Episode 31 - The Voice of God

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hi friends before we get started this week i wanted to share with you a few really cool announcements uh the show has grown a lot and we get a lot of requests to come to different cities and see people in person and we haven't done that much in the past i mean we've done belong in a couple of cities and we've done a small tour but in general the only way to interact with you guys so far has been through the podcast and then back and forth on social media and this year we're changing that and it's actually starting this month february 26th and 27th in phoenix and los angeles we're going to do an event called lost and found and that's a night of interactive storytelling and music and guided meditations along with the eucharist with gunger and the brilliance and me science mike basically telling stories of faith lost and found of the kind of doubt and renewal you've heard on this show in episodes six and seven but done is a live dramatic presentation it's really cool we've done a few of these before and the reception from audiences has been great so we'd love to see you at lost and found in phoenix and los angeles in february a little bit later but only slightly later in march and april believe it or not the liturgist is going on tour with gunger for their one wild life tour so it'll be a night of music like you would expect from a gunger show but following that we'll do a q a and a conversation very similar to what we do on the liturgist podcast in a whole bunch of cities in the southwest you can learn more about both lost and found and uh the one wildlife tour featuring the liturgists and science mic in addition to of course gunger at the liturgist.com events or if you go to our facebook page and click on tour dates you'll be able to go and see you know if an event is happening in your city or a city near you and get all the details and ticket information and that kind of stuff and finally we're also doing a series of conferences this year like belong but bigger more accessible and more affordable and we're looking for churches in denver dallas chicago or los angeles excuse me to host that uh so if your church can seat 500 to 650 people and you'd like to bring the liturgists to your community at absolutely no cost just go to the liturgist.com 2016 event and either fill out the contact form or call the phone number listed on that page again that's the liturgist.com slash event so really looking forward to the big 2016 with you all and hopefully i'll see you in person sometime in the next three months hey everybody michael gunger here today's episode is sort of a follow-up to our last episode with rachel held evans about prophecy last time we spoke about prophecy more in the vein of speaking truth to power this time we focus on the voice of god itself is there such a thing does god speak to people are all the people running around telling people what god told them totally full of it or is there any possibility that any of it might be real so to start the discussion we're going to speak with some friends of ours meet hayden marshall hello science mike and i were recently at the sundance film festival and we hung out with aj and her husband jacob quite a bit hey how's it going and as usual with mike and i the conversation soon began to veer towards the bazaar and one of the afternoons while we were all standing in line for one of the art exhibits at sundance ajin started telling us about how different her life is now than it was a year ago and how one of the major influencing factors was this prophecy that she received online from a woman in texas upon hearing this it became clear that such a story should not be told without pushing record [Music] so the story goes i had a friend and she tells me that her sister who pastors in korea had received a prophecy from a woman in texas my friend is super conservative very skeptical and tells me that she believes every word of this prophecy so i feel like i should explain to you that hagen and jacob are not your typical pentecostal or charismatic evangelical christians again we're at sundance film festival and these are some of the more creative edgy people that we know they live in new york and they're very connected in the art scene and the music scene not people you might expect to be telling you about a prophecy when she receives her prophecy and it's recorded she sends it to me and we listen to it and i'm just blown away that it sounds exactly like my friend's life it's super specific and because i knew my friend's story and journey i i knew that she was struggling and you know it was just like you need to rest you need to realize that life is not going to be all exciting and you're not going to have it right now when you want it so how she knew that for my friend and then i'm i start to listen to other people's because it's like an open chat room the other people's prophecies sound nothing like my friend you can't just flip them or mix them up and say like well sarah gets this one and then we'll say that tim gets that one and we'll say you know it doesn't work that way it was so cool to listen to it and it really was exactly what she needed to hear at that moment in life so then i am just blown away by listening to her sisters listening to hers and i'm like wow i would love to try this [Music] the woman does it her name is mary she lives in texas and she does it twice a month and you don't know when she's going to do like post or uh hold her sessions you don't know when she posts on her website the dates and you it's first come first servants like you you need to work your schedule around to be able to be part of this session so then you download the server it's kind of like a skype and what do you see what are you seeing on your screen you see what looks like if you remember you know aol chat rooms just screen names okay which is your first name and that's it it's a chat room though basically yeah okay it's a chat room and it has the audio function so you can you know microphone in and when you need to say oh hello you just chime in and then all you're doing is there's no video screen of her or anything nope she doesn't know what i look like all she knows she knows your first name she doesn't know your last name she doesn't know what you look like because is where you live because this is what you have typed in on your server or whatever right i could make up my name in fact that's part of the story too i have an american name and a korean name okay and the first time i did it i decided i'm going to use my american name