Spiritual Phenomenon and Religious Bias (Part 2)

Part 1 of this post makes the assumptions that God is willing and wanting to communicate with everyone, and that there are no special skills, or devotion standing in the way of God communicating with anyone. There appears to be need to devote oneself to a life of service to God, but He may at any time simply interact with us because He likes to do so. He is not biased in such a way as to choose one group of people over another to communicate to - or so it seems.

Now of course, I am taking into account that the Old Testament is a covenant with the Jewish people, yet even in this covenant, God gives miraculous dreams to Pharoah, and Nebuchadnezzar; and He speaks through Balaam and Balaam's ass (his donkey for those of you who are thinking something else.)

In saying this I am NOT saying that special devotion does not trigger a closer relationship with God. I believe that it does. Yet, I do believe that God has, does and will continue to make Himself known in a variety of phenomena to people in this world. Those people will come from a variety of backgrounds.

Therefore, I must be ready to acknowledge that there will be people who experience "weird" things, and that those weird things might in fact come from God. (I do believe that they might in fact come from somewhere else as well, but that is another post.) I also need to acknowledge that there will be people whom I would not expect to have spiritual phenomenon occurring in their lives. If I can not get past this point, then I will be carrying a bias unlike the bias of God.

The bias of God is toward you, toward me, and toward all people. He is concerned and wanting to touch all people. At least, my theology and my experiences tell me so. Experiences of some of my friends and the people we meet in Salem, MA and at Burning Man tell me this as well.

If my bias tells me that certain people are only mad, or only are hearing from the devil before I have heard them out I am sure that my bias is not God's bias, because His bias is for people and not against them. On the other hand, once I have heard them out there is an opportunity to decide the source of the spiritual encounter.