, anybody who claimed that God told them something in accordance with those now defunct beliefs will retroactively be declared insane.

Repeat as necessary....

Barry

[smiling bandit]

Fortunately for me, I have no such problems. Anyone actually acting under Divine Influence will likely never reveal that fact to the world. Ergo, no problem.

[ffolkelore]

Unless there was a trick involved, like Polonius whispering behind the arras, then yes, it's insanity. Sanity is connection to the real world.
Now, whether there is enough insanity depends how hard you push it. We all have some amount of insanity- often it's simply disconnects from our past in the form of selective memory.

[godzillatemple]

Originally posted by ffolkelore
Unless there was a trick involved, like Polonius whispering behind the arras, then yes, it's insanity. Sanity is connection to the real world.
Now, whether there is enough insanity depends how hard you push it. We all have some amount of insanity- often it's simply disconnects from our past in the form of selective memory.

Well, that's certainly the viewpoint of the atheists, since God does not exist and is therefore not part of the "real world."

A more interesting question, I think, would be to ask of somebody who does believe in God how does one tell the difference between receiving a message from God and simply hearing voices. The best answer I have ever heard is "By their fruits shall you know them." In other words, if the alleged revelation leads men to do good works, it is from God. If it leads them to do bad things, it is either of the Devil or a product of the person's own fevered imagination.

This is, of course, a completely circular way of analyzing things, since you first have to define what is "good" in order to know whether the alleged communication supports that good or not. It also lends itself to revisionsim, as I mentioned in my previous post, since the notions of "good" and "right" tend to evolve over time.

Welcome to the Straight Dope, by the way!

Barry

[Joe Random]

Originally posted by godzillatemple
A more interesting question, I think, would be to ask of somebody who does believe in God how does one tell the difference between receiving a message from God and simply hearing voices. I'm an atheist, but from my many conversations with Christians, I have gathered that speaking with God never involves actually hearing a voice. It's all about feeling that you know what God wants of you, or having a revelation of some sort (kind of like when the answer to a difficult problem suddenly becomes obvious).

So I'd say that if you're actually hearing a voice, then you're either hallucinating due to medication or lack of sleep, or you're showing signs of mental illness.

[greck]

Originally posted by TVAA
Abolutionists often faced serious problems with social function in the 19th century. Clearly, a desire to abolish slavery was a symptom of mental illness.

not nearly the same thing. Abolitionists faced social problems in these instances because their views were unpopular, their society consisted of other abolitionists and they (the sane ones) were able to participate fully in it.

Desire really doesn't factor that much into mental illness by the way, sometimes it's part of a criteria set, but it's so subjective it has to be checked somehow in the diagnostic process.

Still not the same level of social functioning though. To meet criteria for mental illness it would be more like the inability to carry a conversation, having a logical discussion about slavery without veering wildly off topic because God keeps interrupting or changing the topic to shoes or trees or the beauty of the ocean.

[dal_timgar]

Whenever it happens.

Are there other possible sources for voices? How does a voice prove that it is God? Why couldn't God do His own killing?

Dal Timgar

[Liberal]

I'm not sure about insanity (I presume it has legal and medical definitions), but when a voice says anything that advises you to obstruct goodness, it is not the voice of God Who, after all, is the perfect facilitator of goodness.

[Sampiro]

Originally posted by TVAA
Abolutionists often faced serious problems with social function in the 19th century. Clearly, a desire to abolish slavery was a symptom of mental illness.

John Brown, if I'm not mistaken, claimed to hear the audible voice of God. Certainly he was hailed as a prophet by no less an audience than Emerson, Thoreau, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Unfortunately, the people that God specifically ordered him to kill rarely had anything to do with the crimes he was punishing (e.g. his raid on Lawrence resulted in the deaths of randomly chosen people who weren't slaveholders).
I wonder why John Brown is hailed in many books as a hero while Charles Guiteau, whose delusions caused him to kill Garfield, or John Wilkes Booth (who claimed to be an instrument of the divine though to my knowledge never claimed to have heard voices or been miraculously moved) are seen as mere nutcases. For that matter, the suicides at Jonestown and the zealots who held the Branch Davidian compound rather than surrendering are looked upon as textbook cases of mind control/mass insanity while those who held Masada prior to mass suicide are cultural icons as are the defenders/martyrs of the Alamo.

[X~Slayer(ALE)]

I would think that hearing God in your head would be considered Insanaity pretty much everytime except for 2 conditions

a) Other people Heard God the same way you did and heard the exact same message.

b) The actions you undertake under God's behalf is substantiated by divine signs or miracles.

[Jonmarzie]

When does hearing God constiture insanity?

When it isn't God. :D

[Chefguy]

Originally posted by ffolkelore
Unless there was a trick involved, like Polonius whispering behind the arras, then yes, it's insanity. Sanity is connection to the real world.
Now, whether there is enough insanity depends how hard you push it. We all have some amount of insanity- often it's simply disconnects from our past in the form of selective memory.

