Tag: experience

Posted in Bible

Experience and the Bible

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

For Christians, experience has always been important. As a boy, I sang the hymn “He Lives” on many Sundays, but especially on Easter. One line concludes:

“You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.”

Experience is one factor that helps the church confirm calling. My first application for a District Minister’s License included questions about my religious experience, questions like:

When were you saved? When were you sanctified wholly? Why do you think God has called you to preach?

Recounting our life-changing experience with the Lord also encourages others, inviting them to participate in the things of God. In church jargon, these are called testimonies, and there’s biblical precedent for them. When Jesus cast demons out of the demoniac in the Gerasenes (Luke 8:26-39), the man was restored to health. The Lord commanded him:

“Go back to your family, and tell them everything God has done for you” (v. 39, NLT).

In the same way, the woman at the well in Samaria was so impressed by the words of Jesus to her, she went back to the village of Sychar and proclaimed: “Come and see a man who told me everything I every did! Could he possibly be the Messiah?” (John 4:29, NLT).

Experience confirms doctrine and practice. It can help establish the validity of divine calling, and it winsomely points other to Christ.

Experience informs our thinking

Let’s focus for the rest of this essay on the first point, that experience confirms doctrine and practice. John Wesley (1703-91) understood the role of experience as related to our faith and how we live it out. In the 1760s, some Methodists were testifying to having experienced entire sanctification (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24). He carefully interviewed many men and women about what had happened to them. Wesley knew that if the Methodists had interpreted Scripture correctly regarding the nature of sanctification, then they should expect validation of their viewpoint through on-the-ground testimonies. In the end, he was re-assured that the doctrine of Christian perfection as taught by himself, his brother, Charles, and the other Methodist preachers was indeed valid. It was confirmed through lived experience.

Whatever the Methodist understanding of Scripture arrived at through Bible study, Wesley knew that interpretations were always open to review. Interpretations are fallible because the Bible is always interpreted by human beings, with all their foibles and propensities toward error. If an interpretation is correct, then we can expect it to be confirmed “where the rubber hits the road.” The implication is simple: When there is a disconnect between a given understanding of the Bible and what Christians experience when applying it, then we must go back to the drawing board and – like a mathematician – check our work.

A musical illustration may help. There’s an old Sunday School chorus I learned to sing as a child. The lyrics say:

“I’m inright, outright, upright, downright happy all the time. Since Jesus Christ came in, and cleansed my heart from sin, I’m inright, outright, upright, downright happy all the time.”

For my young mind, the lesson was: “If I am saved and sanctified, then I’ll always be happy. Likewise, if I’m not always happy, then I can question whether I’ve really been saved and sanctified.”

My older self realizes that these lyrics — though sung by Sunday School children over decades – are nonetheless false. Christians may be saved and sanctified, but we are also human, with all the ups-and-downs that a full range of emotions bring. How did I come to this conclusion? It was because I found that far from being happy all the time, I sometimes was sad. My experience didn’t validate the theology of that children’s chorus. So, I went back to the drawing board, and checked my work. That’s when I realized that – however catchy the tune – that song’s lyrics were just plain wrong.

It’s important to note that experience isn’t just individual; groups also experience things. On the Day of Pentecost, the 120 who had gathered in the upper room experienced the Holy Spirit together. In our Western, individualistic outlook, we too often overlook this truth.

Let’s apply to a contemporary question the Wesleyan principal that experience validates (or calls into question) given interpretations of Scripture. Many churches believe that the role of pastor is reserved for males only. To make their point, they cite 1 Corinthians 14:34 – “Women must remain silent in the church.” Also highlighted is 1 Timothy 2:12, which seems to categorically forbid women to have authority over men. The question is:

Does the church’s experience validate this interpretation or call it into question?

