Part 2: Does God really speak?

Link to Part 1
Part 2: There must be identifiable ways in which God speaks or a “modality” that shows us God speaking.


Recap from where we left off about communication as direct communication in Part 1:
- direct communication is words spoken
God has spoken his words and we have accounts from people hearing

- direct communication is also more than words (body language, tones, passion, etc.)
God doesn’t have a “body” so how do we hear if God’s communicating?
direct communication is “revealing” – i.e. it shares personhood in a process
- this is God’s primary objective

- the problems of direct communication for us
+ intellectually we find it hard to allow for the possibility of God speaking
+ historically the Bible has been used for reasons other than God’s
+ deeper communication, into revealing, is challenging work

We’ve already glanced at the problem: God doesn’t have a “body” per se, like you and I. Does that necessarily mean God doesn’t speak and can’t be heard? Or has God in history addressed that issue? Are there identifiable ways in which God speaks?

Looking from a human perspective, it’s difficult to imagine communicating taking place without some physical form. I have a hard time thinking outside of these standard ways of communicating: picking up my cell phone to call someone requires a body/physical interaction, typing into this blog or IM-ing requires physical touch, and writing a note or sending a birthday card requires my hands (and money). When I worked as a nurse with neurologically diseased and partially/severely paralyzed persons who couldn’t communicate in our ‘standard’ ways, I could watch their eyes, get a blink for yes, or help them adapt with what they could do. Still a body and physical interaction was able to take place in some way between us.

Perhaps that’s the clincher though. Adaptation to what is available to us. As a nurse one of the most important jobs I had was to find ways to help these patients be able to communicate with their outside world. Someone who didn’t know their challenges and hadn’t worked through those challenges with them, or who hadn’t spent time watching their normal behavior – would not understand how one of the nurses knew what a person was “saying” or “asking for.” It didn’t make sense to them.

I had learned to identify their “signs” and “behaviors.” Our communication efforts with them were based upon a couple of assumptions found to be true. First, we assumed that they wanted to communicate with us. Second, that we could mutually find ways for that communication to happen. Third, that they would want to find the means to do more than exist, but find ways of sharing with us who they were, what they liked, what they were thinking, and how they felt – personhood or the revealing side of communication. So, our team of medical staff set out to find and invent modes for them to communicate.

One patient was able to move one toe and one finger. Our medical team made a computer control pad that could be attached to their toe. One patient was deaf, and so our team worked with this patient to learn American Sign Language. One patient was mute and blind but could smile and nod their head. We found modes of interaction that worked. They were able to reveal to us who they were because each had a very different personality, liked very different things and expressed emotions or feelings in different ways.

I want to make two points. They are both about the modes in which God communicates, and I would simplistically call them “adaptive modes” God uses. First, is about the physical modes God employs to communicate personhood. That will be in Part 2A (God’s communicating in general) and 2B (a human body in Jesus Christ). Second, is to stay tuned for how we’re made to adapt to those modes on a soul level for Part 3.