Then by this logic it would seem that if *hearing* god speak to you is insanity, then *believing* in a god is also insane. Believers would point to the biblical stories of god speaking to all manner of folks throughout the ages, which would lead one to believe that it's not all that uncommon.

[godzillatemple]

Originally posted by Joe Random
I'm an atheist, but from my many conversations with Christians, I have gathered that speaking with God never involves actually hearing a voice. It's all about feeling that you know what God wants of you, or having a revelation of some sort (kind of like when the answer to a difficult problem suddenly becomes obvious).

Never say "never" when describing large groups of people with disparate beliefs. I was raised in a Christian faith and I can tell you absolutely that many Christians believe that God spoke to them personally. Yes, sometimes it was more of a "presence," and sometimes it was in a dream, but many also claim that God put words into their mind.

The difference is that if the voice/presence says, "Be at peace. Know that I Am and that all is well," society is willing to believe that the person received a message from God, whereas if the voice/presence says, "Your neighbor is the antichrist and needs to be killed" we tend to assume the person is bonkers.

In other words, it's not the way the message was received that determines whether we think somebody is insane or not; it's whether we agree with that message.

Barry

[minty green]

Originally posted by Sampiro
Attorneys for the Lafferty brothers and attorneys for Andrea Yates all tried to have their clients declared insane for trial. All failed because they were told that merely hearing the voice of God is not synonymous with insanity.Not quite. The definition of insanity as used as a defense to criminal charges is very different from the clinical definitions of insanity. In most states, the defendant has to prove that he did not have the mental capacity to understand know his actions were wrongful.

"Wrongful," by the way, refers to social standards, not the word of god. The Laffertys knew what they were doing was wrong in the eyes of the law and society at large, and that's why they weren't acquitted on the basis of insanity.

On the question posed by the OP, I am certainly no expert in psychiatric disorders, but I personally regard hearing messages from god as pretty good evidence of mental illness.

[DrMatrix]

Originally posted by Libertarian

I'm not sure about insanity (I presume it has legal and medical definitions), but when a voice says anything that advises you to obstruct goodness, it is not the voice of God Who, after all, is the perfect facilitator of goodness. Well, that's kind of tricky. If God tells you to do something, it would be presumptious to say "No, that would obstruct goodness." What do you do if God asks you to kill someone. If we look to Genesis 22, that's exactly what God asked Abraham to do -- not just kill someone, his very own son, Isaac. Now, the angel of the Lord stopped him just in the nick of time, but it appears that God was pleased with Abraham for being willing to kill his own son, and, from my reading, God would have not been pleased if Abraham had declined.

[robertliguori]

Anyone actually acting under Divine Influence will likely never reveal that fact to the world. Ergo, no problem.

Jesus?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

There are verses in the Bible where God orders the Israelites to commit large scale slaughters of Canaanites, including women children and infants (see 1 Samuel 15:2,3 (http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&passage=1+samuel+15%3A2%2C3&version=NIV)).

So were those people insane or did God really order it? It doesn't sound like it was facillitaing any goodness to me.

Also if God could order it before, why can't he order it again? How would we know if it was really him?

[godzillatemple]

Originally posted by Diogenes the Cynic
There are verses in the Bible where God orders the Israelites to commit large scale slaughters of Canaanites, including women children and infants (see 1 Samuel 15:2,3 (http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&passage=1+samuel+15%3A2%2C3&version=NIV)).

Those examples don't count, since they are drawn from the Old Testament, which everybody knows is mostly allegorical (especially the parts that disagree with what we feel comfortable with).

The New Testament, on the other hand, is the literal word of God (except for the parts we disagree with, but that can be ascribed to transcription errors and the like).

Barry

[AHunter3]

You can't know.

If you claim to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have heard God, as opposed to hearing what you want to hear or having an hallucination or experiencing some static in your neurons or hearing the voice of Cthulhu instead or whatever, you are in error if not necessarily insane. (You are in error insofar as you claim to know for sure).

As long as you acknowledge and accept that, you are behaving sanely and anyone who reacts to you as if (on the basis of your claims) you are insane is someone who is themselves not behaving rationally.

[DanBlather]

Originally posted by godzillatemple
Those examples don't count, since they are drawn from the Old Testament, which everybody knows is mostly allegorical (especially the parts that disagree with what we feel comfortable with).

The New Testament, on the other hand, is the literal word of God (except for the parts we disagree with, but that can be ascribed to transcription errors and the like).

Barry Amen

[don't ask]

I know from my psych nursing days that all the psychotics I met who had direct contact with God received the messages via something - TV, radio, hallucinated figures.