because what what's the difference and so then prophecies just start popping up for all the names so yeah we're all in the session and there's a portion she starts off where she she preaches and that's probably about three four minutes and then she by random chooses who starts so you say okay paul here we go like i'm gonna go pray she prays for about a minute comes back and just starts so any of us that grew up in the charismatic church have seen this not digitally but we've seen right the prophets do this a lot of times many of us are very skeptical of such things so but give us the evidence i wouldn't have seen this because you know i'm baptist and they're like really uncomfortable with things like this i'm i always say i'm baptist even though i'm not baptist i was baptist so that i didn't realize there was like a real world analog at all yeah so like in your church people just speak prophecies oh yeah yeah so you you have guest prophets that you could come to the church whoever was giving the prophecy would pray walk around and kind of look at the audience and say you there sir in the second row i feel like you have a calling you have a gifting you uh music is in your is in your soul i was like yeah i was playing in the band but so that's an important point like i've always thought that those kind of prophets are basically mentalists they're really good at reading people and reflecting but there's like this internet veil here yeah where there's no ability to either read the person ahead of during the them like there's no that's what makes this a little more interesting to me oh i'm i'm interested don't miss it and don't be alone i'm still deeply skeptical yeah but it is i'm i mean i was interested enough to come and say let's push record on this because i want to hear this but please don't take my no i i i'm with you i'm totally there okay i still have to i mean i get skeptical still and then i listen to it again and i'm like wow never mind and every person well i've only shared it with a small amount of people for this but every time i have shared it people literally are looking at me like you're crazy and you poor girl you have no idea what you're talking about and then they they listen to it and everything changes all right yeah can we hear it yeah so yeah my american name that uh is jacqueline and korean name is hijin so the first one you'll hear i decided you know let's make it easy let's just use jacqueline let's just see if that means any difference all right ready so there's a bit of silence in the beginning because like i said for a minute she goes and prays she's praying right now yeah yeah i kind of like the tension yeah i know i was just imagine me sitting there in silence freaked out thank you jesus thank you lord jacqueline as soon as i close my i just you are a beautiful woman and i think that jacqueline and the truth you're a beautiful woman on the outside and you're a beautiful woman on the inside there's been a lot of emphasis placed on you by other people on your beauty and on what you can contribute and on your talents and that though those things are real and those things are good that the lord wants you to know that he has selected you for himself okay so mary the prophet begins speaking like this and she goes on for several minutes and honestly i'm sitting there listening to them playing me the recording and i'm feeling a little disappointed i'm not sure exactly what i was expecting but i was hoping for something that would be [Music] less ambiguous less christianese more concrete more something that to me would sound only like hey jin but to me it sounded a little generic uh you truly are a woman who sees things and wants to declare those things and you see things in the lord but there's a hesitancy in you to step into the things that god that you see and that you feel but in this season god is going to bring such a sense of his love and his favor and his accuracy in you that as you walk out of this it's all really nice stuff but honestly i can imagine these things applying to a lot of different people not just hey jin but she had obviously been very moved by these words and the last thing i wanted to do is belittle something meaningful to her so as the prophecy ends i just kind of go quiet thankfully science mike was there and apparently feeling a little less cynical than me that day so what but first like why did you feel like that spoke to you in particular like what in there left out and why because i i know you yeah i'd like to hear that for everybody yeah or yeah it just sounded exactly like who i am what i'm going through and what i needed to hear in that moment and that just blew me away and i was literally i almost felt like i was in a trance and i was shaking with so much just emotion and connection with god because she's speaking the words but i'm feeling like the presence all around me and i mean it's still every time i listen to it i'm just like oh my gosh like yeah and to be funny before that prophecy i was a four on the enneagram i was an individualist and i took it again after and now i'm a reformer which is if anyone knows enneagram it's positive growth so the things that she was saying about having certain pressures placed on me or walking in in securities you know i came from uh small town virginia and made a huge move to new york city and that's where i'm living now and the kind of things that you're you know you're putting the environment and the people and with business and just everything socially it's it was either make or break and i feel like it just all the things that have happened to me since living in new york and the people that i'm supposed to have in my life have just shaped me and this is just something that was like affirming all of that i guess it just kind of released something there was a freedom of just saying i actually need to just love myself because god loves me and that's it that's so easy right but it's just like i i needed to hear it so that it just broke something in me and i feel yeah i'm just a different per like so many people have seen this change in me and they're like man tell me about your year like what's happened and you know all these awesome things are happening and i'm just like oh yeah i'm so on my ride right now it's great so then you went back with jacob right so then um i just remember being just so shaken and and feeling like the most euphoric sense and and just couldn't wait for him to get home so that we could share this in a quiet space and so like couple hours later you know i tell him i'm like oh my gosh you gotta hear it and we intentionally were