I once visited a Holy Roller church and there were several persons actually rolling on the floor babbling while others stood around singing. Then one woman stood on the pew and said in a loud voice. “There is a non believer among us’ She pointed in my general direction. I was near a rear door. " That would be me” I said as I drifted out. God must have been speaking thru her.
Interesting article: What God does to your brain.
Usually it involves an anvil followed by song birds flying about my cranium.
God talks to me all the time, especially in September or October when I get asked to renew season tickets for the NY Mets. “They’re turning the corner,” he assures me; “They’re gonna pull off a stunning surprise next year, be there for the ride with the best of bona fides!”
He also totally, absolutely, 110% guaranteed me, in person and looking me straight in the eyes, that the Mets would win Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS after Endy Chavez made that amazing catch to pull back that home run from over the wall to preserve a 1-1 tie. In a home game. “There’s no WAY I would have the Mets lose now!” He said. “That would be a spiked shoe kick in the nuts!”
He has, alas, kicked me in the nuts. Repeatedly.
But other than baseball I got no complaints about my life, so I think God just has a twisted sense of humor.
He’s certainly building up the mother of all punch lines at Wrigley Field. Especially after having the Red Sox and White Sox win in back to back years in 2004-2005! Ha ha!
Once you find the person that does not filter the world through their own lenses, I’m sure your infuriation will cease.
I get what you’re saying, but we all do it whether you think so or not. My filter is a book, YMMV.
No, we don’t all “do it.” I may have thoughts or impulses that could be considered either moral or immoral.
The difference is that I own them. It seems to me (and I’m not trying to put words in your mouth) that you are incapable of having a moral thought on your own without God planting it.
Eh…no. I don’t do this. I do a lot of crazy stuff. But I don’t attribute my own thoughts to someone else. Even thoughts that I don’t control are still mine. The moment I start externalizing them, I hope someone will step in and help me find the right combination of medication.
If someone told me that the light fixtures speak to me, I would be cordial and respectful towards them because they’re probably a nice person. But I probably wouldn’t trust them with anything very analytical. I don’t know why I should haven’t the same feeling towards someone to claims to be spoken to by God. They are probably a nice person, but easily suggestible and given to magical thinking.
He never talks to me, but that wasn’t the bargain. People made that up somewhere along the way; all of that burning bush stuff is so Old Testament.
There once was a fiddler in Georgia…
He screams obscenities through the mouths of his dumb fucking followers.
Who fished in the deeps of Simorgya…
Now, now, let’s be fair. Many of his followers are surpassing intelligent, well-spoken, and possessed of impeccable manners. Some are even sexually abstinent as a condition of their faith. (Seems like a damn waste, but there ya go.)
He doesn’t speak through them, and nobody is listening anyways.
I can tell just from this one post that you are a wonderful person, who would never want to hurt anybody. So when you get a thought that you should kill homosexuals, or adulterers (which, according to Jesus, includes divorced people who have remarried), or people who do any kind of work on the Sabbath, you know that’s God talking to you, right? Because it agrees with Biblical teaching and is against your normal nature.
He shouts at me from over the neighbour’s fence.
Or maybe that’s somebody else.
He talks to me on the TV. Once a day He stands on a podium, and one of His angels turns over letters, revealing His Word to me.
Same for me, I find the first two act over potentially infinite distances, while the other two act over act over minuscule distances.
Sometimes he hints at a unifying fifth force, but I can’t seem to string it together.
That sort of stuff is what the rest of us refer to as hallucinations.
I have found that God speaks to me much more since I have been actively studying scripture. Guess it’s a matter of seeking to learn more about Him so He responds more. Sometimes it’s by intuitive knowledge, sometimes through music, I have visions that come true, dreams that are prophetic in personal matters and if He really wants to be firm, He speaks aloud in my head but not my ear.
An example would be that the day I went to the hospital because I had a heart attack, God said to me, in my head, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” He reminded me of scripture that I was familiar with. At the time, I didn’t know why He said that but months later after I had been through a horrid experience with the doctors and nurses, I remembered that and it enabled me to forgive them, even though they had turned my life and my daughter’s life upside down.
To paraphrase the old joke, he sent me two boats and a helicopter, what more do I want?
To elaborate on that: I believe that I am called to be a physics teacher. How was I called? Through aptitude assessments, evaluations, and personal experiences that tell me that that’s how I’m most suited to improve the world. Unglamorous, maybe, but that’s the way God calls physicists, and the great thing is that it works whether or not the physicist recognizes it as a call.
The other great thing is that it works whether or not there is a God.
God tells me to make good choices, like not murdering other motorists on my morning commute. So far I’ve listened to his wisdom.