The worst TV interview I ever saw was with a woman who had survived 30 odd days adrift at sea. I think the interviewer asked her had she ever given up hope. She replied that she had almost given up hope but then... "God spoke to me and I knew I would be alright". She said this in the most matter of fact manner. The interviewer just read the next question on his list instead of asking her what God had said. In the whole interview the woman made no other reference of a religious nature and I wished the interviewer had just listened to her.

[Zoe]

Kierkegaard had an interest in this particular subject. He referred to it as the "Teleological Suspensin of the Ethical." There are several links and this is one:

http://allfreeessays.com/student/free/Teleological_Suspension_of_the_Ethical.shtml

My mother claims to have heard the voice of God once, folllowied by a miraculous event. I was born. :) Maybe it was the meds.

Who knows if meds can free up part of the brain that is receptive to the voice of God, huh?

I used to teach next door to a woman who said that God spoke to her while she was hanging clothes on the line and told her to go and buy a dog. I never knew if she was clinically ill or just a victim of some teachings. She was later relieved of duty. I saw her about ten years later and she swore she had never known me and seemed paranoid when I told her some things about her.

Also, a man who lived in my apartment complex many years ago murdered his wife "because she was a demon." That's what happens when you start becoming too judgmental...

[Mangetout]

I have experienced two distinct episodes where I seemed to hear something that I personally attribute to God - I say 'seemed' because I'm aware that the whole thing is entirely subjective and because it wasn't exactly like hearing a human voice in the form of sound waves, but it wasn't just a vague fuzzy feeling (I've had that a lot of other times).

On both occasions there was a specific instruction to help someone in need and on both occasions it resulted not only in success, but amazement on the part of the recipient. The strange thing is that the first time it was a life-and-death situation, but the second, it was seemingly almost embarrassingly trivial.

As AHunter3 says though, I can't know it wasn't all just hallucination coupled with coincidence, or my spider-sense, but then we could possibly argue that about a lot of mundane private experiences.

[mrblue92]

I'd say there are different levels of insanity.

If you believe God might be speaking to you, but you remain acutely aware that you might be fooling yourself, that's pretty innocuous.

If you believe God is speaking to you and stop questioning the voice altogether, that's getting dangerous.

If you believe God personally told you to dance naked through the city streets smeared in lime jello and singing "Louie, Louie" at the top of your lungs, that's insanity. :)

[pool]

People too often use god an an excuse when it comes to making decisions like if they fail at something "Oh, well that just isn't the path god wanted me to take." or "God told me that he wants me to do this with my life" It is a bunch of bullshit, they cannot function without believing someone else has control of the show or that there is some kind of divine hand behind everything, yeah I sort of got off topic.

[F. U. Shakespeare]

A key point here is how ongoing revelation is handled the person's individual religion.

I once worked with a devout Lutheran, who was of a very conservative cultural/political bent as well. He believed that there was a time when God spoke to people, but that time was past. (I have no idea if this is official church policy). And by extension, that a contemporary person who heard God's voice was delusional. That sounded like rationalization to me, but I'm an agnostic/atheist, so I'm a pretty hard sell.

As far as LDS, my understanding is that the official stance of the Mormon Church is that ongoing revelations heard by lay people are not valid unless they pertain to personal, day-to-day things, like where to buy a house, what college to send the kids to, etc. The world-changing revelations were reserved for the Prophet (or other high-ranking Church officials). Perhaps an LDS member here can confirm or correct this?

I personally accept the aforementioned partial copout that whether the person is sane depends on the actions that God is telling you to take.

Originally posted by Chefguy
Then by this logic it would seem that if *hearing* god speak to you is insanity, then *believing* in a god is also insane. Believers would point to the biblical stories of god speaking to all manner of folks throughout the ages, which would lead one to believe that it's not all that uncommon.

[godzillatemple]

Originally posted by F. U. Shakespeare
As far as LDS, my understanding is that the official stance of the Mormon Church is that ongoing revelations heard by lay people are not valid unless they pertain to personal, day-to-day things, like where to buy a house, what college to send the kids to, etc. The world-changing revelations were reserved for the Prophet (or other high-ranking Church officials). Perhaps an LDS member here can confirm or correct this?

Yes, that is correct. It still doesn't solve the problem, though, since somebody can claim that God told them to paint all their children red and call them tomatoes. You don't have to receive a "world-changing" revelation in order for it to be a sign of insanity....

[Oh, and in case anybody is wondering at my presumption, last I checked I was still officially listed on the rolls of the LDS church...]

Barry

[Sampiro]

Originally posted by F. U. Shakespeare
As far as LDS, my understanding is that the official stance of the Mormon Church is that ongoing revelations heard by lay people are not valid unless they pertain to personal, day-to-day things, like where to buy a house, what college to send the kids to, etc. The world-changing revelations were reserved for the Prophet (or other high-ranking Church officials). Perhaps an LDS member here can confirm or correct this?