just like okay you know let's create the environment in our home and and we sat there and played it and listened to it together and he just started weeping and it's like the person that knows me the most and knows what i'm going through and like he fully every word totally resonated it was so beautiful it's like one of the most beautiful moments we've shared uh next are jacob and hajin welcome uh i'm glad that you're here i'm just gonna pray and i will come back and share with you what i'm hearing thank you lord thank you lord thank you jesus thank you jesus um jacob and hagin i just see you being equipped for a new work that you have walked and served in a certain pattern um that you have known the lord in a certain pattern and i see him bringing into a season where he's equipping you for a different work it's almost like he's bringing you from a place of high polish it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over one million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com slash liturgists so jacob's in here now hey jacob check him out hey how's it going we played the prophet we played both prophecies okay and what in that prophecy to both of you seemed uniquely you and not applicable to other people my skepticism was off the charts too my first instinct when i heard about this was like every red flag went off this sounds exactly like the thing uh we should not be giving any attention to her it just felt like a waste right and and so but hayden uh she doesn't have the baggage that i have kind of having grown up in evangelicalism and uh so there's a purity about her search and and also a healthy skepticism in her own right um and so given those two things uh the significance of the response that she had i was instantly open to to digging a little deeper it just um you know so to kind of enter into that moment together you know and and to hear that together like i i cried like i literally had tears coming down my my face when i when i heard it because it was so specific to exactly what i was going through in the moment you know and it was it was so different from every other person's who we heard you know we we listen to everybody you know and um no one else's was even remotely similar to that and i guess that's the mystery of it right like those words could have been spoken to somebody else and it wouldn't have had the effect that it had on me and it had the exact effect on me that i needed in that moment i felt a beckoning into the goodness the love the presence of god or the will of god in my life however you describe that or whittle that down a sense of solidarity that is transcendent of logic it's transcendent of what i expected coming in and the specificity was i've never experienced anything else quite like that before you're going to be shepherding and seeing and hearing the voice of the lord for people and being able to call people into the gifts and the callings of god not just gifts of your profit or gifts that you have a word of knowledge but grace is in their life to technology and to industry and all those kinds of things and that you're going to become builders of people in that regard you know sometimes you're not sure if you're you know walking with christ like they say sometimes you you feel like am i doing the right thing am i am i out on the outside and you know looking in and i can't relate i feel judged i feel dismissed and so to hear those words was so empowering and it was just like yes keep going like the people that you you need to reach via technology and industry which i don't i don't know i guess i know jacob and agent very well so of the whole thing the part that kind of was most intriguing to me was like what what two interesting words to use in the context of how you're gonna help people i don't know and that's like where in certain industries circles that's what i mean is this very subtle details in on both of these sessions that i'm i'm just like how do you know that and like such intimacy there like how how do you do that right so someone tell me because i think about it i'm just like i would love i would love someone's well this is how it's done but i'm torn here if i know you are so i am too uh if we took that file and we made it um we edited it and we got her voice we got her to say here's what i hear for you michael and lisa how much did it land for you okay so this is why i'm torn because i don't want to say anything to it like try to discredit what your experience was yeah because that's how i like to look at it too on both sides your experience whether it had anything to do with that woman or not to me doesn't mean anything about you the reality of your experience so yeah you hear these words and for you god speaks to you and god moves in you that i have nothing to say about yeah but i personally think that happened that could happen through anything through like i i was at um i was at disneyland a few a few weeks ago and there's this girl this worker on the she's like sweeping the streets and the parade is about to start and she the music starts and it's like we can fly we can fly we can vlog peter pan yeah and um and the music starts and she's picks up her broom and she like throws her arms out and just runs down the street and immediately just tears start coming down my face i don't know what it was it was like pure beautiful childlike joy i was like she's the streets i know she's supposed to be happy but they could they couldn't have paid her to do that that was there was something authentic about it like she was excited the parade is about to start she sees us how many times a week you know um and she's running and i'm like i experienced god through that absolutely so all that to say like there's no comparing no all i'm saying is what i'm about to say is i think the things she's saying are generic enough that when you hear them and when you and i did while i was listening i put myself in them for a minute i was like because i've i've done that i've experienced these this sort of prophecy that's what i want to hear from you um and when you're listening to it and every time i've experienced it it is really lovely and you hear things because i think what happens is she says something like you're in transition or whatever and you hear virginia to new york and i hear we're going into a new record that is a totally totally and mike here is i'm thinking about moving to los angeles and but it's a very what she said was ambiguous what you think when she hear when you hear it is very specific and you see a picture here's why i want to do it because when i listen to that one if i imagine