Signals of Transcendence: Listening to the Promptings of Life, by Os Guinness

When the words "respected author” or “social critic" are mentioned, Evangelical Christians' minds often think of Os Guinness.

Less likely, but perhaps more apt is to recognize Guinness is a Missionary Kid. While he is widely acclaimed for his writing and cultural commentary, fewer people know he grew up in China.

His 40th book, Signals of Transcendence: Listening to the Promptings of Life, invites us to pay attention to the subtle, divine promptings that surround us like below-the-radar, burning bushes.

Rather than telling arguments, Guinness shows the signs that unveil transcendent truths within individual lives, offering a profound understanding of how God communicates. It could have been even bigger and better had he included stories from non-Westerners.

The book presents a tenner of remarkable individuals’ stories, who each in their own way, responded to their unique signals. As they pursued the clues, they unlocked more of the solution. Guinness emphasizes these signals are not universally recognizable, and one person's signal may be another person's silence.

The book's opening story is as personal as it is powerful. Guinness delves into the extraordinary account of an old friend, Malcolm Muggeridge. Swimming towards suicide off an African beach, Muggeridge's life takes an unexpected turn when the lights of home pierce through his despair. The profound experience sparks a desire within him to search for a greater purpose, igniting a journey towards discovering his true home.

Signals of transcendence, coined by Peter Berger, are phenomena within our natural reality that point beyond what is readily apparent. These signals can occur at any point in our lives, often lingering long in our minds long after they appear. According to Guinness, these signals have a dual purpose: penetrate our illusions and steer us towards a transformative reality. Although not bombproof certainties, they act as hunches or triggers, haunting us with the existence of something beyond.

Because our world is filled with endless distractions and never-ending diversions, the signals of transcendence are mostly missed. He writes, “…we live in what Berger calls ‘a world without windows,’ the materialistic shadow world of Plato’s cave with official scorn for any mention of the sun or outside world.”(location 106) Guinness wants us to break free and kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. He highlights the importance of creating space in our lives to allow divine light to penetrate our hearts. We are urged to cultivate margin and encourage others to do the same, enabling us to hear the profound signals amidst the incessant interference.
Guinness' masterful storytelling serves a wider purpose. He prompts us with eloquent and captivating narratives so we seek out our own signals of transcendence. His approach is refreshing as he recounts individual’s successes and struggles, making sure to connect the dots between their stories and our own.

By doing so, Guinness commends us to embark on our own journeys of reflection, recognizing the significance of the echoes that resound around us.

Read this book if you want to awaken a deeper faith and ignite a passion for sharing the message of hope with the world.

Further Reading:
Berger, Peter L. A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural. Revised ed. edition ed., Garden City, NY, Anchor,1970.

Guinness, Os. The Great Quest: Invitation to an Examined Life Anda Sure Path to Meaning. 1st edition ed., IVP BOOKS, 2022.

Muggeridge, Malcolm. “Half in Love with Death.” The Observer, 2 Feb. 1970, www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1970/feb/02/life1.lifemagazine. Accessed 21 June 2023.

It's by Os Guinness. I could just leave it there and say buy it and read it. It's about various authors and life experience and how each provides, as the title suggests, Signals of Transcendence. Inspiring but also a challenge. When you can hit life's buffers and still see God then you're beginning to understand. Recommended.

“What do I do with all this pain, God?”

“Can you help me find light in the midst of this overwhelming darkness?”

“Where were you God?”

Those were the questions I tried to shove deep down into places no one could reach. What I needed were not the Christian platitudes of “prayer harder” and “just have faith.” What I desperately craved was something that pulled me out of the deepest pit of despair. Something that gave me hope. I needed a signal that would pull me out my malaise and point me to something concrete. More on this signal later.

In his latest book, Signals of Transcendence, Os Guinness guides readers through the lives of well known men and women in order to show us the signals they received that pointed them to beauty, truth, and goodness. A signal that made that seekers of something more than what they had been living for.