That's true. However, Lafferty believed that the mainstream Mormon Church was evil and that he was appointed by God to be the new prophet.

I think I saw the woman who was rescued from sea. As memory serves, what God told her was "Eat the other people on the raft and then steer towards land".

[Michael Ellis]

Originally posted by mrblue92
If you believe God personally told you to dance naked through the city streets smeared in lime jello and singing "Louie, Louie" at the top of your lungs, that's insanity. :)

That ain't insanity where I come from, mac. That's a well spent evening.

[mrblue92]

Originally posted by Michael Ellis
That ain't insanity where I come from, mac. That's a well spent evening. Oh, did I leave out the self-immolation part?

[Tejota]

Auditory halucinations are definite evidence that the brain 'aint working properly. But we only count this as insane if the voice tells you to do something illegal or destructive and you go and do it. (Or if you hear voices so often that they distract you from knowing what is going on around you).

[greck]

OK, I finally whipped out the DSM

(from diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia)

criterion A (two or more of the following)
1) delusions
2) hallucinations
3) disorganized speech (such as frequent derailment or incoherence)
4) grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior
5) negative symptoms (flat affect, not taking care of self, etc.)

so to be insane, the person needs to be hearing god plus one other of those two things and:

Criterion B Social/occupational dysfunction
basically, there has to be a marked drop from how the person was doing beforehand.

and:

Criterion C Duration

at least 6 months involving signs of the disturbance with 1 month of god talking to him and the other criterion A symptom.

and D: it's not some other disorder like depression or bipolar or some other psychotic disorder.

There are plenty of other disorders it COULD be, but most often god talks to people who have schizophrenia when he talks to people who have a mental illness.

[AV8R]

I only saw the episode once (about a hundred years ago) but Johnny Fever struggled with this issue on WKRP in Cincinnati once. Johnny had some kind of dream or vision or something in which he truly belived that God spoke to him. The voice said something like "I want you to be a golf pro".
Johnny spoke with his boss about it, because he wasn't sure if he was going nuts or not. His boss said that he didn't know if it really was the voice of God, but he hoped it was, that there was a God who would talk to us.

[Upon reading this during preview, I realize that reminiscing about an old TV show contributes nothing to the resolution of a Great Debate, but I'll hit Submit anyway.]

[handy]

What if you are deaf & you hear him speak to you? Is that automatic looney bin?

[Reepicheep]

Interesting aside, Joan of Arc heard auditory voices. No one in power at that time questioned that she was hearing voices, just if the voices were from Satan or the Archangel Michael. Following what the voices told her to do, she raised an army - which was not something that an ordinary peasant girl could do. Following the voices also got her burned at the stake by the English. Was she hearing from God, Satan or was she insane?

[greck]

Originally posted by Reepicheep
Interesting aside, Joan of Arc heard auditory voices. No one in power at that time questioned that she was hearing voices, just if the voices were from Satan or the Archangel Michael. Following what the voices told her to do, she raised an army - which was not something that an ordinary peasant girl could do. Following the voices also got her burned at the stake by the English. Was she hearing from God, Satan or was she insane?

Well, take from what else was known about her, there's more to diagnosis of a mental illness than one symptom. Ok, granted, pursuit of her version of self actualization got her killed, but she was fulfilling her divine mission.

And-

Mental illness often is a function of a system outside of a discrete individual, and the individual is merely the "identified patient" in the system. For example -anorexia. this is an illness constructed of personal anxiety, (often) trauma, and societal forces. So to call Joan insane without consideration for her historical/societal context may not be fair.

If I had to guess at a diagnosis for her, I'd say she maybe was bipolar with psychotic features (or some version of it, these things tend to change as society changes). People who are manic tend to have quite a bit of charisma.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Joan of Arc did not "raise an army." She convinced the king of France to grant her command of his army. The king, desperate for a spark, let her do it and the French army was inspired and revitalized enough to win some battles against the Bristish. It's still an extraordinary story but not all that mystical in the long run.

BTW, Joan swore until the day she was burned alive that the voices kept telling her that angels would fly down and rescue her her from the flames. Obviously the angels never showed up so was Joan crazy or was God lying to her?

[godzillatemple]

Originally posted by Diogenes the Cynic
BTW, Joan swore until the day she was burned alive that the voices kept telling her that angels would fly down and rescue her her from the flames. Obviously the angels never showed up so was Joan crazy or was God lying to her?

I'd go with the second option, personally. God can be funny that way....

Barry

[Optihut]

I´d advise anyone, who hears compelling voices to become god´s personal hitman to check back with your lawyer first.

[X~Slayer(ALE)]

That would be unwise. All laywers (and all MBAs) signed their souls to the devil before passing the bar.

[X~Slayer(ALE)]

ACK!! I meant Lawyers!

....The devil made me do that typo!!