None of us can live well without having a purpose. We find ourselves asking, ‘What am I good at?’ Or, ‘Why am I here?’ We are longing to be someone—to have a reason to live.
But here, it matters who you are listening to. Our culture says we should have a reason to live within ourselves. We just need to find it. We need to listen to ourselves. If we can just find our real self, and if everyone lets us be that, everything will be alright.
But the voice from within is never enough. We have evidence of that in the way we need affirmation or approval from friends, and from the community as a whole. Listening to our own inner voice is not making us more secure people.
There are many voices to listen to. And we are hard-wired to be listening to something or someone. We need a voice to tell us who we are and what we are here for.
Simply, God made us. And he talks to us. This is why we need something outside of ourselves. We were made to listen.
But there is another voice. In fact, there are many voices. None of us would have enough time to listen to all of them. But if they are not from God, they are coming from ‘below’. This is one way to describe the two kinds of voices that come to us.
Here is how I learned to tell the difference between a voice from above and a voice from below.
A voice from above, for starters, agrees with the teaching of Christ and his apostles—our Bible in other words. If it doesn’t do that, it must be coming from below. This is a whole subject in itself, but I want to focus on what flows from this.
I know the difference between a voice from above and one from below because a word from below drags me down. It condemns. A word from above gives hope—for me, regardless of what I think of myself, or what I have done.
There’s a reason for this. God isn’t limited to the processes of cause and effect. What I mean is the same as what we say about computers: ‘Rubbish in, rubbish out’. We know that systems can’t rise higher than the material we put into them. But God is outside his own creation. He is not limited to what we do.
God is good. We might say, ‘He can’t help himself!’ This is who he is. When we do bad things, he doesn’t spit it back at us with interest! In fact, he loves what he has made. He has decided to do us good anyway.
He has told us this in many ways. For a start, he hasn’t closed the solar system down because we pollute his creation. He doesn’t stop people having babies just because parents are selfish. There are lots of things like this to observe.
But the main way God has spoken to us is by giving his Son to us—to live among us. Even a casual reading of this Jesus story shows that he gave people hope. God was showing the way for our future—not a future that is the product of what we put into life but the result of his kindness.
He knows the reason why we feel bad about ourselves. He knows why we need constant affirmation from others. Simply put, we’ve tried to live without him. We’re not living truly—and it hurts. It’s called guilt.
No one can really deal with this unless it’s the person we’ve offended—God. And he does it by giving our burden to Jesus. This is what his death means. And God is entirely pleased with what Jesus has done. He’s entirely happy to announce that anyone who relies on him is forgiven. You can’t have a message like this unless there’s something outside the ‘system’—a loving God.
There’s a voice from below as well. It’s not just the accumulation of voices that don’t want to have God. It’s Satan or the devil. He hates what God is about. He is called ‘the god of this world’. He is the god you have when you don’t want the real one.
Now, here’s how I know one ‘voice’ from the other. When I ‘hear’ accusations, put-downs, nightmares of hopelessness, I know it’s coming from below. It’s not coming from God.
God’s voice tells me about his Son, about his resolve to give me something good that I don’t deserve. It teaches me to trust God. It gives me a future and a hope. It makes me change for the better.
There’s a lot more to say about this, but I hope you are persuaded that we can’t help but listen to voices besides our own. I hope you are persuaded that something needs to come to us from outside our own ‘closed system’. And I hope you are willing to listen to a Voice that gives you a hope you don’t deserve. Then, you may be able to see all sorts of possibilities for yourself!
Simply True 