Guinness examines the lives of figures like W.H. Auden, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton (notice a theme with the first names here), and Leo Tolstoy. Each had their own moment, or signal if you will, that put them on the trail towards truth, goodness, and beauty. Each signal different in its voicing and context, but a clear signal nonetheless. Of course, as Guinness points out, there is no singular version of a signal. No signal repeats itself in the same way and in the same context. Each operates on its own and in the lives of those individuals through vastly different means.

My signal happened in the middle of a face-melting, humid day in July at a concert in central Minnesota. In the middle of my misery (not only from the summer weather) but from my pain growing up, I needed something that would pierce my cynical heart. What I got was a glance of Joy during a worship set. How can thousands of people, who don’t know each other, crammed together in a stinky crowd cause something like joy to spring up in me? To be honest, I’m not really sure. It lasted only a few seconds and my heart was hooked.

I proceeded to read men like Jonathan Edwards, C.S. Lewis, and the like, looking for a formula for producing joy. What I got instead was a vision of the Word who pursues wayward men and women. I caught the scent of a place far away that I’m still chasing to this day. This is the sort of story that Os Guinness chronicles for us in Signals of Transcendence. May you take up and read, and perhaps, find your own story coming into shape through the signals around us every day.

According to Os Guinness, a signal of transcendence is an experience which transcends you beyond the normal or material world; just for a moment perhaps showing you something deeper, something which helps you to make sense of human existence. He explains these signals as the kind of life-changing experiences which shock you awake and make you realise that you’ve been sleeping at the wheel and ignoring the reality of the big questions of life and death, meaning and purpose, or the prospect that there is something more — a reality beyond physical matter.

A signal of transcendence may take many forms, it might be: a near-death experience, a sudden epiphany, or the product of deep searching over many years, or something else entirely (‘one person’s signal is another person’s silence’). Guinness picks out ten such examples (and mentions a load more in passing), recounting the stories of men and women who have had such calls and the extent to which they have heeded them (which is often another matter entirely!).

This book is a challenge to think, to distract yourself no longer, to start asking questions again, with the irrepressible curiosity and wonder we had when we were children. To leave the ranks of the brain-dead masses who distract themselves with TV, or mindlessly scroll through TikTok and Instagram, or find a million other ways to keep themselves busy so that they avoid ever stopping to think. For Plato this was the shadows in the cave — life exists outside of it, but everyone is too scared to venture beyond what’s comfortable and familiar; the sunlight might be dangerous; who knows what could be out there? So Os Guinness challenges us to take on life’s big questions, and never give up searching, and to be ready for when your signal of transcendence comes.

[Full review in blog post]

