Hearing Voices

Who’s Speaking? When I was a young lad growing up in the Shenandoah Valley, I lived with my grandparents. My grandmother was affectionately called Mamie. Mamie was noted for making a sound of “whew-he-e-e” when something excited her. When this “whew-he-e-e” was heard, we all ran to her as firefighters to a fire alarm. Past experiences conditioned us when we heard her unusual sound; something was up with her as possibly a spider, snake, mouse or some other noxious creature came across her path.

One day, while she was washing the dishes, we all heard a loud whew-he-e-e reverberate throughout the house. Everyone was shuttle butting to her sound, with excited shouts from all of us, what is it, Mamie? When we reached the kitchen, we viewed her backside bolting through the back screen door. When we entered the backyard, she was holding my little-wet brother in her arms. What happened was my brother had wiggled his way through the bottom locked screen door and sidestepped Mamie and ended up in the baby pool face down. Mamie was oblivious to my brother’s mischievous maneuvers, but an inner voice spoke to her that the baby was in danger in the backyard. If it were not for her inner voice warning her, most likely my brother would not be with me today.

Intuition is real as any part of human experiences. Intuition is beyond the grasp of science. Science is monograph not polygraph of individual descriptions. Any educated person knows that intuition is a miracle of a keen, quick insight of truth without any reasoning process. Science cannot verify this fact, though anthropologists recognize intuition is real. Life is replete with unexplainable realities. Science deals with the five senses, and it stops there for their reality. Although, they know there is objective truth beyond the five senses, their academic training does not nor can it assist them in this area of human experiences. Intuition is separate from science, though it is a reality, that puzzles the laboratory whitecoats. The white coat technicians with their clipboards in hand can only record cause and effect not the unexplainable.

A friend of mine who is a police officer stopped a person in a store as a gut feeling told him this individual was up to no good. My friend was proven right, as the shoplifter emptied his pockets of the stolen property. At the trail, his gut feeling about the evil thief, was admissible in court. The store owner was happy for my friend’s gut feeling.

When I was in Viet Nam, our commander directed us away from our previous planned coordinates by Head Quarters, and we shifted to another area. His explanation to his superiors for the shift was he had an inner voice warning him of danger if we continued as planned. Thank God for that inner voice of our commander, as it turns out a whole regiment of NVA soldiers were waiting to ambush us.

Thomas Edison in 1879 was hearing a voice that gave us electricity. After multiple failed attempts, he commented to his assistant: “I know the problem!” “What is it?” Said, the assistant. “We need to insulate the wires”, responded, Edison. The assistant with a puzzled looked replied, “I never heard of that word!” “I know”, said Edison, “I just made it up as it came to me.” A neologism was born for the dictionaries. Science is unable to explain all of the realities of life. The humanities teach about the incipiency of the will, or free will as part of life.

Free will is one of the main attributes of man who has been created in God’s image. “In His image” is a profound phrase, and certainly includes some of God’s attributes, such as, free will, intellect, sensibilities (the abilities to experience or feel), conscience, abilities to perceive various relationships, such as family, social, civil, and spiritual relationships. It also includes the function of “spirit” which is the ability man has to communicate with God. Free will is the ability to direct another attribute. The will can choose whether to study electronics instead of geography or quantum mechanics at any given time, or a career or life’s mate, or in which direction to walk.

When we say that man is free, (also see Moral Agent, ed.) that freedom does not consist in complete lack of restraint, but in the absence of restraint within mutual and agreed- upon Limits. The “freedom” we are describing is not anarchy, license, or autonomy.

Free will is perhaps the greatest mystery of man and must be guarded very closely because a wise man once wrote that freedom exists only in proportion to a wholesome restraint. Freedom without wholesome restraint leads to license, license leads to licentiousness, and these evaporate freedom and lead to bondage. Man’s own appetites, passions, and excesses forge his own fetters of bondage. As Edmund Burke wrote, “It is increasingly evident that if we don’t curb, control and regulate our appetites and desires from within, we are controlled increasingly more from without.” That control from without will be by guilt, depression, sickness and penal sanctions. We need to remember that an accurate definition of “savage” is a person who does his own thing without regard for anyone else. The oil that lubricates the machinery of the free society that makes it possible for people to live and work together amicably and productively, is the voluntary observance of both formal and informal codes of conduct which serve the common good.” Dr. Harry Conn

The argument about voices is its origin, not if it exists. Stated above, voices come from our creator as a function of the spirit communicating between man and God. Or you can believe voices come from the primeval soup of germinating fecal material that evolved to a higher fecal intelligence. And the collectively developed experiences from prehistoric fecal life to an intelligent fecal life culminated a voice pushing through to your conscience as a warning from a lizard. A narrow unintelligent mind will deny God and the unexplainable realities of life.

Romans 1:18-23 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.”