I am very grateful for my spam filters, both the one for my e-mail which catches most of the 600 or so spam e-mails per month which are sent to me, and for Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam and Akismet which catch most of the spam comments sent to this blog. It is sad that some of these spam e-mails are now coming from apparently genuine Christian ministries such as Christian Music Updates (no, I won’t give a link to them).
In this busy world where more and more people seem to be trying to catch our attention, I’m sure most of us have equivalents to spam filters for our junk “snail mail”, telephone calls and callers at the door. I suppose we all throw away some mail unopened and politely put down the phone on some callers. We can even find ways of getting rid of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons on our doorsteps.
But there is a danger in all spam filters and equivalents, that if they are used without great care they can filter out genuine messages, that people who we really want to hear from are unable to contact us because their messages are being wrongly discarded as spam.
Dave Warnock makes the point in passing here (explained further in the comments) that even messages from God can get caught in our spam filters. Of course at least since the childhood of Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1-10) people have often mistaken the voice of God for a human message, but God in his persistence has managed to communicate in the end. But in these days when there are so many messages bombarding us, it is perhaps far too easy for us to filter out all messages which we don’t immediately recognise. In these circumstances, what chance has God of being able to communicate with us?
Well, of course if God really needs to communicate with us, he will find a way. We should be careful about pushing him this far, as his way may be through sickness or even death (compare 1 Corinthians 11:30). But in other cases, if we won’t listen to him he simply gives up on us, and perhaps looks for someone else to do his work.
So surely (and here I am preaching to myself as much as to others) each of us needs to find a place and a time where we can get away from the insistent voices of the world trying to grab our attention, let down our spam filters, and listen to what God has to say to us.
Thank you Peter for bringing the anti-spam filter to our attention. My son installed it last night and this morning I had no spam for the first time ever!
Good, but I hope it didn’t also stop you hearing from God!
Nope. He is still coming through loud and clear!
So surely (and here I am preaching to myself as much as to others) each of us needs to find a place and a time where we can get away from the insistent voices of the world trying to grab our attention, let down our spam filters, and listen to what God has to say to us.
Peter, yes, I agree. But I honestly don’t think it’s all that easy an enterprise. In the conversation in question, we were talking about hearing a call from God to full-time ministry.
I’m only a Probationer Minister (sort of like a curate, but not ordained to anything yet). This is supposed to be a two year period of testing our call. Sometimes I think that the Church has got the whole “ordained” thing wrong and that maybe my call is elsewhere. Other times I feel that I’m doing what I’m “supposed” to be doing.
I’ve been practicing Ignatian discernment since 1975 and I still haven’t got the “listening to God” thing sussed. I sometimes think that the evangelical tradition takes the whole “call” thing far too lightly.
Thanks, Pam. I am struggling with similar issues about calling to full-time ministry. Don’t get me on to discussing ordination, or I might write things that would get me thrown out of every church!