John Wesley did not allow women to preach, until his mother, Susanna, insisted he come and listen to a woman who was leading a Methodist Society meeting in London. He couldn’t deny that the female leader was anointed by the Holy Spirit when she expounded the Scripture. He could have refused to even go with his mother to the meeting, considering the question of male only preaching a long-settled issue. Or having gone, he could have chosen to double down on his previous understanding of Scripture, telling the brave woman to sit down. For Wesley, this would have been to view what was happening in that Methodist meeting through the lens of his existing biblical interpretation. Instead, he went and listened with an open mind and heart. He let the new light he received inform his thinking. He did not jettison the Bible, but he adjusted his former interpretation to accommodate his new observation. The Church of the Nazarene follows in this understanding, believing that both men and women are called by God to preach, and can serve in any leadership capacity in the church.

John Wesley allowing experience to inform his doctrine was nothing new; he was following a well-worn New Testament path. For Peter, the question of clean and unclean animals was settled doctrine, having been addressed in the Old Testament purity laws. By extension, he understood that the children of Israel were the sole objects of God’s saving concern, the “clean” vs. the Gentiles, who were “unclean.” God was about to shake him up. On a rooftop in Joppa (Acts 10), Peter fell into a trance and had a vision. A sheet was let down from heaven, filled with all kinds of unclean animals, including reptiles and birds. Then, a voice commanded him: “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat them” (v. 13). Peter objected that he could not eat anything that Jewish law had declared unclean. The command came three times, then the sheet went back up to heaven.

The rest of the chapter recounts the arrival of messengers from Cornelius, a God-fearing centurion, a Gentile, and therefore (in Peter’s thinking) “unclean”. The Holy Spirit commands Peter to go with them to Cornelius, where Peter preaches the gospel and the Holy Spirit falls upon them, as evidenced by them speaking in languages they had never learned (vv. 44-46). Peter is astounded, and accepts Cornelius and his household as fellow Christians. Later, in Acts 15, he tells the story again, explaining how the experience of the Holy Spirit falling on Cornelius and his household had forced him to rethink what he thought he knew about Jews, Gentiles, and salvation.

Put yourself in the place of the elders in Jerusalem. Surely, Peter’s words must have seemed strange to them at first. After all, the understanding that salvation is limited to the Jews was a centuries-old interpretation of the Old Testament on the matter, yet they listened. They were willing to discuss together respectfully, allowing God to use the experience of Cornelius’ conversion to reshape their thinking. As for me, I’m glad Peter’s argument carried the day, or we would not as Gentiles be included in the church!

Coming into the 19th century, the principle of experience forcing a re-think of cherished biblical interpretations shows up again around the issue of slavery. Slave-owners in the United States viewed slaves as property, as sub-human. They could quote plenty of Bible passages that seemed to confirm that God held nothing against owning slaves. It was interaction with slaves and their undeniable humanity that led abolitionists to take up the cause of liberation: “Chains shall He break, for the slave is my brother, and in His name all oppression shall cease” (“O Holy Night,” 1855). Experience forced them to go back to the Bible and look again at longstanding, historic interpretations that had caused so much pain. They found better interpretations more in-line with love, a central tenet of the Christian faith.

Conclusion

I’m glad that the Church of the Nazarene historically has left a large place for experience in how we understand our faith and practice. I wonder: What other issues are we facing in the 21st century that need further study of Scripture, in-light of our individual and group experience? Will our fear prevent us from praying, studying, and talking together? Will anxiety lead us to sanction prophets among us who call us to this hard but holy work? May God grant us the grace and courage to re-evaluate interpretations of the Bible that – though longstanding – can cause harm, setting up stumbling blocks for those who otherwise might follow Christ.

Posted in reflections

From conditioning to encounter: A response to Aldous Huxley

Posted on by Gregory Crofford

huxley2
Aldous Huxely (1894-1963)

The interface between theology and psychology has always intrigued me. Yesterday, I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The 1932 classic from the British novelist and philosopher presents a vision of a far-off future where humans no longer fulfill the role of “father” and “mother.” Instead, reproduction is carefully engineered by the State, social classes predetermined from fertilization and gestation in closely-monitored bottles.

There are many themes to explore in the book, and the dystopian vision still resonates well at a time when The Hunger Games is all the rage. Allow me to focus this brief essay on a single topic, namely, whether we believe in God only because others have conditioned us to do so.