How do people find faith in God? What led them to recognize the divine presence in their lives? Why do people believe in God? Respected author Os Guinness tells us that it all boils down to positive responses toward divine promptings. These promptings come in many different forms. A lot of us might be expecting amazing signs and wonders happening in the terrestrial heavens or the skies above. Truth is, things often happen amid the ordinary circumstances of life. Sometimes, it occurs in periods of immense crises. "There must be something more to life as we know it." This is the basic question to gear one up toward anticipation of something bigger than ourselves. As people become more inward-looking, society is in need of people to have an outward-looking mindset. Lest we become a nation of self-loving, self-indulgent, and self-centered people. Ironically, the first step toward being more other-centered is the right perspective of oneself. The fundamental questions asked by Guinness all revolve around self-awareness and self-discovery: "Who am I? Why am I here? What is life all about?" I believe everybody asks one or more of these questions from time to time. If not, they would have been prompted in some ways, in what the author entitles, "signals of transcendence." For the Irish, these are "thin places." For students, questions can be gateways to answers. For readers, this book provides us a glimpse into the lives of ten famous individuals who had taken the leap of faith from unbelievers to believers. Malcolm Muggeridge, the popular English author who was often credited for making Mother Teresa famous, converted to Christianity after he "rediscovered Jesus." It was his deep search for home that led him to Christ. Austrian-born theologian, Peter Berger honors all mothers by recognizing their impact on their children. Mothers bring us into this world. Thus, in every child, there is a deep need for motherly assurance or reassurance. This need itself constitutes a "signal of transcendence." British-American poet, Wystan H Auden's signal comes in the form of the horrors of World War II. In a world where truth claims are increasingly relativized, Auden realized that the need for absolutes is deeply ingrained. Just like we need to call a spade a spade, the presence of evil means we need to call out evil as what it is, otherwise law and order in society will crumble. Like Auden, scholar Philip Hailie also grappled with the presence of evil in his quest for meaning in life. Pain and suffering from the Holocaust form part of the cultural identification as a Jew. His moment of divine awareness comes via a small town (Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in South-Central France) that practiced non-violent resistance against the Nazi regime. Instead of drowning in the multitudes of evil in this world, he finds hope in the smacks of goodness that defies evil. Just like the Talmudic saying, "Whoever saves a life is as one who has saved an entire world," Hailie was saved by his encounter with the goodness of the people in this town, which eventually led him to God. Renowned author G.K. Chesterton came to faith because of the humble dandelion. After living in a prolonged state of pessimism, Chesterton's life was changed because of "sheer beauty, the simple words of existence, gratitude for the gift of life." Popular Christian author C.S. Lewis also has that moment of transcendence that moved him from atheism to the Christian faith. His divine trigger? "Surprised by Joy." He even wrote a book by that title. Lewis who once called himself "the hardest-boiled atheist" was inspired by GK Chesterton's "The Everlasting Man" which demonstrates the uniqueness of Christ in the redemption of the world. Windsor Elliot is a fashion model whose adventure was less about the glamour of the fashion world and more about the questions of life. Not satisfied with the alternatives offered by New Age Spirituality or legalistic religion, she rises above the fake images of fashion, to respond to the promptings of transcendence. Her memoir "Faces" looks at the three faces of our lives: the faces we were born with, the faces that we try to make, and the faces that we eventually grow into. It was the latter that drives her search for meaning and the need to form good inner character. How we become is more important than the other two faces. The Russian author Leo Tolstoy is best known for his classic novels like "War and Peace," and "Anna Karenina." His search for life's meaning took a dramatic turn when he read Pascal's apologetic treatise, "Pensées." Spurred by a keen awareness of "life is short and death is certain," his writings soon deal more with faith matters. Guinness also writes about his Irish grandfather, Whitfield Guinness. Whitfield was a missionary to China during the tumultuous Boxer rebellion period. He met his wife, Jane who was a Swedish missionary also to China. Miraculously, they escaped the persecution and found love. Love was their signal of transcendence. The last character is British historian, Kenneth Clark. Clark is one who protected his privacy well, so well that not many people actually know him or his thoughts. The main way to understand him is through his writings, where he shares his religious experience in the church of San Lorenzo. For Clark, beauty is the key signal to transcendence.

My Thoughts
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Guinness has put together ten stories of individuals from different walks of life. All of them have one thing in common: An awareness of a calling bigger than themselves to a God that is beyond what this world can offer. Resembling mini-biographies, Guinness is able to view their lives from the perspective of faith in a world gone mad. These people are busy people with their respective work, jobs, careers, and businesses. Instead of getting swallowed up by the activities, they responded to the promptings along the journey of life, and eventually found faith in God. It is not good to be stuck in our busy ways without paying attention to the signals of life. We need to pause and pay attention. It is not enough to simply pay attention by hearing the prompts. We need to respond. It is not enough to simply respond, we need to turn in the right direction. Sometimes, I feel that people want big answers to the big questions of life. According to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, life is meant to be lived forward but understood backward. Whether through music, history, phenomena, or some current events, we can try to ignore these signals but we risk missing out on insights beyond our comfort zones.

