Why Some Doubt God Can Communicate with Us

I particularly like the post Robert Easter put up on Monday at Sanctifusion. When I first read the first paragraph, I didn't understand it. But now I am thinking that he is saying that there is something inside of us that doesn't want us to believe that God can communicate with us. That something inside of us wants to be a god, and therefore, doesn't want us hearing from the real God.

I was thinking about people who say we can all be gods because of yesterday's Lectionary reading from Ephesians, particularly the final verses of the reading, Ephesians 4: 11-16:

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds [7] and teachers, [8] 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, [9] to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

In a draft of the Anglican Covenant, I noticed that people can pull out a piece of these verses to say that we are called to grow into the full stature of Christ. This is dangerous because it can be understood to mean that we can each, as individuals, grow into the full stature of Christ. I used to be a sweet naive soul who doubted that anyone believed that. But consider these sentences from the Diocese of Northern Michigan's response to the Dar Communique:

We seek and serve Christ in all persons because all persons are the living Christ. Each and every human being, as a human being, is knit together in God's Spirit, and thus an anointed one – Christ.

Reading these sentences within the context of the whole statement, we can see that they have extrapolated from the truth that we each are created in the image of God, and bear Christ's image within us, to the idea that we are each "an anointed one - Christ." How we understand that concept seems to be at the heart of this wrong way of understanding Christianity. And Robert Easter is articulating the right of understanding that in his post.

Where, I differ with Robert Easter is that he thinks it is the desire to be a god that keeps us from believing God can communicate with us, while my experience is that those who desire to be a God do believe God can communicate with us. In my experience, their problem is a failure to discern between communications from God and the "devices and desires of our own hearts." (from the General Confession in the 1928 Prayer Book)

In my experience, the ability to receive communicate from God is denied by many faithful Christians who are concerned about personal desires masquerading as communications from God. The book Charismatic Chaos by John MacArthur is a good example of this. So, I think I didn't fully appreciate Robert Easter's post because my experience is so different.

Ira Milligan's Understanding the Dreams You Dream

This book is very grounded in scripture. It has a short section on decoding dreams and a rather extensive dream dictionary with a biblical emphasis. This book is valuable because of the way he links imagery to scripture. As I read through it, it occurred to me that it would be very helpful in doing work on the Dreams of my namesake, Perpetua of Carthage. However, I was very uncomfortable with his approach to sin and his emphasis on demons.

I have heard others discuss the issue of demons and witchcraft with regard to dreams. But I have simply not had experience with demons or witchcraft. So, while I respect their warnings, I also see warnings away from material that I have experienced as positive.

For example, he writes:

Likewise, a terrifying dream of being stabbed or killed often reveals the presence of a spirit of fear from which one needs deliverance (see Tim 1:7, Heb 2:14-15) The very word used to describe such a dream, nightmare, means a dream given by a monster or demon.(pg 15)

Well, in dream work I have done, we understand this sort of dream to be about a part of oneself that is killing off another part of oneself. The dream is understood to be about maturation and growth. I will say that I agree with Milligan that it is a terrifying dream and that prayer is useful to overcome the fears. But I am just not sure that these dreams come from demons. Letting go of the old self and growing into the new self is not demonic, if one is growing in Christ.

Now Milligan also tells a specific example of a woman's nightmare that he says did come from God. As he looked at a repeating theme in the nightmare, he saw that it was telling her to revisit a situation from her past (when she had been involved n the occult). He says "When she asked God's forgiveness and renounced her involvement with the occult, her entire life changed dramatically." Here, he attributes the dream to God, but there is still an occult angle.

Perhaps this emphasis would be reassuring to Christians who are afraid of dreams because of fears of witchcraft and the occult. Such Christians can read this book knowing that Milligan is not attracted to the occult.

Milligan shares some dream theory with, of all people, Freud. They are the only dream theorists I know of that advocate the idea that dreams are deliberately coded to hide their meanings. Freud believed that the dreams originated with wishes that were then distorted and censored to disguise their antisocial nature. Milligan believes that dreams originating from God are deliberately coded to disguise their holy nature.

God will use names that rhyme, puns, riddles, proverbs, almost anything imaginable to hide the truth from our "old man" when he speaks to us in the night.

For both Freud and Milligan, the dreams were disguised from our public social selves, but for very different reasons.

I strongly disagree with both Freud and Milligan on this. Yes, the dreams do use "rhyme, puns, riddles, proverbs, almost anything imaginable", but it is to break through and communicate, not to be obscure.

Jane Hamon's "Dreams and Visions" -- How the Charismatic Church Does Dreamwork

I have just finished reading "Dreams and Visions: Understanding Your Dreams and how God Can Use Then to Speak to You Today," by Jane Hamon. I was pleasantly surprised by the degree of alignment with the contemporary liberal/ mainline dreamwork tradition. I thought this was a good integration of the ideas of Morton Kelsey, John Sanford and Jeremy Taylor with an emphasis on the importance of conformity to Scripture.

As well as her emphasis on the Word of God in Holy Scripture, she differs from the liberal/ mainline in cautioning people about sharing their dreams. I think there is wisdom in this. I do lead dream groups and we do benefit from sharing the dreams in the group. However, this requires experienced leadership and I like to have co-leaders, so that two people are responsible for maintaining the safety of the group.

The benefits I see in group dream work are the building of community, the learning by experience about "projection", and the decoding of the symbolism. As Jeremy Taylor (a D. Min in the Unitarian Universalist Church) says, "The dreamer is uniquely blind to the meaning of his or her own dream." However, when the dream's meaning is suggested by others, the dreamer will have what Jeremy calls the "aha!" moment. As he puts it in his Basic Dream Work Tool Kit:

Only the dreamer can say with any certainty what meanings his or her dream may have. This certainty usually comes in the form of a wordless "aha!" of recognition, and is the only reliable touchstone of dream work.

Hamon makes what I perceive as the similar point, but ascribes the "aha!" to the work of God and the Holy Spirit:

Whatever symbols appear in a dream, they must be either interpreted by the Holy Spirit or analyzed in light of the dreamer's experience and not solely by an interpretation imposed by another individual. Never impose your interpretation of a symbol on another if the dreamer does not bear witness to it. God will give the dreamer assurance and peace when the proper representation if the symbol is found.(pg 150)

Hamon's emphasis on caution regarding sharing dreams with others may be based on the dynamics of prophetic, charismatic churches. Her words suggest that people in these charismatic churches may use their dreams to accuse others (and even challenge the leadership of the churches -- see pg. 170).

This is the area where people tend to make the most mistakes in responding to their dreams. While God does in fact sometimes give us dreams regarding others, it is imperative that we use extra caution in responding to such dreams. As we have seen, many times when you dream of of other people, you may not be receiving a revelation or message for them; instead you may be actually dreaming about a part of your self.(pg. 166)

As implied here, Hamon has developed in the book a Christian charismatic presentation of the idea that the characters in a dream represent the parts of ourselves. At the beginning of the book, she presented a dream about her concerns for her out of control child, that she explains was actually about a part of herself that was immature. She notes how a wrong interpretation would have been to fear for her child, believing the dream was a prophecy about him. Rather, God showed her the area of herself that needed development.

I liked Hamon's book very much because of her emphasis on the Bible and symbolism and especially because of her understanding of the potential for other people in one's dream to be aspects of oneself.
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