At the beginning of this book we told the story of Linda, who was married to a man she did not love. Marrying Steve was not her idea in the first place. While in college she had joined a vigorously evangelistic covenant community. The group promised not only a vibrant, intense experience of "New Testament Christianity", but also help to "find God's will for your life". A devout person, Linda saw the community as an answer to prayer. As she grew in the Christian life and finished her studies, the community and its leaders were always there to counsel and advise. Shortly after graduation, one of the handmaids came to Linda and told her that it was time now to "pray through her state in life". For a year Linda was not to date, but instead to pray and meet frequently with the handmaid to discern God's plan for her life. In the meanwhile the community was growing rapidly on campus. But the leaders wanted to build up its presence in town, too. For their community to endure, they needed a large, stable core of young families with homes off campus. Together with her handmaid, Linda discovered that God was calling her to be married. Linda was pleased by this. In her heart of hearts she knew all along that she wanted to be a wife and mother. With the handmaid's guidance, Linda began the process of "casual dating".
Steve was one of the young men who started dating her. Unlike Linda, Steve had often thought of not marrying. From his childhood he had imagined himself a priest. Indeed, he had even sent off for information from the Jesuits up near Detroit. However, Steve's pastoral leader (or "head") showed him how certain events in his life, prophecies, and the mission of the community as a whole all pointed to marriage as God's will for his life. "We are all called to die to ourselves," his head told him. "God seems to be calling you to give up your personal dream of being a priest to serve what he is doing now." Steve wanted nothing more than to please God by obeying him. Under his head's direc-tion he started dating eligible women in the community. His head was very pleased when he asked Linda out.
Everybody said Steve and Linda made a good couple. Both were young, but serious, devout, and committed to Christian life in the community. They enjoyed their times together and seemed compatible. But the relationship was not exclusive, and Linda also accepted a couple of dates with Roger, a natural comedian and former third-string football player in the Big Ten. Roger had hung around the community for a while but then drifted away. After graduation, though, he had stayed on as an assistant coach for the freshman team while he studied in the M.B.A. program. Linda was not sure how much she was attracted romantically to Roger; she did know however that they were friends, and she liked his company.
The handmaid soon learned about Linda's relationship with Roger. (Actually it was no secret.) It was time for a talk. God was leading Linda to marriage. This meant that Linda had to take this dating process seriously. More important, the handmaid discerned that Linda's growing desire for Roger's company came from a spirit of lust. It was a plain fact that Linda had to cut this relationship off. "Steve," said the handmaid, "is the better candidate."
For his part, Steve confided to his head that he had a strong respect for Linda. The head brightened up. "In a world so dominated by lust, you have God's wisdom!" he said. "This may be the best sign that Linda is the one God has chosen for you." At his head's urging, Steve suggested to Linda that they pray about the future of their relation-ship. Urged by the handmaid, Linda agreed. As they prayed they found they shared similar views of family life. Their values were much the same. Still neither was con-vinced that they were meant for each other. Their relationship stalled.
It was at this point Steve's head received a message in prayer. The Holy Spirit seemed to say, "I have chosen Linda to complete Steve's heart." That same day, the handmaid opened up her Bible at random, and her eyes lit upon the passage, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become as one." (Mt. 19:5) In the meantime, Linda ran unexpectedly into Roger. For an hour they chatted and joked. Linda laughed so hard, her sides hurt. The rest of the afternoon her heart was light, and she thought, "I hope the man I marry can make me laugh." That evening she, Steve, the head, and the handmaid met to pray. It was dis-cerned that God was calling Steve and Linda to become "one flesh" for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Steve and Linda obeyed God's word for their lives. They announced their engagement the following Sunday at the community gathering.
Linda and Steve got married because others convinced them that this was what God wanted. The had fallen into the Personal Prophecy (P.P.) trap. Like any mechanical trap, this one has two jaws. The lower jaw is the belief that God has some one thing he wants a person to do. The upper jaw is the word of the prophet who claims to know what that thing is.
Of course, the Bible is full of stories of God's call to different people. Both the prophet Jeremiah and the apostle Paul were called from their mothers' wombs to serve God's word (Jer. 1:5; Gal. 1:15). Zechariah prophesied of his son, John the Baptist, "And you, my child, shall be called the Prophet of the Most High; you shall go before the Lord to prepare his way." (Lk. 1:76) God called the prophet Jonah and commanded him to preach repentance to Nineveh. When Jonah took a ship to run away, God raised such a terrible storm that the prophet's shipmates had to throw him overboard to save their lives. Then God sent the fish to catch Jonah and vomit him up on the shore near Nineveh. God wanted him to do something and pursued him until he did it. And in the Gospels we see Jesus repeatedly inviting people to believe in him and follow him. He chose twelve of these people to serve as his Apostles. God does call on people to do things for him.
