The following is from the Break-point Daily on
the Chuck Colson Center for a Christian World View; Written by Eric Metaxas with
Anne Morse.
A Washington Post writer once said that evangelicals are “poor, ignorant,
and easy to command.” Well, at least he didn’t say we were mentally ill. Vice President Mike Pence is a lot of things. Faithful husband and
father. Solid Christian. And he backs a lot of policies that many on the left
absolutely abhor. But no one, not even his political enemies, has ever called
him mentally ill.
Until now that is. On a recent
segment of “The View,” Joy Behar took aim at Mike Pence’s belief that God speaks
to him. Responding to a comment by another host, Behar said, “It’s one thing to
talk to Jesus. It’s another when Jesus talks to you. That’s a mental illness if
I’m not correct. Hearing voices.” That’s a sign of how
ignorant elites truly are about beliefs and practices common to something like
two billion Christians.
I actually find it surprising that
Behar, who claims to be Catholic, hasn’t found time in her seventy-five years to
learn a little more about prayer. Behar’s comment outraged
Americans from coast to coast. Twenty-five thousand people let ABC know what we
thought of a network that allows an employee to sneer at the way other people
practice their faith. The next day, Behar responded to her
critics with a sarcastic clarification, saying, “I don’t think Mike Pence is
mentally ill even though he says he is hearing voices.” Wow.
That’s some apology.
I’d like to propose a solution. I
invite Joy Behar to spend some time looking into what Christians mean when they
say they hear God’s voice. She might start with the writings
of J. Warner Wallace, a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center. In a piece posted by
FOX News, Wallace notes that when Christians say, “God spoke to me,” they don’t
“necessarily mean that God spoke audibly.” Christians, he explains,
“believe the Bible is the ‘word of God,’ and by reading it, [we] gain access to
the mind of God.”
He points to 2nd Timothy, which notes
that Holy Scripture is “God-breathed,” and Hebrews 4, which says “the word of
God is living and active.” Reading these verses, one could see how Christians
might legitimately say, “God spoke to me,” Wallace explains.
Second, God can use wise and mature advisors to
teach us about God’s will–people who have invested long years reading and
meditating over scripture. Wallace writes that a believer who says God spoke to
her “may simply mean that one of God’s children provided them with Biblical
wisdom.”
Third, God may speak to us
through difficult experiences. As C.S. Lewis writes in The Problem
of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures . . . but shouts in our
pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Fourth, God may indeed speak audibly
to His followers. Many people have written about hearing God’s voice in a
crisis. And in my own case, God spoke to me through an amazing, mind-blowing
dream. Bible-reading Christians know this. Open your Bible,
and you’ll find all kinds of examples of each of the ways God speaks to His
people—audibly, through prophets, and through the written
word.
Finally, it’s worth reminding our
media that, if Mike Pence is crazy for believing he hears God’s voice, then so
are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and
Barack Obama—all of whom said they listened for the still, small voice of God.
I really do hope Joy Behar will give it a try. And for more by J.
Warner Wallace on Christian apologetics, please visit BreakPoint.org.
Love, Jerry & Dotse
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