Hearing Voices – the Voice of God or a symptom of illness?
This is a challenging question to which I do not claim to have good answers but I can offer some observations from a psychiatric perspective. An excellent study of voice hearing, in the Bible and Christian tradition with discussions about how our understanding of “the voice of God” is shaped by neuroscience today, is in the book by Christopher Cook at Durham University: “Hearing Voices – Demonic and Divine. Scientific and Theological Perspectives” Published by Routledge in 2019 (free on open access at www.taylorfrancis.com).
Another insightful book I have found helpful, is “When God Talks Back” (Vintage Books; 2012), by the anthropologist TM Luhrmann who interviewed and described the experiences of members of US Vineyard evangelical churches.
Terminology of mental phenomena can be a problem so it is worth repeating a medical definition of a hallucination as: a perception without a sensory stimulus where the person is convinced the experience is real. In contrast an illusion is defined as a perception that occurs when a sensory stimulus is present but is incorrectly perceived and misinterpreted, such as hearing the wind as someone crying.
Hallucinations, described as hearing voices, seeing visions or as experiences of touch and smell, are often described, during bouts of severe illness, by people with schizophrenia, mania and depression, common illnesses affecting around 2-3% of any population worldwide. Hallucinations are also a feature of delirious states brought on by alcohol and drug use, head injury and more and for centuries Shamans have used plants and mushrooms to communicate with Gods. Mostly, however, voices are not caused by illness. Hearing the voice of a loved one is a common experience in bereavement and somewhere around 5% of the population admit to auditory experiences, hearing something when nobody is around.
However the auditory hallucinations experienced by many people during psychosis, have a number of intriguing properties which are difficult to explain and which critics seize upon as proof that anyone who hears the voice of God is almost certainly mentally ill.
The content of auditory hallucinations during psychosis, is varied but surveys reliably find that in about 25% of cases, the voices have religious content. The content depends very much on the mood of the patient at the time, for instance during an episode of mania a person may make a grandiose claim when a voice, perceived as God’s voice, tells them they have been chosen for a special task, or a severely depressed person is persecuted by a voice saying they deserve to be punished. Sometimes there is just an emotionally neutral chatter of voices taken to be devils or spirits.
It is quite challenging to discover that patients who experience voices with a religious content during a psychotic illness, are not always religious nor had a religious education and surveys in India among Hindus and in Pakistan among Moslems, report similar findings in people with severe mental illness. Typically, these hallucinations respond to medication in days or weeks and brain scans, recorded during hallucinations reveal changes consistent with abnormal activity in brain regions that process sound and generate speech and language.
The main conclusion is that hallucinations, including voices, visions, smells and sensations of touch, have a firm biological basis and are false signals generated by a disease process affecting the sensory systems of the brain.
These observations contribute to the long tradition of explaining religion as a mental disorder.
Sigmund Freud called religion “A universal obsessional neurosis”. “A system of wishful illusions – a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion”
Daniel Dennett, the psychologist, in his book “Breaking the Spell” supports the notion that religion had its roots in mental illness when Shamans gained influence and power in their tribe, through their ability to hear the Gods speaking directly to them - likewise the voices heard by prophets in the Bible and by saints and mystics down the centuries.
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However, all the evidence points the other way. Population surveys looking at the relationship between religion and mental health, reach a clear consensus that people who report for instance, that they attend church regularly, pray often and believe that God is important in their lives, have better mental health than survey respondents who declare no religion.
There are many unanswered questions about the neural basis of hallucinations and interesting but challenging findings concerning their content, but neuroscience is on the side of separating religion and mental disorder. Hearing the voice of God, in worship, will not be explained away as a manifestation of illness. There also is no reason to claim that God does not communicate with someone in the context of mental illness.
How can Christians discern if voices are a genuine revelation from God?
Christopher Cook points out that voice hearing is a spiritual experience and part of a conversation:
“Revelatory voices will be creative, redemptive and transformative, not merely entertaining or distracting. In discerning whether a voice is truly God’s, the concern is thus not merely with rational and critical evaluation of the words heard, but with evaluating the impact of the voice in human lives and in Church and society.”
“None of this implies that all experiences of voice hearing are revelatory, even if they do convey spiritual or religious content. The voices are not always to be believed without question. However, it does affirm experiences of hearing voices as being one of the ways in which God’s presence is known.”
TM Luhrmann summarised some of the ways that Pastors and congregations in Pentecostal Churches find helpful to distinguish voices associated with mental illness from those accepted as a spiritual experience. What the voice says should be completely in keeping with the Bible and the teaching of the church. The person has an attitude of calmness and humility and may describe the voice as an inner sense “as if” God spoke. There is an “Interpreting Community” able to share the experience which has relevance to the whole group.
