Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 24, No.

2, Summer 1985

A Voice Within: The Prophetic

Experience of Vocation
J E F F R E Y G. SOBOSAN

When I was a child, I had an imaginary playmate. I kept him a secret because I
thought other people would ridicule me if I told them he existed. But in m y
solitude I would converse with him as if he really were another little child sit-
ting or standing beside me. I remember t h a t some of the most "serious"
decisions I made as a child were formulated under the influence of his advice. I
would call to him and he would call to me; I would laugh or cry with him; he
would laugh or cry with me. There was no doubt in m y mind t h a t he was the
best friend I would ever have. I sometimes wonder if t h a t has not been the
case.
As I grew older, and, of course, wiser in the j u d g m e n t of others, I realized
t h a t my playmate wasn't real at all. He was an alter ego, a companion struc-
tured out of my childhood needs and imaginings. The advance of years had
brutalized one of the finest possessions I owned. The boundaries of its reality
were invaded, many of its specific characteristics dismantled. Finally, when
the whole process was complete, all I was left with was the voice. Everything
else had faded or been dismissed from my consciousness. But the voice still
remained. To this day it still calls; it still instructs, laughs, cries, and
reprimands. It still speaks with untempered feelings.
The sayings of the mind and heart can remain a monologue. There is no
discussion, no doubt or debate within you. There is no posing of options, no
awareness that a different perspective might be taken on the way you are
looking at things. In this situation the voice within you always speaks with ab-
solute judgment. Its mode is unremittingly the imperative, and you are its
slave. No longer a playmate through life, it is now a t y r a n t that works its will
without constraint. The voice speaks, but it speaks alone; your response is
silence and submission. Your mind, in other words, is like a musical score in
which your consciousness permits only one sound to be heard. Hence, the
diversity required for harmony is absent, and your thinking takes on the ab-
soluteness (and reliability) of a steady hum, while lacking the creative in-
terplay of sounds t h a t is a prerequisite for all true music.
This type of dictatorial consciousness is demonic. It straps you into one way
Jeffrey G. Sobosan, Th.D., is Associate Professor and Chairman at the University of Portland
in Portland, Oregon.

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126 Journal of Religion and Health

of thinking that immediately rebukes any refinement or contradiction. Any

call that you might experience to a different way of thinking, a changed way of
looking at the events and situations that populate your life, is crushed into
irrelevance or forgetfulness. The millionaire physician who works his craft
only for the benefit of the wealthy may some day hear a voice calling him to
leave all that he has and give his curing talent to the poor. But the voice is
gagged as soon as it speaks, for it has offended the hegemony of a con-
sciousness grown large on the thought that his healing skills are simply hand-
maidens to his bank account. A consciousness that speaks with one voice can
engage only in a monologue. Dialogue is possible only when more than one
voice speaks and each is respected for what it says.

Call and response

The ancient theology which recognizes that God's revelation of his will is prin-
cipaUy verbal, a Word, is premised on the idea that more than one voice must
speak within us. This, however, does not simultaneously require a type of
schizophrenic "break" within us, a splitting of our personality into distinct,
autonomous p a r t s - - a s some psychologists of religion have unwisely {and often
unfairly} suggested. What it requires, rather, is a willing acceptance of the idea
that within every single personality, just as within every single work of music,
there is a diversity of parts that must be respected if harmony, a sense of
wholeness, is to be achieved. But like a work of music, too, we may say that
while God's will is a call, it is not compelling. We are not forced but invited to
listen to it. We may ignore the invitation, of course, refusing the dialogue it
would initiate within us. In this case our preference is unmistakably clear: we
wish to guide our lives without any intrusion that would force the breaking of
our monologue with ourselves, our settled ways of thinking and feeling. The
beckoning call of God, the proposal that we hear what he has to say, that we
speak with him, goes unheeded. Our hearing turns to deafness for the sake of
comfort. The call of God, we fear, can only bring disruption into the life we
have planned. It is better for us to remain silent, unresponsive before it.
Or we can listen to the call; we can entertain it. The security of speaking only
to ourselves, hearing only what we wish to hear, gives way to the excitement,
the enchantment of speaking to another. We make no decisions yet as to the
worthiness of what he might say, but we will listen. If he is persuasive, we will
concede to his persuasion; our ways of thinking and feeling will respect what
he has said. If he is unpersuasive, this too will be acknowledged; our ways of
thinking and feeling will achieve greater justification. But we know that
whatever the result may be, we must first listen to his call, that to refuse to
listen is to paralyze ourselves, remaining neither changed nor strengthened in
how we think and feel.
When you engage in conversation with a friend you respect, your attention
to what he says will be much greater than it is when you are in conversation
with someone you do not respect. You will be much more willing to let what