mike and jenny the hit rate is like 25 or less so i'd like to hear but i'm also like a i'm a pretty specific thinker yeah you know what i mean yeah so i'd like to see if she's a prophecy for me if the hit rate was also about 25 yeah or 35 or whatever i don't know like have you so i don't have any experience with this kind of stuff in the church yeah at all yeah all new to me sure uh i've spent more time deconstructing like horoscopes and stuff yeah but that's because you know my baptist church going up really affirmed deconstructing horoscopes but i've had those moments in my life where i've felt compelled to pray for someone that i've gone to them and prayed for them not knowing what i should pray for them about and then as i spoke spoke something specific into their life and through my atheist journey i assumed that was some form of deep-seated neurological intuition where my brain was telling me cues about this person's life and i was proof texting that into god and in every case these were people i knew it was never like a person on the internet that's random but even to the point that i guess is where my past comes into this i've sounded like that woman before in a room by myself where i'm hearing something from god and i'm just saying yes and thank you and now not a lot um post atheism it's pretty rare now but i mean so like the one thing i really agree with like well god and you guys can't see my air quotes here god speaks through anything because it's how we it's us finding meaning that's a huge part of what god is but i guess the question is how talented is this woman or what's spiritually gifted where is she is she channeling something um and again that's why i didn't want to say because i don't i don't i hate like crapping on a beautiful experience you know what i mean but for the sake of the podcast i mean like we're discussing it okay so things that we don't necessarily know about are what what does our unconscious mind pick up on for instance jacob and hesion on an internet chat room that at the time of day that it was it says some things those two names say some things maybe not thinking about it but okay probably an asian and probably a white guy or yeah lots of asians are nurses and doctors i'm far from that no i'm not saying that just kidding i mean i'm just saying there's a little bit of information yeah right i mean even like even like it's not it's not bubba todd right yeah yeah most of the names are todd most of them are the katie's in general they'll speak something your name does say something it says something about your age usually what kind of family you came from a little bit a little bit so if she's just in this place like unconscious is free that that doesn't explain enough to go real specific for people but but that's one element of the unknown here is all the ways that her unconscious might be quite brilliant um that's just picking up on whatever names and there were no interactions that nobody talked at all some people had the option of typing and chatting okay but other than that it was and not chatting says something to your unconscious mind saying anything that people say i mean there's little things little pieces of information and the other thing is that that i don't know is there anything to actual the energy of people psychic energy spirit whatever like the words that usually give us the crease yes i mean everything is so bizarre when i land in a city i feel like i feel something different than when i was in the last city even if i don't know anything about that new city i feel something different so maybe there is something that people can feel on an intuitive level in some sort of genius crazy part of the human brain or i don't know so i leave room for some mystery here i just i just think it's my guess as she puts herself in that state and she's got kind of a gift at being very encouraging to people and you guys were in a state of being able to hear what you needed to hear at the time and you received what you needed to receive at the time wait hold on a second wait am i the one open to a spiritual experience what mark it down let it just listeners yeah mark it in the books for the record i don't know i can never know if she really is hearing from god and i'm okay with that yeah because yeah yeah and i say this as a person i've had i've had i'm skeptical of it but i've had experiences where like i have to at the same time question my own cynicism because i i like when we were supposed when we moved to denver um there was this guy in our church in michigan that was an odd bird um kind of always like he was kind of the prophetic guy at the church well i feel like a lot of times people that say these prophets are kind of odd god told me this to tell you but i was having this moment and i was praying and i was like i felt like it was time to leave michigan and i was just afraid but i really had felt like now is the time and this guy came up and he slapped me on the butt right it was just walking down the hall he slapped me but god said time to go i was like whoa that was weird so i called lisa and lisa said i told her the story and she said i was just in the backyard praying and this sounds crazy but i had sort of a vision i felt like it's time to go to denver so the thing that interests me about your perspective is i think we're all like charismatic prophecy noobs and you're not so you're more familiar with the patterns of speech you're you've that's been a part of your deconstruction in a way that it has not been a part of mine well it's actually been a part of mine like i mean yeah we grew up charismatic and yeah so i'm i'm actually very familiar with it which is why it was so uh hard for me to take seriously at first yeah how many have you had prophecies like to you before personally yeah yeah mostly growing up you know so so uh in hindsight you know nothing that i actually remember in a way that um has continued to affect my life at this point it's not like i had you know when i was 10 the thing that that lady said uh you know stuck with me my entire life i just feel like at each juncture that that happened it was more of like a sense of encouragement or or something and all usually from people who at least knew me or were in the room together i think part of what made this so bizarrely special was the context and having no sense of connection and yet to have such a pure um wonderful and you know way right to the core of me like past all of the skepticism past all of the the the other things she could have said she went right to the core of what i i needed to hear i don't know what you guys like as well