• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are
• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week’s subject is on courtship. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Kahu Dr. James Fung
Lihu‘e Christian Church
A professor of religion shared how when he was a student in graduate school, had a late night mystical experience that he would never forget. He felt “a powerful and overwhelming sense of God’s closeness.” Although he heard no actual voice speaking to him, yet there was “this indescribable sense of the intimate presence of God.” It was something that he never experienced before. Although he knew a lot about the Bible and the other great books of the religions of the world, such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran and the Analects of Confucius, all this was, “intellectual stuff.” Something happened that night that convinced him that God was indeed “real” and a loving and divine presence that could be at least apprehended, if not comprehended.
He was so elated with this “religious affection” that he was prepared that night to give his life wholeheartedly in service to God. But first he wanted, “one small sign” that God really wanted him to be his fully dedicated instrument of divine grace.
He drew a line on a white sheet of paper and placed the point of a sharpened pencil next to that line on the page. And then, he prayed fervently for the next four hours asking that God move that pencil ever so little o give him an indication that his apprehension of God’s reality was real and not just a figment of his religious imagination.
But nothing happened. Exhausted and despairing, it was as if the spiritual wind in his soul was knocked out of him.
He came to terms with the orthodox mantra that it was wrong to put God to the test like this. However he acknowledged if God had responded he would have strove to use every ounce of his being as God’s servant. Instead, he said, he merely became a theologian.
In the Bible and all through history people have looked for a sign, an indication, a guidepost, a direction, a hint of God’s plan. But Jesus taught that we should direct less of our energy to signs and more to being awake and watchful. (Matt. 24: 36-44)
There is something within us that yearns for a solid and confirming sign that God is out there making contact. But it could just be that God really wants us to walk, not by sight, but by faith.
Topic for two
weeks from today
• Will you speak to us on
ritual?
•Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com
•Deadline each week is
Tuesday, by 5 p.m.