Does Joy Behar have a Bible in her home?

You probably know about Joy Behar's "mental illness" remark, but here's a concise account of the Joy Behar portion of the story. Her remark was in regard to what Manigault had said on a reality show the previous night. Manigault had said Pence's faith was scary and looney. Behar concurred:

Vice President Pence gave an interview to Axios‘ Mike Allen Wednesday. Pence was asked about comments Joy Behar made this week on ABC’s The View. During a discussion of Pence’s faith, Behar said, “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus, it’s another thing when Jesus talks to you. That’s called mental illness if I’m not correct.” Behar was reacting to some comments by former White House staffer Omarosa Manigault. Asked for his reaction the comments, Pence never mentioned Behar by name but did question ABC promoting comments he labeled “religious intolerance.”

In the Axios interview, Pence handles the matter with his customary statesmanlike demeanor (which sometimes frustrates me; once in a while, he's in a situation that, it seems to me, calls for a raised voice, or at least a snarl):

“I actually heard that ABC has a program that compared my Christianity to mental illness and I’d like to laugh about it but I really can’t,” Pence said. He continued, “Tens of millions of Americans today will have ash on their foreheads to mark the beginning of Lent. [The] overwhelming majority of Americans cherish their faith.

“We’ve all different types of faith in this country. And I have to tell you to have ABC maintain a broadcast forum that compared Christianity to mental illness, it’s just wrong. And it’s an insult not to me but to the vast majority of American people who, like me, cherish their faith.”

“I just think it demonstrates how out-of-touch some in the mainstream media are with the faith and values of the American people,” he said.

Pence concluded, “It’s just simply wrong for ABC to have a television program that expresses that kind of religious intolerance. We’re better than that.”

Pence is walking a fine line here. As Vice President, he doesn’t want to say anything that would suggest he doesn’t support free speech, even for someone like Joy Behar who is calling him mentally ill on television. So instead, he focuses on ABC which is amplifying her often absurd musing. 

The what-ABC-is-culpable-for angle - the institutionalization of a dismissive attitude toward Christian faith - is important, but the train of thought this catalyzes for me is the utter secularization of an ever-increasing swath of America that Behar encapsulates.

If conversation between God and individual people isn't two-way, there's no point to prayer, certainly not prayer for guidance in one's personal life.

I get a daily devotional in my email from First 15. Its whole ministry is predicated on personal relationship with the Lord. Nearly every day, the message has something to do with the myriad ways God is speaking to us.

This gets to one of the final sticking points in my own faith journey. During my last days of bucking like a mule against the Truth, I would stress to anyone I was discussing it with, "But no one can see God. We can see any person we talk to or correspond with, hear that person's voice, see what that person has typed. When it comes to God, what are we to look for?"

And that's what I am now learning about.

It takes a purposeful humbling to explore the whole notion of God communicating with us. You can't lay the sensory evidence that he doesn't on the table and call that the end of the matter. I know this to be true, because in my own life as well as the lives of my brothers and sisters in Christ, there are situations in which God's hand is undeniable and unmistakable. A word of encouragement, an opportunity to use one's gifts in service to someone, a rescue from a tight spot are just some of the ways I've seen it work.

Mainly, though, it comes down to the indispensability of reading Scripture. Does Joy Behar have a Bible in her home? When was the last time she cracked it open?

The secular mocking of the notion of hearing from God surely stems from viewing it through a kind of anthropological kind of lens, hearkening back to tribal implorings of rain gods or sacrifices in the expectation of good crops. But the real, actual God makes clear to us through His word that keeping Him front and center in our thoughts and mediating on his omniscient power opens a range of ways in which he'll make his presence and love known.

It boils down to the question of whether one sees oneself as being on one's own, with no resources to rely on other than one's own faculties. If a critical mass of people think this way, an entire nation can see itself as on its own. At that point, there comes a nasty clamoring for the position of being able to chart the nation's direction, rather than listening for God's direction.

I'm still only a few years into this, so I may not articulate the truth of God speaking to us with the authority of a seasoned theologian, but I know it to be so. I hear Him more frequently all the time.