I'm sitting in on Professor Mark Husbands' course, "Faith Seeking Understanding." He began yesterday with Augustine's Credo ut intelligam, "I believe in order to understand." This is a tough beginning for us moderns. Seeing is believing; we want our evidence. Yet, faith does not come by seeing. It comes by hearing. I'm also struck anew at Jesus' words in John 10:
"He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers."
Roger Lundin, a favorite professor from my undergrad, was the keynote speaker last night at our Veritas Forum here at Hope College. About fifteen minutes into the lecture I realized how comforting it was to hear his voice, the calm cadence of his musing along with the explosive, ecstatic boom of his voice. Further into the lecture I found myself confused--how much of Dr. Ludin's voice is similar to the voice of Garrison Keillor? Was I truly being comforted by gnostalgia for Dr. Lundin? Or was it really just the similarities of his voice with the radio voice I grew up hearing from childhood?
It is such a poignant example of the familiarity we have with voices. I pray that it is not so hard to discern between the the voice of Christ and the other voices we hear. I pray we will not even know the voices of strangers.
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