4. A Still, Small Voice

"9 And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?

10 And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.

11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

13 And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?”

1 Kings 19:9–13

God, please help me figure out a way to explain factoring to this student! Ug, I have tried everything. Summer cannot come fast enough…!

Tired, I started driving home. I turned on the radio to a Christian radio station and tried to think about something besides teaching.

Then a seemingly random thought, almost like a still, small voice, entered my mind as I drove:

Marriage is in the new heaven and new earth.

It had nothing to do with anything that had happened that day or anything I had been thinking about. The thought seemed to come out of nowhere.

God, that is not true, I prayed. Jesus said to the Sadducees that there was no marriage in the resurrection. That is definitely off.

But I had a difficult time dismissing the thought. I began to sense that perhaps the Holy Spirit was prompting me to research whether the idea could actually be biblical.

God, I prayed, I do not think this is from You, and I do not want to waste my time researching this topic. Why does it even matter whether marriage continues or not? How does that matter for Your kingdom? I do not think there is any serious Christian who actually believes marriage is in the new heaven and new earth. It seems to be contradicted so clearly by Jesus in Your Word! But okay… I will research it.

So I did.

I began studying the Bible to see whether there was any evidence that marriage could continue in the new heaven and new earth. I was surprised by what I found. Not only did I discover that some Christians believed marriage continued, I also found biblical evidence that made the idea more plausible than I had expected.

I was not convinced. But I was more open to the possibility.

***

Not long afterward that spring, another unexpected thought entered my mind:

The Holy Spirit is God the Mother.

Just like the first thought, it seemed to come without any external stimulus. I had never in my life seriously considered that the Holy Spirit could be God the Mother. I did not even know that anyone believed such a thing could be biblical.

It seemed very strange to me at first.

Mother? God is Father, certainly. That is explicit in the Bible. But Mother? There is nothing in the Bible, I reasoned, that says God is Mother.

Yet again, I sensed what might be the Holy Spirit prompting me not simply to accept the idea, but to research it.

So again, I studied.

And again, I was surprised.

I found biblical evidence that I had never noticed before. I also began discovering evidence from early Christianity that some Christians had spoken of the Holy Spirit in maternal and feminine terms: and, at times, explicitly as Mother.

To have a heavenly Father AND a heavenly Mother, I thought, would be such a gift.

As I continued to study the Bible, Christian history, and pray, I found myself becoming more open to the idea that God was also Mother.

***

Near the end of that school year, I laughed as a group of ninth-grade boys made paper airplanes out of the little printed notes I had written for each student.

So glad they appreciated them…!

As I sent students in pairs to get their yearbooks following their final exam, another thought came to me, again in the form of a still, small voice:

Do you really think I will not save all? Just as every student who goes to your school is recorded in your yearbook, each person I created participating in the school of life will be written in the Lamb’s book of life. All will be saved.

This time my response was very different. I prayed,

Oh, God! How I long for this to be Your voice! But how can that possibly be true? What about all the judgment in the Bible? Eternal hell? So many people have died without hearing the gospel—and the gospel is the only way to be saved. Holy Spirit, please, may this be Your voice.

The voice seemed to reply definitively:

All will be saved.

And again, I sensed, I thought from the Holy Spirit, that I should study the Bible to see if perhaps God was speaking to me.

So I began researching universal salvation, doubtful but hopeful.

For a third time, I was surprised by what I found.

I discovered historical evidence that universal salvation was a much more widespread Christian belief before the 4th century, and I also began finding biblical passages that seemed to say far more about the ultimate salvation and restoration of humanity than I had realized.

I still did not understand how God's judgment and the biblical passages I had always understood as teaching eternal hell fit into the picture. I also did not understand how universal salvation could possibly work given the countless people who had died without hearing the gospel.

But I saw many passages of Scripture that seemed to point directly toward the ultimate salvation of all.

I could not explain fully yet how that could be true.

But I believed God's Word was true even when I did not yet understand how everything fit together. I began to hope against hope concerning a doctrine I thought was settled. I began to hope that perhaps God would save all.

***

Summer began as normal, and I was excited to be off from school. I continued praying, researching, and thinking about these questions.

I was certainly not convinced that these unexpected thoughts were coming from the Holy Spirit. I simply thought it was possible.

What gave me confidence was not the thoughts themselves. It was my belief that God could lead me into truth and that Scripture was the trustworthy standard by which every idea had to be tested.

That summer, my sister, a good friend, and I attended a women's conference. As I listened to session after session taught almost entirely by women to an audience of women, I found myself praying:

God, why can't women teach at many churches? I don't get it. They have so many powerful things to say. I'm so encouraged and empowered hearing women teach and preach here.

I think women should be able to teach. Where in Your Word does it really say differently? Holy Spirit?

And another prayer followed naturally:

Holy Spirit… if You really are Mother, surely women made in Your image can teach both sexes? You are the One, after all, who empowers men to teach.

My questions kept growing.

***

Later that summer I was at the beach with my family—my favorite place.

I sat on the back porch of the beach house in the hot sun, looking out over the bay and looking forward to going down to the beach. Everything always seemed more hopeful and peaceful to me at the beach. The vastness of the ocean left me in awe of God and confident in His love and goodness.

And then another thought came.

Jesus is not God.

I immediately revolted against it.

God, that is NOT true. Jesus IS God. I have no idea where that thought came from. I have NEVER thought that in my life.

I continued praying:

Jesus IS God! There is no doubt in my mind that He is God. The Bible provides overwhelming evidence for Jesus' deity.

But once again, I began to sense what I thought might be the Holy Spirit pushing me to investigate Scripture to see if Jesus really was God.