There is a deep truth in this idea of a personal calling or vocation from God. In the Lord's eyes we are not so many interchangeable human pieces. The military com-mander wants a certain number of healthy, trained young men to fill his ranks. If Private Jones is wounded, then Private Smith can take his place. As long as both can handle a rifle and a grenade, it doesn't matter which one fills that slot. In God's Kingdom, how-ever, each of us is personally willed, chosen, and loved by the Creator himself. We are not a mass of nameless faces but his sons and daughters. He knows each of us by name - you and me. What we do is important to God. And he really does have a plan for each of us.
The P.P. trap begins with the belief that God wants some one thing from each one of us - that God has a very particular job for me to do and I have to find out what it is. One covenant community leader put it this way, "God wants you to do some one thing. Satan wants you to do anything else." The individual Christian's job is to find out what the "one thing" is. Obviously, if there is some one thing God wants a Christian to do, he will have to let him or her know what it is. For his part Satan will try to distract or confuse the Christian, so that he does not know what God really wants. So one of the Christian's chief tasks is to listen carefully to find out what God has in mind.
This "one thing" could be anything. For Linda, it was to marry Steve. Some Catholics believe that they must travel to Garabandal, Spain, when Mary gives a certain signal. In the early days of charismatic renewal, some charismatics believed that every morning the Holy Spirit would direct all their activities for the day, if they would but pay close attention to him. Leaders of one international Marian group make no plans of their own, but pray every morning, fully expecting Mary to give them their orders for that day. Pastoral Renewal magazine presented the example of a young man's turning his back on the medical career he had always wanted, because prophetic leaders told him God wanted him to be a renewal community elder. The "one thing", then, could be an activity for the day or a life choice.
To know God's specific will, the Christian needs a specific revelation. Some popular teachers and theologians have explained this in terms of two Greek words, logos and rhema. The logos is God's eternal word (so the theory goes), always and everywhere true for all Christians. The logos says, "love your neighbor", "feed the hungry", "go the extra mile", "show hospitality to the saints", and so on. The rhema, on the other hand, is God's now word - what he wants of this person (or these people) now. This "now word" might say, "move together with this other family", "move from the big city to a Midwest-ern town", "fly to Medjugorje and pray on the mountain", "warn the Church against Freemasonry", and so on. To know this "now word", it is not enough to read Scripture. A special revelation is needed, a word for now - in short, a prophecy.
Of course, this "now word" cannot conflict with the eternal logos, nor can it add anything to Revelation. But it does have a certain priority over God's eternal word, because the rhema tells us what God actually wants us to step out and do now. For example, on the basis of prophetic revelation one group discerned that Marxism, Islamic fundamentalism and militant feminism were Satan's principal tools to destroy Christian-ity in our age. Their leaders taught special courses and mobilized their people to meet these threats. At one of their meetings, one woman asked if the group could also do something about the number of abortions in the town. The leader's response went straight to the "now word": "God wants us to battle the enemies of Christianity. We don't have the time or resources to worry about ordinary murder."
Believers in the rhema use slogans like, "The good is the enemy of the best," and "We don't want to get so caught up in doing good things that we neglect God's thing". Often a belief that the times are in crisis underlies this "now word" theology. We are special people called to service in a critical time. Normally it is a good thing to plant crops or assemble clocks. But when hurricane and flood strike or the enemy hordes ride over the hill, these good things become irrelevant. Everyone must mobilize to meet the present emergency. Likewise, the rhema theology suggests that normal good things - like studying, visiting the nursing home, balancing the books for the Christ Child Society, serving coffee after the 10:30 Mass - are distractions from the work of combating femi-nism, preparing for the Three Days of Darkness, or building up the Spirit-filled bulwark against evil.
God's "now word" must be a prophecy, spoken by God to someone at a particu-lar time. It is generally assumed that it has to run contrary to natural inclinations: why would God ask me to do what I would want to do anyway? (Remember how Linda and Steve's own desires and yearnings had little to do with finding God's will for them.) A peculiar kind of theology of suffering is at work here. Whatever God really wants must involve a sacrifice. The harder it is to accept something, the more likely it is that it is God's will. I know a man who went through real pangs of conscience, because he was not willing to obey a momentary impulse to throw away his Swiss Army knife to show he loved God. Indeed, a surprising number of Christians are ready to believe that what they want in their own hearts is "merely human" or "carnal" and therefore not God's will.
