Peter Costello
How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People by Pete Greig (Hodder and Stoughton, £14.99/€18.00)
Author Peter Greig is pastor in Emmaus Road Church in Guilford, England. This is his eighth book, but his books are only a part of his life. He says that he often finds himself bewildered, but his bewilderment is understandable, given all that he makes himself do, but he can also see many things clearly given his experience. One of those earlier books was called How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People. This new book is what he calls, it should be noted, a “prequel to this title”.
Refreshing
It opens with a very refreshing section called disarmingly “How to Read this Books in Five Minutes”.
This is in effect a summary of the book, but don’t be tempted to take it too literally, for the book is filled with insights and thoughts that need to be read for themselves.
The dominant image pervading the book is the encounter on the Road to Emmaus, where the two disciples encounter Jesus and listen to his voice and his wise words, and all in a very friendly way. And how the experience of recognising the voice one is hearing is the voice of God.
Greig reminds his reader, and this is page one, of the remark of St Teresa of Avila that “Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God”.
The book emphasises what happened on the road again to the two disciples when he explained to them, what theologians call the Christological hermeneutic.
One cannot help on reading a new book of this kind to note passages apposite to the day we are living through.
“A Christological reading of the Bible may well unsettle hierarchical models of Church governance based upon the Old Testament temple and its elliptical priesthood. It will dismantle the arguments used by some people to justify nationalism and racism based purely on the Old Testament view of Israel. It will also challenge attitudes that subjugate women in ways he himself clearly and consistently redressed.”
Having undoubtedly rattled a few cages here, Greig adds this Jesus-centred view “is that it makes love the lens through which we must henceforth read the Bible in the light of Christ”.
He reminds us too that: “The whole Bible does nothing but tell of God’s love”, according to Augustine of Hippo.
Efforts
Greater efforts rather are put into converting others. But for great changes he says “we don’t need non-Christians to become Christians, we need Christians to become Christians”.
Later in the book he notes that it is estimated that there are two billion Christians in the world. What profound things might happen if they all acted as Christians.
But a tide of change depends on people he thinks adjusting themselves and their way of life to hearing that “still small voice”.
For “normal people”, which we all aspire to be, that is perhaps a hard task today.
The heart of Peter Greig’s book suggests how they might go about it. This is not just a book written in a charming style, but perhaps in the end a book that will help many change their lives and adjust themselves to hearing that “still small voice” of which the Bible speaks.