as mike does but as i was listening i was hearing the language that i always heard a lot of christianese charismatic language but i believe you guys when you say at least that you heard what you needed to hear so either she's really gifted at saying things that um it is encouraging and is full of love and if you're in a place where you're listening i think when i was in a cc on this meditation retreat i got to this point where i could look at a painting i was meditating all day and this painting would speak all these specifics to my life i felt like god was speaking through everything so i'm not even questioning that god spoke through what she said and that you heard what you needed to hear i'm just questioning how special what she said or or what the nature of her gifting is how about that whether it's encouragement whether it's specific prophecy to individual people that has and how much is that channel because if it was specifics if it was a magic trick which is you know like a fortune telling thing it'd be one thing if she's like jacqueline why did you tell me your name is jacqueline your name is hayden right holy shit that's what we needed to hear yeah i know yeah yeah so this was not that this was not specific enough like you guys were in virginia you're moving to new york sure yeah um but that wouldn't have been helpful in a way it's true yeah but that's why where is where is god in that this is why like this conversation in particular fascinates me because it gets to the kernel of my search for understanding of the divine because you look at a painting and the painting speaks to you directly and she hears a prophecy or god speaks to me through the painting whatever you want to do right right yeah and that she has the same experience with a passage of speech on the internet so when we think about god and i don't think this is answerable but i continue to search for an answer regardless is it that somehow god is simply emanating through all things and sometimes we tune in and become aware or sometimes is that emanation in some way specific to us and we receive a specific message from that which we call god and that's why this particular mystery is so compelling to me is like i like having your degree of distance my lesser degree of distance and then being in it and seeing how that affects the reaction because i knew them well like i heard hey jen's and i was like yeah i mean that's like a couple things that stood out like not all people are beautiful inside and out and not even all people would say like be able to acknowledge that right and that that the expectations based on appearance you know what i mean i thought about heiden not only as a person but as an attractive asian person and how that white america works in fashion right exactly so but i know details so that's where my brain goes but then when i heard both of theirs and the way she was talking about you know you're making this shift and you're going to start saying things you've never said before and some of the places you've been and the the knowledge you received in an old tradition has applied anymore and you're going to take these insights you're going to use them to move people via technology and industry at which point i was like that's oddly specific it's just wild because i listen to the ears and it doesn't apply to me but i i'm also like deeply deeply disappointed in the suspension of my skepticism [Laughter] like i'm disappointing myself okay okay i gotta i gotta do this okay dude i did the two things first i was uh at a retreat with this church that i've gone to before i love them it's a it's a youth group giant giant youth group and this woman was there in like their prayer ministry and uh she wanted to pray with me and my mom's like a really big prayer person so if like a mom aged person wants to pray with me yeah let that happen and as she was praying she said and the difficulties you've been having with your mind and your head we just surrender those to god and like she didn't know anything about the concussion and i was like what just happened like it actually freaked me out and i got done and i was like i just had a concussion like you know do you follow my work she's like i have no idea who you are you know what i mean like she according to her she's never heard of me before that first talk i gave and i didn't i didn't talk about the head injury or any of the and i was really back then at the time it was happening it was a lot more pressing than it is now and i just kind of sat with it so i'm gonna i'm gonna take science hat off for a second i'm gonna put mystic hat on for a second i identify more with people who give prophecies than receive them and i'm about to sound crazy and you guys know i'm super comfortable with that and admitting that everything i'm about to say is completely unscientific but in my time as a believer pre-atheism there were many moments where i felt a nearly uncontrollable compulsion to say something of what content i did not know to a specific person and whenever i would do that if i wouldn't do it i couldn't calm down or find any peace and whenever i did it most of the times that person would start weeping now i'm a pretty empathetic person [Music] but the other thing is in my work now since part of what i do is i try to be honest like in this conversation i'm being honest that i'm both skeptical and searching in the act of doing that people are drawn to it who feel misplaced spiritually or curious spiritually or deeply hurt spiritually that that's the people that follow the literatures but also the science mike stuff and whenever i get a question from someone that's not about physics or neurology but about hurt in their life i do something internally that's different and that's i'd completely empty my mind and i imagine i can't say this out loud i imagine that i'm an antenna and i just turn up the game and try to step out of the way and when i do that i never know what's going to come out of my mouth i believe that's what that woman is doing too right so that's what i'm saying i think i understand exactly what she's doing in texas and for me the the struggle in my faith post a i don't struggles too strong word i enjoy the process uh but the thing i is trying to figure out what i'm tuning into am i achieving a particular brain state excu i'm definitely achieving a particular brain state but what is the source yeah of that brain state and i know i don't think anyone has an answer i'm just yeah that's where i'm at with this story that's pretty much where our conversation left off with them with a big question mark so we let the story