I applaud Guinness for the way he summarizes the lives of these ten eminent characters and shows us that we all can learn from their experiences. God does not touch only the lives of the rich and the famous. He calls us all to Him. Whether it is the beauty of creation, an escape from danger, a "finger of God," or the face of the future, the way forward begins not with the first step but with the first prompting. If we are honest with ourselves, God will always try to prompt us with signs and gentle whispers. We need to be open. We need to listen well. We need to respond positively. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we can experience our very own "signals of transcendence" and will live to write or share about it.

Os Guinness (DPhil, Oxford) is the author or editor of more than thirty books, including The Dust of Death, The Call, Fool's Talk, Last Call for Liberty, and The Great Quest. A frequent speaker and prominent social critic, he has a lifelong passion to make sense of our extraordinary modern world and stand between the worlds of scholarship and ordinary life, helping each to understand the other. He lives with his wife, Jenny, in the Washington, DC, area.

Rating: 4.75 stars of 5.

conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of InterVarsity Press and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

I was given an early copy of Os Guinness' new book, Signals of Transcendence, which comes out in March. I was instantly hooked. And yes, he is related to the beer that shares his name. Os is the great-great-great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer.

Each chapter follows the journey of someone throughout history and illuminates the turning point (Guinness refers to this as a 'signal') that led them to faith in Jesus. Some of the names he explores include W. H. Auden, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Leo Tolstoy.

Not only do you feel like you get a perspective of each of these fascinating lives, but you also feel like you are reading dozens of books at once as the author seamlessly weaves together his perspective with that of others. Between the stories and quotes this was such an enjoyable and satisfying read.

Guinness gets his title phrase from the social scientist Peter Berger. According to Berger, signals of transcendence are "arresting and intriguing experiences that both capture our attention and call for further explanation." In this regard, much of this book reminded me of another stellar book I recently read called Hunting Magic Eels.

We may be quick to dismiss these moments. Guinness acknowledges that "Talk of transcendence smacks of drugs, madness, or mysticism. But such experiences are undeniable, and they are more common than many might think." I agree.

"Too many modern people live as if society is indebted to them, and they are owed a life -when the fact is that our existence itself is a wonder, and we should ask to whom or to what we owe the response that our lives should be."

The concept of signals of transcendence plays off a phrase you might be more familiar with called 'thin places.' Guinness connects the two ideas.

"The Irish have a term, thin places, which they use to describe places or experiences where the membrane between the seen and the unseen, the natural and the supernatural, is barely there and easily penetrated. Heaven and earth are only a few feet apart, the Celts say, but in thin places they are even closer. Experiencing a signal of transcendence is like having a knife thrust through the membrane in thin places."

Guinness argues—and I would agree—that many people experience these types of moments but then bury them and move on for fear of what they might lead to.

"The question is what we do with them... Are we too shy, too embarrassed to even consider them as signals, to share our experiences with others, and to follow the thrusting logic of their questions, wherever they lead and whatever the cost? Are we afraid of reaching conclusions that might be dismissed as odd, deluded, or out of line with fashionable opinion in our day? In the world of the blind, the one- eyed person always runs the risk of being scoffed at as an idiot."

What I love most of all is that the book isn't merely a study of how God reached out to other people previously. It's an invitation to boldly analyze our own experiences to see where God may be reaching out to us.

"Each signal of transcendence sounds out its own special call. No signal is a signal for everyone to hear, so one person's signal is another's person's silence. Be ready, then, for the call that comes to you in your own life. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."

And once we do recognize a signal, then the real work begins. It's not enough to notice God reaching out. We must respond to the invitation.

"The flash of insight must be followed by the hard work of thinking through what it means and following the logic of its thrust with close attention. In other words, the perspiration that follows the signal is as important to the search as the inspiration."

This is a good book for seekers. It’s also good for people who need tangible examples of spiritual concepts. This book includes mostly stories of well known figures from the past, and most of them are men. Personally, this book didn’t grab me, but it was well written.

