How Does God Speak?

In a recent post, Michael Halcomb expressed his skepticism about claims to have heard a personal message from God:

The thing is, people can rarely ever prove that God spoke, it's like, well, you just have to take their word for it.... But then, I really think that there are legitimate instances where God speaks to people. So, I guess I'm wondering, are there any bloggers out there to whom God has spoken or speaks? If so, how does it happen and how do you know?

I responded there:

God's voice has always seemed to me less like a source of information and more like a rather forceful and focused form of conscience, persistently (sometimes even uncomfortably) pointing toward or away from certain specific decisions. It's not always been there (in fact, ignoring it is a pretty sure way to make it disappear!), but when I have experienced it, it's unmistakable.

And Michael responded:

I'm still wondering just how. Your notion of a "source of information" is interesting but still, how did you hear it? Did you "feel" more than "hear"? What?

My answer grew a bit too long for the comment thread, so I’ll post it here:

The first thing I should say is that I think God’s primary means of communication are scripture and the church, but I don’t think those are the only ways he speaks, and unless I am completely nuts, I think I have occasionally heard his voice in other ways. In my own experience, those latter cases always seemed a mix of thoughts, feelings and "coincidence," like everything in my life was pointed towards a particular choice, and usually one that I did want to make (thus, almost every time it has happened I fought God on it for a long while). At such times I always found that, if I obeyed, things turned out for the best but, if I disobeyed, they very much did not. I’ve given a number of examples in other posts, so here I'll give just one more (omitting a few personal details):

When I was a sophomore in college, for several months I strongly felt that I needed to end a certain relationship, but I had no desire to do so. There wasn't anything immoral about the relationship, but every time I prayed--heck—even when I didn’t, this persistent thought/feeling kept intruding. But I kept pushing it back, giving excuses, arguing with God that it would hurt the other person too much. This went on for months, until finally I got so fed up that one night I went out to the "Back 40" of our campus and prayed/yelled (I don't normally pray out loud, let alone at a shout!) that I didn't understand, I didn't think I could do it, and how could I even know it was God I was hearing and not just my own twisted mind? There was no voice from heaven (if that ever happens, I've not experienced it), just that persistent feeling. So finally I said: "I give up, if this is really you, God, if you really want me to do this, you're gonna have to do something drastic. Hit me over the head with a 2x4!"

I know, I know, that's not how you're supposed to talk to God (I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I did at all, but then again, it'd be nice to have that kind of passion again). Well anyway, I stood there for a few minutes, half expecting some crazed student to jump out of the woods and hit me upside the head, but nothing happened. So I sighed and turned around to walk back to campus, and immediately (I kid you not) I smacked my forehead on a big block of wood.

In all the time I was standing there, I had entirely forgotten where I was. Our campus had a raised set of railroad tracks that ran through the back 40, which the path crossed through a low walking tunnel. I happened to be standing just outside the opening of that tunnel, a bit closer than I realized, I suppose. So when I turned around I slammed my head right into the center brace holding up the roof. I think it was actually a 4x8, but I got the message, and a bad headache. ;)

But I didn't listen. After all that, I went back to my dorm intent to break it off, but I didn't follow through. In fact, I stopped arguing with God about it at all. I knew what he wanted, but I wasn’t willing to do it. So I just ignored him until finally the feeling disappeared. As it turned out, the decision (or indecision!) led to one of the most difficult years of my life. Worse, after so blatantly ignoring God, I never again felt that tug in the same way I once did.

I realize it all sounds a bit unbelievable, but there were many times in my life when similar things happened. Moreover, what convinces me that it was not just my subconscious playing tricks on me is that, when God’s voice was there, it was always unmistakably persistent and very specific--something particular I needed to do or stop doing, not a replacement for conscience, free will or critical thinking--but when it was gone, I couldn't manufacture it no matter how much I wanted to.

Ultimately, then, I do think God occasionally speaks in a more personal way, and it should never be taken lightly when he does, but I'm not convinced this is something we should be seeking as Christians (and I remain deeply skeptical of people who claim God gave them a message for someone else). There are much more important things to our relationship with God, and more important means of ascertaining God’s will, which (I think) should always be sought in the community of faith and in consultation with scripture. To center your life on seeking some private manifestation of God’s voice will seriously distort things. After all, Christianity is not supposed to be about us at all, but about loving God and neighbor. So in the end, if you want to know God’s will for your life, don’t hide in your prayer closet; start with Micah 6:8. For if you were to truly live this out, you could hardly go wrong:

He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Tidbits

A few items of interest:

Conscience For Me But Not For Thee: The Case for Pro-Life Docs and Pharmacists from the Bad Idea Blog, provides a fairly thorough defense of the concept (see my own post on the subject, from June).