simmer for a week or so and then mike and i decided to debrief a little bit hey mike our conversation with jacob and agent led me to some questions that i haven't thought about in a while and when you're talking about prophecy whether it's fortune telling or the admonishment of the divine towards encouragement or hope or whatever what does it mean for god to speak you know because it's one thing if you assume that god is a being that has something specific to say to people maybe we take that assumption first which is a big assumption uh that's a big assumption it's probably a little bit more orthodox than you and i tend to be how does that get translated i mean we did the episode on the the asymptotic fidelity of words and that's with humans so how assuming that god could have some sort of concept to relay to human beings how much asymptotic fidelity are we dealing with that it has to like downgrade into electrical firing you know like it has to get into the brain somehow it has to it has to fire off some neurons well so yeah so we're making that assumption that like god speaks in some discernible way that i don't know we'll come back to that because i want to unpack that further but so if we assume there is some being beyond space and time not locked temporarily like we are which we have to assume a god-like being would otherwise it's just like a roman deity it's not like a god like we've described yahweh to be in a trinitarian context i think first of all anything that god is communicating to us has to be reduced and simplified and turned into metaphor to be accessible it's got to come out of this a temporal non-locality and become a temporal local idea and if i make those assumptions it's it's actually relatively interesting because it it puts me more at peace with say genesis or jonah uh or even jesus speaking about jonah because god's already having to limit information so much to be accessible to get that fidelity down to a place that human brains can comprehend it that including a cultural context is no different than including a space-time context well um so that that i find comforting the tension for me the place i'm torn up all the time is when i look at physics and when i look at a logical portrayal of reality a god that speaks in that way it just doesn't make any sense yeah it just doesn't make any sense at all um and i can appeal to say well god doesn't have to make sense that's fine but if i just open my mind to any nonsensical idea that's not a very useful way of thinking why why does it make this this particular conception of god true and not some other conception of god or not all conceptions of god so maybe we could clarify what do you mean by it doesn't make sense if god speaks the criteria under which god speaks and acts are troubling like so if god can speak to us i sure wish god would have explained germ theory some time before the black plague like you don't even have to perform any miracles here just tell people the consequences of dumping their sewage in the street just tell people the consequences of not cleaning their hands after handling things and not only death you know death inevitable but painful death senseless suffering grievous losses could be avoided and so that's what i mean there's this logical there's this it a god who speaks shines a spotlight on the problem of evil and that's what i mean when i say that i have these problems with the idea yeah and when i look at cosmology when i look at physics this sort of almost platonic idea or this unchanging god idea in christian theology actually seems much more plausible than the ways i usually think about god a god is absolutely unchanging and from whom everything emerged or emanated that's a decent idea in physics but that's not a being that's not a being who speaks so when i try to reconcile that with my experiences my experiences throughout my life have been a god who speaks over and over pre-atheism post-atheism the transition from atheism to belief again was all about hearing god speak to me and it still happens to me today and i have not been able to bring this distant impersonal plausible deity in contact with the whisper i hear in my ear that that frankly jacob and hey jen heard through this woman um i know why they have this as much as i'm so deeply skeptical i understand how it was moving to them and not only moving but spooky because i i have those moments too but i can't fit those moments inside my worldview all right so here's a little food for thought let's maybe go to a closer model of god to maybe what you and i tend to talk about ground of being or love or you know infinite mystery that has this direction let's assume let's let's assume that love is a real thing and that there is this pull or or gravitation or will if you even would want to say to it that there there's something that drives that it that god is and that you know that's what holds all things together that's what keeps pulling us into love so it's the light by which we see and say that thing that god somehow makes it is able to communicate with us when you think of the asymptotic fidelity of a human speaking to a human and how we you know if i'm trying to communicate to you mike that i treasure your friendship i have to i have to first like find ways of coming in into touch with how i actually feel about our friendship i have to like self-examine and then i have to find metaphors and words and ways of like kind of minimizing it boxing it into concepts and speaking that to you and then i send it across you know airwaves or ones and zeros over a phone whatever i have to do i have to minimize it some way and find a way to try to send it to you in hopes that you'll understand something of my emotion if i if i could more directly just kind of plug somehow into your very being let you feel what i feel that wouldn't actually be a lesser form of communication it would actually be in some ways a far clearer and more direct form of communication and so what i wonder when i think of like prophecy in this way of god speaking a prophet that somehow ascertains the very heart of love and justice and the divine or of encouragement and and he or she can see this person divinely or see himself or herself divinely and something from that ground sort of emanates into the brain into the very being of the of the prophet not so much as in say these say these words uh these words are gonna you know here's a concept this person is a designer and you should say something about industry and you should say so you know i have a hard time with that to me that when i heard that prophecy even the little specifics