A second quality of the rhema is that it is better than any reasoning or planning. One of the most popular tests of prophetic words in the charismatic renewal was: "It must have been the Spirit. I never would have thought of that myself." The advice of Church leaders and the reflections of theologians count only as "worldly wisdom", which falls short of God's "now word". (Here is a danger signal: When a group rejects all criticism or advice because no outsider can really understand what God is doing with them, the group is probably a trap.) We see this especially when priests or bishops warn about the dangers of enthusiasm or when new groups are encouraged to adopt certain safeguards. Reason is only human; prophecy is divine.
The rhema theology says I need to know God's "now word" now, so that I can get on with serving him. How do I get this word? What techniques do I use? Certainly, I can pray and see if God says anything. The thoughts that come into my head might be from God. But they might also be my own imaginings. How can I know for sure? I could "pray for a passage", that is, invoke the Holy Spirit and then open the Bible at random to see what it says. Whatever it says is God's word for me. God can actually use something like this. St. Augustine wanted to be a Christian but could not accept chastity. As he was sitting in a garden, he heard a child's voice saying "tolle, lege tolle, lege" ("Take and read"). He picked up the Bible, and it fell open to Romans 13: 13-14: "not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh."* Immediately his heart softened and he decided to accept Baptism.
Some Christians "lay fleeces before the Lord", following Gideon's example in the Old Testament. The Lord had called on Gideon to save Israel from the Midianites. Since Gideon could not believe that God would choose someone so unimportant as himself, he set up a test. "If indeed you are going to save Israel through me, as you promised, I am putting this woolen fleece on the threshing floor. If dew comes on the fleece alone, while all the ground is dry, I shall know that you will save Israel through me, as you promised." (Judges 6:37) The next morning the fleece was so wet with dew that Gideon could wring a large bowl full of water from it. In other words, he asked God for a miraculous sign to show that it was really God speaking. Today, many Christians will present "fleeces" to the Lord. "Jesus, if you want me to tell this man about the Gospel, have that red car turn left," or "Mary, if you want me to go to Medjugorje, have someone send me $10 unexpectedly."
Inspirations in prayer, Scripture passages, fleeces, and coincidences can all point to God's will - sometimes. If God wants to say something, he has plenty of options. But he also has the right to remain silent. Very few Christians really experience God speak-ing clearly to them every day or in every important choice.
If this is so, how can I know God's word for me today? How can I get it right? One answer, which arose in the covenant community movement and which is now appearing is some parts of the Marian movement, is that God will speak through wiser, more mature, spiritually gifted persons. That is, God has sent his prophets and they will guide me. (This is how Steve and Linda "knew" God's will for their marriage.) Through the other methods - prayer, passages, "fleeces", and so on - God does not seem to speak all that clearly. This is particularly true with major decisions, such as marriage or entry into religious life. How can I know what to do? If God has raised up a prophet, then the prophet can tell me. If he has given special gifts to the leaders of our movement or group, they can tell me. After all, I can see only a small piece of God's overall plan. The leaders see the whole as God wants it. They can tell me what to do. And besides if I want to obey God, I must obey those he has raised up.
We need to note this well. A fundamental change has occurred. No longer do such Christians expect God to speak to their hearts. They believe that God must speak from outside them. What has happened is a shift away from personal trust in God. The Christian who reaches this point in the rhema theology no longer trusts God to move powerfully in the depths of his own heart. He will only listen to the god who issues direct, specific commands through some third party. Here is where faulty theology becomes a serious trap. Here is where the unordained - and usually theologically un-qualified - leader gains control over lives and consciences.
In fact, the rhema theology is a trap. If God is so specific - so picky - then you've got to get it just right. The P.P. trap says: "Love is not enough; you have to obey God exactly, to get it right. It's your job to pick up his signs and clues, to understand them properly, to find the right prophets to guide you, and to do exactly as God tells you. Otherwise, God will have to write you off as a useless servant." The P.P. trap leads to scruples - to pharisaic nit-picking, straining out gnats while swallowing camels. Essen-tially, this is what Jesus criticized about the Pharisees. The problem with them was not that they were always showing off their holiness or that they claimed to be holy when they really were not. The Pharisees' problem was that they needed rules for serving God. For them, it was a matter of figuring out how to apply the Law of Moses to the tiniest matters of daily life, so that in everything they were sure of obeying God. So Jesus rebuked them: "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you frauds! You pay tithes on mint and herbs and seeds while neglecting the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and good faith." (Mt. 24:23) The Christian in the P.P. trap will fall into the same kinds of pattern needing a revelation, a prophecy, or some divinely authorized instruction for every aspect of his life.