In What Lies Beneath, James McGrath offers a great analogy for the importance of critically examining one's own beliefs.

Peter Chattaway links to a number of early reviews of Religulous, including especially this one by John Nolte, via which I discovered this:

Bill Maher hates your (fill in the blank) religion, which reveals that many of the interviews for the film were acquired deceptively. People were told the movie would be called "A Spiritual Journey" and were not told that Maher would be the host until they were already caught on camera. I'm curious how many of those who (rightly) condemned Expelled for lying to it's subjects will defend Religulous for the using the same tactic. At least Expelled chose recognized experts to interview; Maher apparently went looking for the most ignorant folks he could find.

Finally, and just for fun: In Which Scott Goes To The Fourth Heaven…

How I Became a Christian - Part II

It has been said that if a man talks to God, he’s pious, but if God talks to him, he’s schizophrenic. If that is true, it bodes ill for me, but I suppose I’ll have to let you judge for yourselves. As described in the first part of my story, though I was raised in the church, it was a long time before I was willing to admit that fact to my (mostly non-Christian) friends. When I finally did so, in ninth grade, it was revolutionary. Of course, simple honesty with oneself and one’s acquaintances accounts for much of the change, and would likely have done so regardless of what religion (or lack thereof) I had finally admitted.

But the change went deeper than that, as I stopped looking for my identity and validation in what others thought of me, stopped worrying (as much!) about being well-liked or popular. Ironically, the very act of deciding to care more about my relationship with God than my relationship with others in fact improved my relationships with others as well. As it turned out, not only did my relationships deepen but, quite unexpectedly, I found that my two circles of friends (“church” and “school”) begin to coalesce in a way I could not have thought possible.

But I also found, not for the last time, that God was not satisfied to improve my lot in life; he wanted to improve me. It wasn’t long after that I first became aware of God’s promptings, his “still small voice” (as it has been called), which rather insistently began to demand that I live my life better than I had been doing. It is difficult to describe this “voice,” and those who have not experienced it will be forgiven for finding the notion strange, if not absurd, but it will become central to my story so I must try to explain it. In truth, it’s not really a “voice,” at least not an audible one, but neither is it simply an amorphous “feeling.” As I said in my review of The Shack, the closest thing I could compare it to would be the conscience, but it is distinct from the conscience, and not quite the same.

While the conscience will leave you feeling guilty about certain moral choices (real or potential), God’s promptings are deeper and feel, for lack of a better word, more foreign. The conscience is, after all, just another part of your own mind, and expresses values you already hold, even if you would prefer not to at the moment. The voice of God is like having another mind altogether, simultaneously more elusive and more persistent than the conscience. As I said before, it is not (at least in my experience) a source of information so much as of direction, and it isn’t always limited to strictly moral choices. I’m certain I’ve done a poor job of explaining it, but hopefully the rest of my story itself will clarify what I mean.

In any case, in this subtle but unmistakable way, God began helping me to recognize a few of my worse qualities and begin to move beyond them. For instance, I had a very short temper and could sometimes get violent over very minor things (just ask my younger brothers), and this was one of the first things that God began working on. I came to recognize that television, film and video games were particular problems for me in this area. I would become inexplicably enraged playing even the most innocuous video games (I was a sore loser, I guess), and watched some extremely violent movies.

Looking back, I can see that the problem wasn’t always the shows or games themselves, but simply my own immaturity, but in order to recognize that I had to get away from them for a while, and one of the first things God convicted me of was to take a break from them. And for nearly a year I did so, and apart from a few weak moments, I didn't watch or play any of them. This made a huge difference, beginning me on the path that has led to my current mellow self. Heh. Other issues God took up were my pride and vanity, odd though they might seem for a geeky teenager, and a perennial struggle with lust (made worse, no doubt, by the nudity in some of those movies I had been watching).