and you know maybe i'm too cynical about it but i'm with you if there are specifics that the divine speaks like that why why stay so vague why could the divine not say hey here's how you cure aids here's the fusion that would be a solid yeah here's how to fuse hydrogen on on earth in earth's gravity well go for it yeah exactly here's the here's the formulas that you need or whatever why stay so vague and so that leaves that keeps me in a kind of a cynical place but if there's something of some of the divine that your story your story of encountering jesus in the eucharist you said you make the joke about that he spoke in english to you but it came through your brain your encounter with that deep mystery somehow translated into your being into your brain into your language you know that's that's my hope about if god speaks that's it's it's a bit more direct it's a bit more existential than in concepts or words i hate to give half-formed thoughts because you know a lot of times i let i rattle around things in my head a lot before i ever say them to people especially a few hundred thousand people on a podcast but the way i've been trying to reconcile that god that that ground of being that i find compelling and plausible it's a tremendous combination but this these more personal experiences i've had other people have that are recorded in scripture is i thought about lightning and so you have energy electrical energy that builds up in the cloud layer and then when conditions are right on the surface uh two charges connect and a massive amount of energy is transferred just you know without understanding physics magically right like lightning was lightning was one of the proofs people used for deities in ancient times but there's this tremendous energy that comes down and when it comes to this lightning lightning is going to strike where lightning is going to strike but you can do things to make lightning strikes much less likely so you can through construction techniques and lightning rods and electrical grounding you can make it very unlikely that your structure is going to hit by lightning and the other hand you can do things that make lightning strikes much more likely and i've often wondered if spiritual disciplines and spiritual practices and yes christianity are means by which you make that surge more likely you know the the internet's powered by photons and electrons but they're very structured they're very organized and so they convey a lot of information there's not a lot of information in a lightning strike but there's tremendous power and so i've often wondered if these moments these divine encounters are moments where like you've said this ground of being is connecting and then the storytelling machine the human brain begins to put a context on that connection so the personalization of words yes absolutely so when i had you know i i've described it before even on this episode when i open myself like an antenna to god i'm saying words they seem to be mysterious to me sometimes but you know i i guarantee you as as close as i get to guarantees if we could image the brain sufficiently you would see you know my left temporal lobe assigning that language creating that meaning but that that posture before something greater is what produces the drive to love people so deeply to encourage them so much and you know when i listen i could be wrong but when i hear that woman's voice in texas and what she's doing and you know she doesn't she doesn't collect any money or anything she is driven by a desire to help people to encourage people not to trick or exploit people because there's people who use that kind of language very very exploitatively they exploit people they rob people they give people false hopes and in other cases it's people connecting with that ground of being or seems to be now of course i feel weird saying that i'm science mike and this this is not a scientific idea i can't you know use any kind of meter and demonstrate this i could you know we could scan people's brains we could see the activity the genuine love and affection and their anterior cingulate cortex but i don't know this is one of those moments where my lived experience i mean what we're talking about here the reason this episode's so important to me you're talking about the core of my faith the reason i'm not an atheist is because these experiences are so powerful so profound and so life-changing that i go to a building every sunday morning to hang out with other people who are as equally moved by them and i will like use a word that has tremendous cultural baggage christian and i will unself-consciously apply it to myself a person who is pretty against assigning labels to people and it's because i've been struck by lightning and i feel like jacob and hayden were too through that woman's work yeah [Music] there's a there's a particular thing i've noticed especially lately because i still have this really diverse friend group in terms of religious non-religious hardcore atheist casual atheist and there is this cynical disgust with wonder that some atheists have not all not even a majority but some particularly angry atheists have this cynicism towards wonder and i have found that the kind of sentimentality i have about encounters with god has been an antidote to my cynicism i am i am less cynical today than at any point in the last 10 to 15 years and that is completely completely because i hold in such high regard my encounter with the divine i hope anyone who listens can tell that i have a healthy respect for skepticism and even the idea that most of these things that i'm contemplating through christianity are are truly absurd i mean they're not just unlikely they're they're they're nutty [Laughter] like i actually i actually believe like just some random rabbi in the first century rose from the dead it's just a weird thing to think if you take away social identity yeah like if you were the only guy that believed that exactly exactly exactly like you found some some figure in an ancient text and said this guy was the son of god and he rose from the dead people would be like okay like if you push that hard enough you would probably be committed to a mental institution [Laughter] so i get it i get it it's nutty but when i accept that [Music] it heals me oh it's so weird but when i accept that it heals me it it alters my brain function on a fundamental level and i just see the world through eyes of love yeah so we're back at mystery with some pragmatism as always but you know back to prophet mary let's say that the cynics are correct and nothing she is saying is special