The P.P. trap leads ultimately to an unhealthy dependence on others. "I know what I want to do, but how do I know what God wants me to do." I remember speaking with a young man who was terribly concerned to find God's will. He wanted to be married and was very attracted to one especially pretty young woman. Both were mature, good people. Neither was promiscuous. Yet my acquaintance was troubled that his attraction was motivated by lust. He believed that God wanted him to marry someone without his desire for her physical beauty to enter into it. As a result, he submitted his decision to the leaders of his community, who did - in fact - steer him towards someone of their own choosing. The effect of the P.P. trap on this young man was that he turned control of his own life to someone else.
The P.P. trap is not the idea that God has a plan for your life. It is that God has specific instructions for you to obey. Why this is and how it works are clear when we look at what Jesus himself taught.
Our Lord began his public ministry with the call to repentance. He made it clear that he wanted to forgive sins. When the Rich Young Man asked what he must do to be saved, Jesus told him first to obey the commandments. (Mk. 10:17-25) In other words, Christ wants me to turn away from sin - especially mortal sin - and towards his mercy. Am I stealing from my employer or defrauding the insurance company? Am I sleeping with someone I'm not married to? Do I treat my aged parents shamefully? Do I curse others or revile them behind their back? Then Jesus wants me to stop, repent, and ask his mercy. Standing up boldly against Islamic fundamentalism or invoking Mary under the tile Queen of Peace means nothing if I continue to live in mortal sin.
In turning away from sin I must turn toward God in love. When the Pharisees (who were very keen on the fine points of the Law) wanted to know what was most important, Jesus told them all the Law and the Prophets - EVERYTHING God has in mind - boils down to this: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. (See Mt. 22:34-40) Anyone who repents from sin and strives to avoid it, who loves God wholeheartedly and his neighbor as himself - such a one does not need to worry about obeying God's "now word".
There still remains the question of vocation. After all, God does call Christians to different works. Christ did have an answer for the Rich Young Man, when he asked "what more" could he do to be perfect. And the Church encourages young people to pray about their vocations - whether to the priesthood, religious life, or marriage and family. God's call is real, and he does have plans for us.
God does speak to us, but this "speaking" very seldom comes in the form of an audible voice. Most often it is a thought or a kind of mental vision that comes with an inner conviction. Sister Teresa, an Ursuline nun teaching in a Catholic school in India, was praying as she rode the train to her summer retreat. Suddenly she had a deep awareness of God's wanting her to serve him in the poorest of the poor. She took this idea to her superiors and eventually to the authorities in Rome. With their approval she left her order and founded the new Missionaries of Charity. Today we know her as Mother Teresa of Calcutta. And when did the Lord speak to her? Certainly on the train his call came into focus. Subsequent events, such as Sr. Teresa's idea to found a new order and to collect the dying from the gutters, as well as the guidance and permission of Ursuline and Vatican authorities, also gave shape to what God was saying. Most likely, the plight of the poor had been on her heart for a long time. In other words, God was at work in her heart and her life situation. He did not just speak 'out of the blue' on the train. Similarly, Francis Bernardone was praying at a ruined chapel when he hear Christ speak from the cross: "You see my church, how it is in ruins. Rebuild my church." Immediately, Francis set to work restoring the chapel. The young men who gathered around him made up the core of a movement and religious order that would eventually renewed the Church universal. Neither Mother Teresa nor St. Francis was expecting God to speak. And certainly Francis did not grasp the full implications of Christ's command, "Rebuild my Church." But Christ, who is always in control, could use his wholehearted love.
To discern God's call (or vocation) is not a complicated matter. It is largely a matter of common sense and clear Scriptural principles.
1. God doesn't play guessing games, and he's not trying to trick us. Losing your passport so you can't go to Medjugorje does not mean missing out on God's plan for your life. Nor does God drop subtle hints and expect you to pick up on them. He does not mention his eternal plan once and then drop it if you don't jump to it.