But while feeling pressed for moral progress is one, and perhaps the most important, aspect of intimacy with God (I said his voice is very like the conscience), it is not the only one. The summer after ninth grade was a particular turning point for me on that score. My youth pastor had started a program called Summer Servants, which was essentially an extension of small group I had been attending, except that it ran all day, every day, for eight weeks. Only five of us were crazy enough to sign up, but that summer changed all of our lives. There is much that I could say about it—how I made some of the deepest friendships I’ve ever had, experienced for the first time how overwhelming an experience prayer and worship can be, and faced my first serious challenge to my faith, among others—but I’ll limit myself to one point:

I’ve said that before I became serious about my faith the only thing I wanted was to be popular, but that isn’t exactly true. There was one thing my teenaged self wanted more: to have a girlfriend. As I was a shy and unattractive pre-teen (or do them call them “tweens” these days?), you wont be shocked to hear that my one relationship during that time consisted almost entirely of passing notes. The one time I worked up the nerve to call, her dad answered the phone, told me it was too late to be calling—it was 8pm—and hung up on me. Finally, I asked her (by note) to a dance, at which we stood ten feet apart and said not a word. A week later, a mutual friend informed me that we had broken up. The only reason I’d even call it “dating” is because it led to a fistfight with her next boyfriend (there was that temper I mentioned), but it sapped any nerve I had to ask another girl out.

Despite that utter failure (or perhaps because of it), however, dating became my dearest wish. Thus, even after I gave up to God my desire to be popular, it took until that summer for God to convince me to give up my obsession with finding a girlfriend. Though no one, that I can recall, ever suggested such a thing to me, it became clearer and clearer that God wanted me to give up dating. Not just to stop worrying so much about it, mind you, but to consciously choose not to date. You might think that a kid who hadn’t managed to ask a girl out since the sixth grade wouldn’t have been too opposed to the idea of giving up for a while, but you would be wrong. The fact that it seemed an unattainable goal only made it harder to give it up, and I fought God on it all summer. Slowly but surely the feeling built that this was what God wanted me to do, but just as steadily my own resistance to the idea grew as well.

By the end of the summer things came to a head. It seemed like every time I opened my Bible I’d stumble on some text like Matthew 19 or 1 Corinthians 7. At one point I even went cliff-diving with the youth group, decided to try a swan dive and instead landed, well in a very uncomfortable position, and got to spend the whole bus-ride home listening to my friends chanting the Beatles’ song Yesterday, especially the line: “suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be.” I actually became quite distressed about the whole affair, as I continued to hold on to what I thought I wanted most, but God was very persistent, and finally, the last week of Summer Servants, I gave in and handed that area of my life over as well.

Once again, and quite immediately, it was startling how freeing it was to let go of the issue. The funny thing was (God’s sense of humor?), just as I decided to give up dating was when I finally got a new hair cut, grew into my feet, and (if I’d have known it), actually did have the chance to go out with the girl I liked. But I stuck with my decision and soon discovered just how valuable refusing to date could be. While all my friends were coupling off, I was able to maintain much closer relationships with our female friends than any of my other guy friends did (the girls called me “as good as gay,” which I guess was a compliment). Freed of sexual tension, some of my best friends during that period were female, and we were able to talk with remarkable candor. Yet the greatest benefit I found was in avoiding the pain caused as my friends who dated inevitably broke up, usually on bad terms, causing divisions and rivalries among their own circles of acquaintances. For those of my friends who had gone further, sexually, this naturally led to worse grief, including at least one pregnancy, and I was spared all of that.

The truth is, God knew exactly what he was doing when he called me not to date, and the next couple years were among the best of my life. I generally found that I knew what it was God wanted of me, though I didn't always succeed in doing it, but as often as I obeyed things worked out better than they would have otherwise. Yet the most significant examples of this pattern will have to wait for the next installment.

Continued in Part III

Is Morality Relative, Absolute or Neither?

In an interesting post at Exploring Our Matrix, James McGrath offers his thoughts on a recent debate between a moral relativist and a moral absolutist. In particular, he raises several objections to the common Christian attempt to ground moral absolutes in the existence of God. First, he mentions the Euthyphro Dilemma, a very old argument which can be boiled down to the following conundrum: If right and wrong depend on God’s choice, then they seem to be arbitrary (and thus not absolute), whereas if they do not depend on God’s choice, then God’s existence does not seem to be necessary to morality. James notes that a frequent rebuttal is that moral absolutes correspond to God’s character, and responds:

That doesn't seem to me to solve the problem. In fact, it seems to create a problem akin to the "fine tuning" of the laws of physics: then we have a Creator of our universe whose morality is fine tuned to the cosmic moral absolutes...

I’m not sure this is a valid response. If morality is absolute, then it would be the “cosmic moral absolutes” that were fined tuned according to God’s character, not the other way around. But more fundamentally, I think we need to distinguish between moral “absolutism” and moral “objectivity.” To say that morality is “absolute” seems to mean that certain actions (like killing babies) are always wrong, no matter what the circumstances. But to say that morality is “objective” means only that for any given circumstance, there is always a right choice.