if what she's doing is being done out of love which it seems to be and what she's saying is done out of a sincere desire you know to be a conduit of divine love to the people who would listen to her i think there's not just something okay about that but it is perhaps even something kind of beautiful about it whether she's funneling god's thoughts or her own people are obviously finding some encouragement and hope there whether those words are directly buzzed in from heaven or whether uh it's simply an intuitive you know sort of feeling of love and compassion for a person if that's what i thought she was doing for me i would love to hear her speak to me out of that place and receive anything of god that i could which is a weird thing to say because i i don't know before this episode that i would have wanted to hear the texas lady prophesy to me um but after all this conversation maybe there is maybe there's something uh good about it either way all right i wrestled with sharing this i'm gonna share it i thought about it enough especially since i've had a you know since we got back time to think about it before i became an atheist i felt a compulsion a calling of god to pray for a specific person so i started praying for them and i didn't feel the peace i usually feel when i'm obedient to that kind of weird calling and so i uh called the person and then i told him we needed to pray together and can i come to your office so i left my job and drove to this person's job went into the person's office shut the door and started to pray and as was typical for me in this point of my pre-skeptical life i i said words that seemed to come from somewhere else and i started to pray for this person's life and then this person's marriage and then the person's problems they were having and the argument last night and as i started praying these really specific things and feeling like this is a really weird thing for me to say [Applause] uh the person i was praying with began to weep and he said that for the first time as marriage last night they had told each other they were getting divorced and i had prayed for this healing this emotional healing and this reconciliation and uh this person is still married today they got through this thing and i from my perspective i didn't have a clue that anything was wrong in their relationship and i i've turned this over in my mind a lot especially this was one of the one of the last ropes i held on to um as my faith fell apart and mike the atheist decided the compulsion was a weird quirk of my brain and that somehow intuitively reading body language or something my brain was honing in on something this person was feeling and maybe that's all it was but it's just it's still strange to me um a little bit before lunch on a regular work day like i couldn't relax until i called this person and said we gotta we've gotta get together and i've gotta pray with you wow yeah that's amazing i like that this whole conversation has pushed me towards mystery again i probably right now in my frame of mind needed a nudge towards mystery again [Laughter] that's sort of what the liturgist is about right if you i think you and i need more than enough [Laughter] uh but when i i guess one thing to for me right now to rationalize such things in in the mystery realm is not just the divine aspect because that does push me you know like like we've been saying back to the the problem of evil um what if god is speaking specific things for specific people like that all the time or occasionally whenever he feels like it or whatever but i wonder how we're connected to one another in ways that we don't even realize right you know it's our our perception of reality is just so limited from a single perspective and it would not surprise me to find out that we are connected to each other in inherent ways uh that we just don't can't understand with how we usually experience reality if it's the divine impetus to call that person but that there's something about the connection that you have to that person that that is on some other level and i don't know you know i don't know i i guess i'm just showing that there's there's a dimension it's not just an up and down dimension speaking metaphorically about you know god above us and telling us to do so but but there's a interconnectedness to all of this that god is the glue that binds us together in some ways as well it's enough that that thought is enough to like it still pulls me into mystery i suppose but it's a beautiful story thank you for sharing i don't think you're a whack job well you're a little bit of a wife i'm at least a little bit of a whack job so am i i mean that's why people enjoy this program i was just thinking on that note like people enjoying this program that's pretty weird like humans have an innate attraction towards people who present their ideas with the most certainty and we present ours with the least certainty you listen to an episode that raises a question and we almost always end with well there's some ideas yeah obviously most of the things in this episode that we have said are incorrect and then we leave you with that well thank you to hey jin and jacob marshall for being part of this conversation thank you to greg nordine for all of his editing help with the conversation and a big special thanks to all of you who responded to the patreon campaign that we have started to keep the show going um thank you so much your support really does matter it really helps us do what we're planning and hoping to do with the show we have huge plans in 2016 we're working on a new format for the show that is more like the high production values that you've seen in uh episode 20 lgbtq but that incorporates the laid-back easy conversation that people enjoy in our other episodes we're aiming higher than we ever have with the show we're getting more downloads than we've ever had and because of that the actual infrastructure and technology required to deliver this program gets more expensive every day so if you'd like to help us branch out create a larger team tell more stories and continue to facilitate the hundreds of thousands to even millions of downloads that happen per month for the liturgist podcast just go the liturgist.com podcast and click on the patreon button as little as a dollar a month from you can really change the trajectory of the show keep it sustainable and make these kinds of stories and conversations about science art and faith possible we love all of you please come see us on the road look forward to seeing you soon i'm michael gunger i'm science mike thanks for listening everybody you