Consider that Jesus is not God? Research that? How could I possibly do that? Wouldn't that be sinful even to consider? God, this is off. Believing Jesus is God is central to being a Christian! I think? There is NO good biblical evidence for him not being God. I am NOT hearing from You, God. Help me—this is so wrong. Where did this thought even come from?

I continued to sense (I thought) the Holy Spirit's leading to reexamine whether Jesus was God in Scripture.

Reluctantly, cautiously, and almost completely certain that I would find nothing biblical pointing away from Jesus' deity, I began to research.

For a fourth time, I was surprised.

I discovered a group of Christians known as biblical Unitarians. They had a high view of Scripture as God's Word but believed that Scripture presents Jesus as God's human Son and Messiah rather than as God Himself.

Over the following months, I read books, articles, and biblical arguments written by these Christians. To my surprise, I found many of their arguments regarding Jesus' identity convincing, biblical, and logical.

My understanding of Jesus slowly began to change.

But one enormous question continued to trouble me:

How could the Church have gotten something this important wrong for centuries?

I wrestled with that constantly.

Surely God would not allow such a significant misunderstanding to dominate Christianity for so long.

At times, that question alone made me wonder whether Jesus' deity must be true regardless of the biblical arguments I was encountering.

Yet I also could not deny what I was beginning to see in Scripture.

Passages I had read many times began to look different when I read them without assuming beforehand that Jesus was God. I saw God's Son: a genuine human being, filled, empowered, sent, raised, and exalted by God, but distinct from God Himself.

After roughly nine months of intensive biblical study and prayer, I finally reached the conclusion that I could no longer see Jesus as God from Scripture.

Even then, I did not want to become closed-minded about what I had concluded. I began trying to talk with Trinitarian Christians around me because I wanted to hear their arguments and remain humbly open to correction.

***

About a year after these questions first began, something changed.

For months, I had researched them largely on my own. I had prayed, read Scripture, looked into history, considered arguments I agreed with and arguments I did not, and repeatedly asked God to correct me wherever I was wrong.

Then one day I wrote down, in one place, what I now believed.

I remember sitting at my computer and staring at what I had written.

It was so different from the theology I had believed only a year earlier.

And yet instead of looking fragmented or random to me, it suddenly seemed to fit together.

God was Father and Mother.

The Holy Spirit was not merely an impersonal force, but God.

God's ultimate plan was the restoration and salvation of His entire creation.

Jesus was not God Himself, but God's uniquely chosen human Son, Messiah, Savior, and image.

Marriage, humanity, creation, judgment, salvation, Jesus, the Spirit—things I had originally researched as separate questions began connecting into one larger narrative.

I remember looking at what I had written and wondering:

How did I never see this in Scripture before?

I had spent roughly a year, for the most part privately, investigating these ideas before my own mind changed.

For approximately two more years, I kept studying and praying.

I dug deeper into Scripture.

I read more Church history.

I researched the original languages of Scripture.

I read scholars and theologians who strongly disagreed with me, and scholars and theologians who agreed.

I talked with pastors, Christian leaders, friends, family members, and other Christians.

I asked people what they thought.

Most of the responses I received did not persuade me to return to my previous theology. But their questions and objections were extremely valuable. Again and again, someone would challenge one part of what I believed, and I would return to Scripture to investigate it more deeply.

Sometimes I realized that I had overstated something.

Sometimes I found that an argument needed to be changed.

Sometimes I discovered biblical evidence I had missed.

Sometimes an objection forced me to think far more carefully about how different parts of Scripture fit together.

Over those two years, the theology became clearer, more refined, and—I believe—more firmly grounded in Scripture.

I am grateful for my conversations with other Christians, as their insights and, in most cases, pushback have helped me to understand Scripture and what is true in a deeper way, though ultimately my final conclusions have remained the same. Understanding Scripture and what is true better is my ultimate goal.

Eventually, after roughly three years of studying these questions—about one year before my basic theology changed, and another two years of continued study, prayer, discussion, and refinement afterward—I began to consider sharing what I had found publicly.

Even then, I hesitated.

Who was I to publish something so different from what most Christians believe?

I am not a pastor or theologian. I did not go to seminary. I am a math teacher who began asking God questions and searched for the answers in Scripture, history, and in conversations with others.

But I also found what I was discovering deeply encouraging:

A God who is Father and Mother.

A God who will not ultimately lose any of His children.

A Jesus who is more truly one of us than I ever imagined and reveals what humanity can become.

A biblical story that ends not with creation permanently divided, but with the restoration of all things.

And beyond being encouraging, these questions seemed important enough that I thought they deserved to be examined openly. After years of private study, I reached the point where I thought it was worth writing about, especially given what I write about is not peripheral to the Christian faith.

The following sections on my blog answer my 4 questions and describe what I am seeing in Scripture. Would you look at it with me?

That is why this blog exists.

I am not asking anyone to believe something because I once experienced thoughts that seemed like a still, small voice.

Those thoughts began the questions.

Scripture had to answer them.

And after years of prayer, Bible study, research, studying history, disagreement, conversation, revision, and continued searching, I came to believe that perhaps the still, small voice that had repeatedly disturbed my comfortable theology had been the Holy Spirit after all.

Whatever the source of those first thoughts, I am grateful that they drove me back to the Bible.

They taught me that neither orthodoxy, tradition, my own background, nor even my own certainty should be the final measure of truth.

God's truth, as found in His Word, must be.

And so I continue to pray the same prayer that has carried me through this entire journey:

Holy Spirit, please lead me into all truth. (John 16:13)