I think it is much more helpful to think of morality as objective than to think of it as absolute. In that case, God’s character can serve as the ultimate standard for right and wrong, not because it is “fine-tuned” to an ideal set of absolute moral principles (which could then be affirmed without God), but because what is right is determined by what choice God himself would make if he were in this situation. This assumes that moral truths are not primarily “facts” which “exist” in the usual sense, but rather inherent attributes of certain choices. In that case, no fine-tuning is necessary (of God or the cosmos) for morality to be objective, all that matters is that a correct choice is possible in each case.

The value of such an approach can be seen by considering James’ second objection, which draws on a scene from the old TV show M*A*S*H. In the series finale of that show, a woman is described who smothered her child to save the lives of a bus full of people. Since “killing babies is wrong” would seem to be about as uncontroversial a moral “absolute” as you could imagine, yet it is unclear that the woman’s action would be wrong in this case, the notion of moral absolutism seems rather problematic. Indeed, even if one responds that the woman was wrong to kill her child, would that not make Abraham’s intent to sacrifice Isaac (in Genesis 22) all the more immoral? Yet that case was commanded by God, according to the Bible.

Here I fully agree with James, but must insist that while such examples make the concept of moral absolutes difficult, they actually strengthen the viability of moral objectivity. For if there is any sense in which the woman can be said to have made the right or the wrong choice – even if different circumstances would certainly result in a different answer – then morality is objective, though it is not absolute. And if this is true of difficult cases like that, how much more of less contestable cases? If it can ever be said that “killing this baby would be evil,” then morality is objective, and it is worth asking how this can be so. If the world (including every baby) is the creation of God, then the character of that God does provide a sound basis for such a view.

The difficulty that remains is in determining what choice the character of God would demand in each circumstance. For James is right that we do not have unmediated access to God’s character, nor any consistent picture of it, even in the Bible. Indeed, it is ironic how often Christians seeking to defend absolute morality are forced to defend a form of relativism in dealing with the seemingly immoral divine commands in the Old Testament. This is a serious challenge and I’ve yet to see a truly satisfying answer to it, but again, it is a greater problem for moral absolutism than for moral objectivism. If the situation today is very different than that in which God was commanding, then his character and choices might be consistent, even if his commands vary with the circumstance. More fundamentally, the Bible itself need not be a perfect reflection of God’s will for God to have a perfect will.

For ultimately, the claim that morality is objective must not be seen as the end of the debate on the nature of morality, but rather its beginning: Only if we assume that there is a right answer, can we even discuss what that answer might be.

The New Atheism as Inadequate Theodicy

I just discovered Ryan Dueck's excellent blog Rumblings, and an article he wrote on "The New Atheism as Inadequate Theodicy". It's a bit long, but worth reading in full. Here's an excerpt:

The prominence of evil in the new atheism—evil attributed to God, his followers, and the hostile, indifferent planet he is claimed to have made—suggests that the issue is not, as it is often presented, “rational” atheism vs. “superstitious” religion. Rather, the issue is between rival theodicies. If religion is thought to be the root cause of much of the evil in the world, a worldview which urges its removal represents a kind of theodicy. Evil is identified as such, its causes are described, and a way forward is recommended. What is not provided is a plausible account of why human beings should have such a strong moral reaction to the nature of our environment in the first place.

The current instantiation of protest atheism, like similar kinds in the past, relies more heavily on the moral capital accumulated through several millennia of Christian influence than it cares to admit. As such, the theodicy offered by the new atheism, while demonstrating an admirable (even biblical!) degree of moral sensitivity, is, ultimately, inadequate.

Confess Your Sins...

Charlie at AnotherThink has written an excellent post on Christian "hypocrisy" and the importance of confession:

Walk into almost any Christian congregation in America and you'll find kind, smiling people, well-dressed and freshly-scrubbed. You'll discover families holding hands, beautiful babies cooing and gurgling, fluffy puppies frolicking in the aisles, giggling children and the bluebird of happiness blowing kisses of good cheer to all.

Ok, so I lied about the puppies; you get the picture.

Back home, the scene can be sadly different. Husbands and wives don't speak to each other — or worse, only communicate in the cruelest of ways. Children rebel against parental authority and are sucked into all the risky adventures our drug- and sex-crazed world can dream up. We pretend everything is fine; inside we live in pain....

