Reflection on Aphorism 7: The Divine Can Only Guide Us If Willing

“As leaders can only lead with the consent of those led, however grudging that might be, the Divine can only guide us if we are willing to be guided.”
–Aphorism 7

Whatever your view on theology, it is clear that the Divine, however we conceive of it, is limited. If you believe in an omnipotent God, then this limitation is clearly self-imposed, for whatever reason. If one believes in a God that is good, one can only assume that it cannot or will not interfere in the world to maximise happiness (unless you go with the “best of all possible worlds” argument, which I always found sophistic). Other conceptions of the Divine are more obviously limited.

By analogy, this aphorism expresses one of those limitations – that while we can put our lives under the ordering of the Spirit, we have to be willing to do so. In fact, while it is not stated in the aphorism, I would go further – we have to work to do so. The Divine may be trying to speak to us all the time, but it cannot reach us without an open heart, or perhaps an open soul, and for most if not all of us, that takes work and practice. We have to learn to quiet the loud voices of our selves to hear the still small voice of God.

Quaker Business Method and Rational Decision-Making

This is a long post, exploring issues in detail, and I would encourage those interested in the topic to read the whole thing. However, a summary is provided at the end of the post, covering both arguments and advice, and should you wish, you can skip to it.

Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive in
the application of Quaker Business Method.

As Quakers, we try to make our decisions using Quaker Business Method – a subject on which I have written a lot, albeit no basic introduction, but please check out the Quaker Business Method tag on this blog for more of my writing on the subject. This is a method, also known as discernment (or more specifically group discernment, as one can engage in discernment entirely alone) whereby we do not set aside our rational mind entirely; we prepare by trying to understand the subject as much as possible, and try to be aware of all the rational factors involved, as well as spiritual ones. We do, however, make the decision in silent waiting, led by spoken ministry (when meeting in such a way that that is possible), so as to make the decision under the guidance of the Divine.

As such, many would say we can’t always (or possibly ever) give clear reasons for decisions. Sometimes the ministry is such that we can see how the various factors were balanced, and we can give an ex post facto rational explanation. Sometimes it’s just “the ministry led us this way, and well, that’s the decision”.

Good vs Evil: Nontheism and Dualism

Some expressions of Christianity are what is termed dualist: they are concerned with the adversarial nature of a divine Lord of good, in the form of God (and the Trinity), and a diabolical lord of evil, in the form of the devil, Satan, Lucifer, or the adversary, to give it a few of the more common names it is known by. All, or almost all are dualist in at least a purely moral sense – there is good and evil, even if there is not a personification of evil in opposition to a personification of good.

Quaker non-theists take a range of positions on the nature of that which our theistic Friends generally (and some non-theists) call ‘God’. Generally speaking, those who consider themselves non-theists (or who might be analytically classified as such) do not accept the idea of God as an entity with personality or personhood, but we recognise something in ourselves which we identify to some extent with what others call ‘God’.

Likewise, theistic Christian Quakers (neither Christianity nor theism inevitably follows from the other in practice, among Quakers) have a range of views about the devil, though among liberal Friends the identification of it as an adversarial persona with true power in opposition to God is relatively unusual. Yet we all recognise the concept of evil, that there are acts that are evil, that we all have the potential for evil within us – just as we all have the potential for good, and that we all have ‘that of God’ within us. We, Quakers, tend to be dualists to that extent, even if the degree of Christian dualism found in some other churches is (in my experience) extremely rare.