Signals of Transcendence


Apologetics is changing, and it’s a good thing, too. The old paradigms of apologetics are finally taking their proper roles as one character among many in the apologetic endeavor and not the whole show. For too long the most popular approaches, evidentialism and classical apologetics, have been the only ways most Christians in the West knew to engage unbelief. While useful tools when dealing with unbelievers with modern, Enlightenment-driven objections, they provide little help with post-modern and post-Christian objections. People who reject science and logic as imperialist, Western, white hegemony to be regarded with suspicion care little about your evidence and arguments. They find Christianity to be distasteful and implausible. No amount of science and logic will change that.

Into this 21st-century reality have come new apologetic resources, rooted in presuppositional apologetics, that emphasize reality and universal human experience as tools to supplement evidence and logic. Examples of this more holistic approach include Josh Chatraw’s Telling a Better Story (Zondervan) and Glen Scrivener’s The Air We Breathe (The Good Book Company). These books, among others, understand that because every person is made in God’s image and lives in God’s world, some of their experiences, intuitions, longings, and habits will irresistibly point to the truth of the God who has revealed himself and whom they know, despite their suppression (Rom. 1:18-25).

One such book is Os Guinness’ forthcoming book, Signals of Transcendence: Listening to the Promptings of Life (IVP, 2023). In this volume, Guinness tells the stories of a number of famous individuals who could not ignore what he calls the signals of transcendence, those internal, cultural, and universal impressions of God’s presence and truth in this world, despite their attempts to silence them. Guinness expands the notion found in Romans 1 that every person knows God exists and knows some truth about Him by virtue of God unmistakably communicating that truth in the things he has made. He explains:

“The advanced modern world has a lopsided view of reality and of how truth may be found. It majors on what can be known through rational logic and sensory perception, so that scientific observation and experimentation form the main body of modern knowledge. The effect is to minimize intuition, even though intuition plays an undeniable part in all creativity and discovery, whether artistic or scientific. Archimedes’ “Eureka!” and Isaac Newton’s response to the falling apple were a matter of intuition and not observation; so too were the creative breakthroughs of Galileo, William Shakespeare, Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and countless others. Overall, this shrunken view of truth and modern knowledge acts to form a gigantic global conspiracy against transcendence. It has become a prominent but unfortunate feature of modern civilization, which helps us to be superachievers materially but underachievers spiritually. It patrols the boundaries of what modernity considers real and unreal. As modern people, we have grown unused to the sound of any voice beyond the immediate and the urgent. Signals of transcendence require a listening that is attention at its best. But while the signals are harder to hear today, they are more important than ever to hear. The how and the what of life rush at us every day with their urgency, but the why is even more important, and that is where we must begin if we desire to explore the whole of reality and discover true meaning and purpose.” (Location 68)

This concept is critical to apologetics in our post-Enlightenment and post-Christian world. Every unbeliever struggles with reconciling his or her particular brand of unbelief or religion and the truth that God has communicated in this world by means of creation and the coming of Christ. This volume takes seriously the idea that no unbeliever can suppress the truth about God ceaselessly and so must, at times, be confronted with the truth that God is real, man is fallen and guilty, God will judge, and there must be a way to make atonement for sin. If we would all do apologetics with the realization that every unbeliever is haunted by signals of transcendence, I believe it would embolden us to speak of Christ as the answer for these signals.


https://apologeticsforthechurch.org/signals-of-transcendence/

Os Guinness provides an account the moments in which various historical figures' realize something much greater exists. I was encouraged seeing many people I am aware of but with whom I have little familiarity. Would encourage those struggling with knowing whether God exists, or those who love someone like that, to read this book. My biggest take away is that no story is the same, but all are different and unique.

The full review is included in the link.

In short, this book has been an intriguing and enlightening read. I fully enjoyed the stories of the individuals recorded here. I think Guinness did a fine job opening up the door to the possibility of that "something more". The writing style here is witty and enjoyable (reminiscent of C.S Lewis' "mere Christianity, in my opinion). Though this book doesn't prove anything, it will certainly help those who are open to the possibility of the transcendent become more sensitive to the various "signals" that God (or whatever else you'd like to call Him) sends them.