What would happen if we took off our masks and talked about the things we're ashamed of, the things that make us weep in the darkness, the things that have power over us? Not in front of the whole church, but in a private conversation with someone we can trust?

We pray to be healed from disease. We pray for protection when we travel. How often do we go to someone we've hurt, apologize and ask for forgiveness? How often do we admit that some compulsion, some addiction, some temptation has grabbed us and shaken us senseless? And if we did, would we be treated with compassion or condemnation?

Catholics are much better about this that we Protestants (though confession can become a mere formality for them as well), and we have a lot to learn from them. The trouble, as noted in the comments, is not just that we don't often confess our sins to one another (at least not the ones that really need to be confessed), but that we too often lack the compassion and humility to respond appropriately when people do admit their darkest secrets. God have mercy.

Compassion and Coercion

The following is a slightly revised version of a post I wrote for the original, and now defunct, Signs of the Times. It was first posted in October 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, and relates to my post from earlier today. Google Cache has a copy of the original, which is otherwise no longer available:

Matt Kaufman has written an interesting article at Boundless discussing our compassion in responding to tragedy, and the way it gets abused in politics. He argues that to politicize compassion is to destroy it, for real compassion comes from caring individuals, not government programs. He writes:

You can argue for some government programs on the grounds that they're necessary, and that no other alternatives will do: The argument may be wrong in many cases, but it's not inherently dishonest. You can't, however, seriously claim that any government programs are driven by compassion. Compassion, as I'm wont to point out, is voluntary by definition; coerced compassion is a contradiction in terms.

This is all true, of course. A forced gift is no gift at all. But perhaps Kaufman is a bit too hard on the role of government. We can complain all we want about how a government agency botched its response to this or that disaster, how it failed to protect such-and-such group of people, or how it wastes billions on bureaucracy. These are no doubt valid criticisms that should be addressed. But in spite of all those deficiencies, government programs can serve an important and sometimes unrecognized role.

The fact is, we individuals may have big hearts and we may be far more compassionate than any government agency ever could be, but we also have shorter memories. When a tragedy strikes, we admirably pinch our pockets and rush to help, but what about the rest of the time? Once the novelty of the situation wears off, few of us continue to give. Who among us are still giving aid to the tsunami survivors? Not me, I admit. Need doesn’t end when the news gets old, but our interest usually does.

This isn’t an indictment; it’s simply a fact of human nature. Our brains are wired to pay attention to what’s new, and our giving reflects that. That’s why even voluntary aid organizations suggest scheduling monthly payments – on our own, we forget. When World Vision takes 30 bucks from my checking account each month, it may feel like a little of the humanity of giving has been lost; but it’s better that, then that my sponsored child gets forgotten when I’m busy. It’s for this reason that we need programs, even forced programs, to ensure that our concern with the needy isn’t forever bound to the latest heart-wrenching news. Sometimes, we need a little coercion to keep things happening when our minds shift to other issues.

Of course, needed or not, programs can be run well or poorly, and compassion cannot be reduced to a government subsidy. So by all means, criticize the government when it is inefficient, misguided or poorly managed (better yet, work to improve it). Certainly, heap praise on those who don’t wait for a program to kick in, but come out in droves to support the latest victims of tragedy. But don’t forget the ongoing needs, the silent and unnoticed victims of poverty. Bureaucracy can be an evil, but it can also help keep aid going to all the little tragedies that don’t make the news. Whether through government agencies or private organizations, compassion and coercion don’t have to be enemies.

Christian Carnival 212

It seems the carnival came early this week, and you can find it over at The Evangelical Ecologist. It includes my post on Knocked Up and Juno, and plenty of other good stuff. In particular, check out this post by Nick at Crossinator, which begs perspective on the Evangelical obsession with abortion:

94% of Evangelical voters think abortion is the most important issue facing America today. Poverty doesn't even make the top 5. That angers me beyond belief. What do you think a major cause of abortion is? Yup, poverty! We should focus more on reducing poverty and not legislating morality. Why have the Evangelicals lost sight of what the Bible so clearly states? We are so focused on "saving the unborn" we don't care how the born actually live. It makes me irate to think that we spend millions of dollars on preventing an abortion and then sit back and do nothing when the "teenage mom" isn't able to adequately support her child. Where is the love in that?

I completely agree that, if we truly claim to be "pro-life," we should care as much about ending poverty as we do about ending abortion (after all, life doesn't end at birth! heh). It truly is shameful that poverty doesn't even appear among many Evangelicals' top five political concerns. That said, I don't really understand how Nick can be "irate" over those who focus primary attention on abortion, which has cost over 40 million lives in this country alone. The two issues are not mutually exclusive.