When I was between the ages of about nine and thirteen, I thought often about entering the priesthood. This idea faded in high school, especially after I discovered how much I liked mathematics. I decided then that maybe I would like to be a scientist instead of a priest. Maybe. Eventually I applied to the University of Notre Dame and was accepted. During the summer after graduation, I attended a special mathematics program there. Living in the dorm on campus, I suddenly became convinced - with absolute certitude, it seemed - that God wanted me to enter a seminary. By going to college to study math that fall, I would be turning my back on God and his will for me. Surely, I thought, God must be angry and disappointed in me. Fortunately, the floor prefect, Fr. Tom McNally, C.S.C.*, was a wise man. "God is not like that," he said. "He's not sitting up there waiting for you to make a mistake, so that he can punish you for the rest of your life. Go ahead and enroll here in the fall. If God really wants you to be a priest, he'll keep calling you." This was some of the best spiritual advice I ever had. Fr. McNally not only set me at peace, but he also taught me something important about God. (Four years later I did enter a seminary. There I quickly learned for certain that God was not calling me to the priesthood.)
Reflecting on the 50th anniversary of his own ordination, Pope John Paul II puts this very clearly:
When Christ called His apostles, He said to each one of them: "Follow me!" (Mt. 4:19; 9:9; Mk. 1:17; 2:14; Lk. 5:27; Jn. 1:43; 21:19). For 2,000 years he has continued to address the same invitation to many men, espe-cially young men. Sometimes he calls them in a surprising way, even though his call is never completely unexpected. Christ's call to follow him usually comes after long preparation. Already present in the mind of the young person, even if later overshadowed by indecision or by the attrac-tion of other possible paths, when the call makes itself felt once more, it does not come as a surprise.*
And if God really wants you to do something, he has ways to make himself very clear. Remember Jonah. God followed him out to sea and sent a fish to bring him back.
2. God's call always works together with our natural talents, interests, and inclina-tions. God is not going to call you to something absolutely foreign to you. If your best efforts in high school Spanish earned you a "C-", God is probably not calling you to work with Mexican migrant workers. If your head is filled with music and your every shower is a concert, your interest in joining the choir might be from God. And Linda, who tended to be a bit too serious, probably should have waited until she found a man more like Roger and less like Steve - someone who attracted her and complemented her own personality.
This does not mean, of course, that God can't let things change our plans. No one's interests and inclinations turn toward caring for a severely disabled or autistic child or a spouse with Alzheimer’s. Yet when these things happen, God's will is that we love and serve. Life doesn't come with guarantees. Young people the world over are pre-vented by poverty, political oppression, or family situation from realizing their dreams and using their gifts. Love is a matter of playing the cards life gives you. The "better or worse" in the marriage vow is a tacit admission that "worse" can happen, and the re-sponse to it is faithful love. These things, however, are beyond human choice. James doesn't marry Sally with the conviction that in forty-five years God will want him to care for an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s. He marries her to build a life with her.
But what about Jeremiah? He did not want to be a prophet. He felt he was too young (Jer. 1:6), and he resented the trouble that his ministry caused him (see Jer. 12:1-5; 15:10-18). But look what goes on in his heart:
Whenever I speak I must cry out, violence and outrage is the message; The word of the LORD has brought me derision and reproach all the day. I say to myself, I will not mention him. I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it. (Jer. 20:8-9)
God's will for Jeremiah was not imposed from outside; it was alive inside him. His own heart was burning with God's word. Likewise, if you know the yearnings of your own heart, if certain Scripture passages sing to your soul, if a particular saint captivates your imagination and you want to model yourself after him or her - these are things pointing to God's will.
3. God points out a direction; he does not assign tasks. When Sr. Teresa was on that train, God did not tell her, "Go into Calcutta. The first dying person you see in the gutter, take him home and clean him up." God simply pointed her to the poorest of the poor and let her decide what to do. The Lord wanted a New Testament written with teaching for his Church. Besides the Gospels, it needed extensive reflections on morality, the rela-tionship between sin and the Law, the nature of the Church as his Body, and so on. But he did not give St. Paul instructions, "Go write a bunch of letters to put into the New Testament." Instead he sent Paul to preach the Gospel. While doing this, Paul came up with the idea of sending letters to some of the churches to clarify some things and help them out. To be sure, the Holy Spirit was at work in this decision; he inspired St. Paul as he wrote. However, God's actual command to Paul seems to have been nothing more specific than "Spread the Gospel".
4. Meet your responsibilities. If you are married, you must care for your spouse and children. Even if Steve did once have a vocation to the priesthood, God wants him now to love and care for his wife and children - and God will help him do this. If you are a priest, then minister to your flock. Students should study and graduate. Workers should do quality work. And in your travels through life, when you come across a man stripped, robbed, and beaten by thieves, don't pass by. God is showing you his will.
St. Augustine wrote at the beginning is his autobiography (The Confessions). "You have made us for yourself, oh God; and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Our hearts are designed for God. We don't need special prophecies to know how to please him. If we strive to love according to the truth about the good, our hearts will lead to God's perfect will.
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