Conditioning is a psychological technique whereby humans are molded to think and act in ways determined by the person in control. Brave New World portrays a system whereby young children are spoon-fed ideas while they sleep, messages repeated over-and-over through tiny speakers hidden under their pillows. In this passive way, the various classes – Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon – acquire their worldview, especially their prejudices toward members of other castes.

Though the novel never explains exactly how the rulers of the “brave new world” condition people’s thinking about God, the Divine Being comes up at the end of the book in a conversation between the Savage and Mustapha Mond, the Controller (p. 183):

The Savage interrupted him. “But isn’t it natural to feel there’s a God?” “You might as well ask if it’s natural to do up one’s trousers with zippers,” said the Controller sarcastically. “You remind me of another of those odd fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reasons for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons – that’s philosophy. People believe in God because they’re conditioned to believe in God.” (italics added)

There’s some truth in what Huxley says. Can there be any doubt that Christian education – what Huxley would no doubt consider a form of conditioning – affects a child’s worldview, like a hand imprint left in wet cement? Children who have not yet learned to reason are particularly open to whatever teaching is given, positive or negative, whether it is training to be an altar boy or a child soldier.

Yet Huxley’s critique leaves unaddressed other considerations, particularly the role of religious experience. This experience is both individual and corporate. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Scripture may be considered largely the experience of the divine as lived across time by persons and peoples. Further, it is not a mystical experience devoid of any historical reference, but experiences that transpired in real time. Isaiah saw the LORD lifted up, but it happened “in the year that King Uzziah died” (Isaiah 1:1). Likewise, The Apostles’ Creed assumes historical reality, portraying a Saviour who “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

More than any other Christian tradition, evangelical faith has discerned the importance of moving past conditioning to encounter. John Wesley (1703-91) had been conditioned by his father and mother to believe that God existed, to pray and to read the Bible. Yet on May 24, 1738, Wesley recorded his personal experience of God’s grace, that his heart was “strangely warmed” while listening to someone read the introduction to Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans. Whether we call this his “evangelical conversion” or simply the moment of the assurance of faith matters little. The point is that – to use Wesley’s later term – he moved in his own self-perception from having the faith of a “servant” to that of a “son.”

Religious experience is always a slippery subject to discuss. Any faith – to be held as true by its adherents – must account for the religious experiences of those who espouse other faith traditions. Why should our community of faith’s experiences be considered more valid? Further, what one calls “God” the skeptic might call hallucination, but at least now we’re having a conversation not about “brainwashing” but something empirical, experiences that can to at least some degree be analyzed and evaluated.

The power of encounter should never be underestimated. Saul had been conditioned to believe certain strict tenets as a boy who grew up under Pharisaical teachings. It was only later, however, when conditioning met encounter in the person of the Living Christ on the road to Damascus that his vision was transformed. Through a radical experience of the transcendent, some of his conditioning was modified. No longer would he seek out Christians to imprison them as enemies of the Jewish faith. Instead, he now became one of their key leaders. Experience trumped conditioning.

Yet one must be careful. God exists independently of our experience of God. One might be tempted to conclude: “For you, God exists because you’ve experienced him, but for me God does not exist since I have never experienced God.” Yet the tree that falls in the forest still makes a sound, whether or not I am close enough to hear it. What matters is that the effects of encounter are measurable. Like a strong wind topples a tree, the fallen tree serves as evidence of an invisible reality. So it is in the spiritual realm. Lives transformed from drunkenness to sobriety, husbands who stop beating their wives, children who were before disobedient to parents who suddenly become more compliant and helpful, these effects and many more testify to a Cause, and that Cause is God. When it happens to enough people, we call it a religious awakening.

Brave New World is a fascinating book on many levels. Aldous Huxley has  done Christ followers a favor by forcing us to begin to think through our assumptions, including how we have come to believe what we do about God. But what do you think? Is Christian faith – or any faith – no more than the result of conditioning? Weigh-in below in the comment thread.

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Photo credit: Diccionari Cultural