The Shouts of God

The Christian writer C. S. Lewis wrote: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain". The idea of God whispering to us, speaking to us and then shouting at us - in that gradual order - is not a widely accepted idea nowadays. It is a rather mystical, almost medieval image, typical of fanatical people. However, this phrase was written by one of the most eminent Cambridge and Oxford professors of the 20th century. Those of us who have the privilege of knowing God can perceive -according to Lewis- that God is shouting to the whole world in our days.

The Israelites, in biblical times, had prophets shouting messages from God to them from mounds in the fields, from the corners of the squares, or at the portals of the temple. They could accept or reject the message, but God would record that he had made his voice heard through his prophets. To Ezekiel, God says: "Therefore I will send you to sons of stern faces and hardened hearts; and you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord GOD. Perhaps they will listen; but if they will not listen, because they are a rebellious house, they will always know that there was a prophet among them" (2:4-5). Their prophets testified that God had sent his word, and that its fulfillment was hastening to come to pass.

Today, God no longer has those prophets. He has them, but not the kind who stand and shout in the streets crying out on God’s behalf for the sins of the nation. The prophets of God who call for repentance are not heard today. They have no space in the media, because they are not pleasant to hear, and because they spoil the TV 'shows'. Those who are heard are those who give false messages of peace to a world that knows no peace.

So, God has to make himself heard in an extreme and painful way. The whispers and the delicate voice of God cannot be heard in the hustle and bustle of the big cities, in the comings and goings of transactions, and in the noise of the car horns on the big avenues.

Therefore, there has to come about a great detonation, which is like the cry of God. And then, sometimes terrible things happen, such as a great earthquake, an unforeseeable tragedy, a catastrophe that leaves a whole country in mourning. And people look for immediate explanations within the sphere of the visible. And various recriminations and hypotheses rise up. However, they rarely stop to look up to the sky to hear God's explanation for that heartbreaking cry.

Even many servants of God, who ought to know that explanation, do not know it. And they also join the general chorus of a confused humanity, saying: "Peace, peace", when there isn’t, and nor can there ever be, peace.

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