Can God Really Be Silenced?

I saw a poster about an event coming up in our area called, The Silencing of God. It seems to be an event that is suggesting that old argument that the liberals are taking God out of the schools, out of politics, out of whatever. Often it is argued that the United States was founded on Christian ideals and I always wonder if that's pre or post Columbus' discovery. Is invading a land and destroying it's indigenous people a valid way to follow Jesus? I mean, were not the indigenous population of what we now call the United States a spiritual people, with spiritual values? Maybe they were not the European spiritual ideals and values, but spiritual all the same.

I thought about what is presumed by the title, The Silencing of God. There is an assumption here, I think, that human efforts can silence God. The assumption is that by our will we can hold the mouth of God shut. Huh? Does disallowing public school officials or teachers to lead prayers in public schools really have the power to silence God? Do we really take seriously the passage from Luke 19 where the Pharisees say to Jesus at his entry into Jerusalem, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples," (because everyone was shouting, "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!") and Jesus responds to them, "If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." To believe that political powers, public schools, or any other institutions or their leaders can "silence God," is to really not understand God's authority and power at all, I think.

Notes to self...God is God. I'm not God. Whether I can talk about God in this or that place does not mean God is silenced. To whom and when God speaks is not under my control, nor is it under the control of anyone else. To suggest that it is, is to give more power to "principalities and powers," as Paul describes them, than these things or people really have. Maybe God wants me to be more silent so that people can hear God's voice without being distracted by my own. This certainly does not mean God is not speaking nor that God is silenced, but maybe it does mean I might be drowning God out. And, is that really possible anyway? Certainly God will be heard if God wants to be heard. Of course I might not hear God even though God is speaking, but that's because of my own heart, not the power of others to quiet God.

I think sometimes we confuse God's voice for our own. We often feel that God wants what we want, thinks as we think, and that God would accept or reject according to our personal preferences and prejudices. So, when someone brings up the topic of The Silencing of God, maybe it says more about whether people want to listen to them or not than whether people want to listen to God. I have found it to be true that people often have great affection for Jesus, but not so much for Christians. We Christians certainly aren't perfect. But I do think our goal is to strive to be more "like Jesus," not more like our country's founders. Jesus was not a white American and I think it is very clear that many of these so called values of the United States, is not necessarily the values of Jesus. You might check out the book God's Politics by Jim Wallis, or the Sojourners or Call to Renewal Websites to discover more discussion and ideas related to some of the differences between what our Country wants and what Jesus might actually desire from us.