I might also add that part of the disconnect Nick identifies stems not from a lack of concern for the poor (though this is sometimes the problem), but rather from a feeling that caring for them best occurs on a personal level, rather than on a government one. Nick's objection to "legislating morality" cuts both ways.

Hope, Sacrifice and Moral Discourse

Over at Matt’s blog, Paul Wright (who describes himself as a “weak atheist”) suggests this “ultimate fallback position” on the value of human beings:

Humans are valuable because I say so. If you agree, we'd better convince others of that, work to bring about a society which believes that, and oppose (by force if necessary, as it was in World War II, to use your example) those who want to treat people as things.

Matt himself provides a good response, noting particularly the contradiction inherent in any attempt to “convince” others of a mere preference. If “humans are valuable” only says something about Paul Wright, and nothing about humanity itself, then there is nothing to convince anyone of – they either agree or they don’t. You might as well try and convince them that they "should" adopt your taste in food – maybe they’ll listen and change their minds, maybe they wont, but you can’t say they should do so; your moral system doesn’t allow it.

This is a good point, but I think there is even more at stake in this debate. The difference between Christian and atheistic worldviews does not just influence whether real moral debate is possible, but also how it can be conducted. There is nothing stopping an atheist from adopting the position Paul outlines, and choosing to work with those who happen to agree with him, while (if necessary) fighting against those who do not. But Christianity allows, indeed calls for, something more.

Since it assumes, first that there is a real and ultimate difference between good and evil, and second that deep down everyone knows it, Christianity calls us not just to fight against those who do evil, but to seek their redemption. Philip Yancey’s excellent book The Jesus I Never Knew provides a discussion of the “Beatitudes” (Matthew 5:3-12, cf. also 5:38-45 and Luke 6:20-31), which helps explain what I mean:

Blessed are the peacemakers... Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.... [Matt. 5:9, 10] The movie Gandhi contains a fine scene in which Gandhi tries to explain his philosophy to the Presbyterian missionary Charlie Andrews. Walking together in a South African city, the two suddenly find their way blocked by young thugs. The Reverend Andrews takes one look at the menacing gangsters and decides to run for it. Gandhi stops him. “Doesn’t the New Testament say if an enemy strikes you on the right cheek you should offer him the left?” [Matt. 5:39] Andrews mumbles that he thought the phrase was used metaphorically. “I’m not so sure,” Gandhi replies. “I suspect he meant you must show courage – be willing to take a blow, several blows, to show you will not strike back nor will you be turned aside. And when you do that it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred decrease and his respect increase. I think Christ grasped that and I have seen it work.”

Years later an American minister, Martin Luther King Jr., studied Gandhi’s tactics and decided to put them into practice in the United States.... As riots broke out in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Harlem, King traveled from city to city trying to cool tempers, forcefully reminding demonstrators that moral change is not accomplished through immoral means....

The real goal, King used to say, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority.... The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.” (pgs. 121-122)

Men like Gandhi and King were willing to put their lives in jeopardy not only to free their own people from injustice, but to do so in a way that also facilitated the repentance and restoration of their oppressors. This kind of moral fortitude is possible only if you believe in a moral order that transcends oppressor and oppressed alike. This kind of sacrifice is possible only if you believe that the state of a person’s soul is infinitely more important than the state of his body. Only then is a person willing to give up their own life in the hope that it might save others – not only the lives of their friends, but perhaps even the souls of their enemies. Yancey continues:

King, like Gandhi before him, died a martyr. After his death, more and more people began adopting the principle of nonviolent protest as a way to demand justice. In the Philippines, after Benigno Aquino's martyrdom, ordinary people brought down a government by gathering in the streets to pray; army tanks rolled to a stop before the kneeling Filipinos as if blocked by an invisible force. Later, in the remarkable year of 1989, in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Mongolia, Albania, the Soviet Union, Nepal, and Chili, more than half a billion people threw off the yoke of oppression through nonviolent means. In many of these places, especially the nations of Eastern Europe, the Christian church led the way. Protesters marched through the streets carrying candles, singing hymns, and praying. As in Joshua's day, the walls came tumbling down. (pgs. 122-123)

The Revenge of Conscience

I stumbled upon this classic article while working on a paper on Numbers 31 (a horrifying passage!). As I remain embroiled in said paper, I'll present this without comment, but it is well worth reading: The Revenge of Conscience by J. Budziszewski (First Things 1998).