God Experiences Are Dangerous
Is there such a thing as too much supernatural?
Scripture minus Spirit says, God loves.
Scripture plus Spirit says, God loves me.
We know faith without works is dead.
Theology without experience is also.
Experience. A word many in the church realm find troubling. It is the supposed battle line drawn between Charismatic and, well, uncharismatic(?) evangelicals. Between sola scriptura and neo-pagan woo-woo. Between those excessively baptized in the Word, and those excessively into the Spirit.
These days I can’t think of a more erroneous dichotomy.
Yet once upon a time, I also disparaged supernatural experiences for reasons that varied from fear, to excess, to abuse. Add to that a healthy dose of, “Well-known Preacher X said!”
What I didn’t realize at the time was that love throws out fear, even the fear of abuse. Paul knew that God has not given us anything related to a scared spirit, but a spirit of love and compassion. The kind that, if this New Covenant is to be taken literally, gives people the benefit of the doubt to a remarkably uncomfortable degree.
Love bears all things, has faith in all things, hopes in all things, endures all things.
Even when unhealthy fruit is observed, love wisely and patiently covers a host of wrongs. Cover, not in the sense of hiding, but embracing. It corrects and heals false experiences while preserving the value of genuine ones.
That being said, I have come to realize that experiences of God are all we really have. They go far beyond feelings and emotions (or gastric phenomena). They touch our spirit! And they are the principal shapers of our identity. According to renowned philosopher Alvin Plantinga, personal experiences of God, such as the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, are self-evident. Like the belief that the universe was not created five minutes ago with an appearance of age, that our memories are real, and that other people exist and are not in fact disembodied brains networked together in a mad scientist’s lab, they fall into the category of properly basic.
Ironically, while virtually all evangelicals recognize its importance, those especially antagonistic to experiences tend to forget that being saved or born again is itself an experience. Forgiveness, adoption, the Father’s love, deliverance, assurance, all are valid and necessary revelatory experiences for the new (and old!) believer. In other words, every true Christian’s Christianity began with an experience of God. Otherwise, we would be no better off than the poor Muslim, who, if pressed, must confess that they are living with a giant question mark over their heads. However pious their conduct, their fate hinges on Allah’s final judgment, a verdict that remains maddeningly unknown until it is too late to do anything about it. Without experiences informing our beliefs, there can be no certainty and conviction in the Christian life. It is a faith-killer.
When we malign the worth of experiences, we miss the value of relationship. The greatest tale of love, the most masterful treatise, or moving song pales in comparison to my three-year-old’s, “Hug me to sleep Daddy” and the tender folding of my arm over her chest.
No matter how much information I possess, to really know a person takes a great deal of actual, personal contact. It is what is going to best inform me concerning what is true and false about their character. In the same way, it gives me justifiable grounds to reject the opinions of those who would characterize that person falsely. For centuries, this has fueled debate over such theological items as the nature of God, justice, hell, the end times, etc.
Several profound arguments in favour of the value of supernatural experiences are brought out in the teaching of Jonathan Welton. He reminds us that the Bible itself is emphatically a written record of supernatural experiences — both the inward kind and the outward. Hardly a page is devoid of them. Abraham did not move his entire family on a whim, but based on a supernatural experience. Moses did not give Pharaoh ten points to ponder, but, in addition to the serpentine showdown, ten increasingly intense experiences. Likewise, Joseph and Daniel shared personal demonstrations of God with their respective kings. Elijah didn’t challenge the prophets of Baal to a debate, but to a properly convincing “God-moment”. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon did not free Daniel’s three friends based on their steadfast personality, but by seeing a fourth man in the fire and unsinged clothes. It led to his own change of heart. There are hundreds of such examples throughout the pages of the Old Testament alone.
But, by far, the greatest example is found in the life of Jesus himself. For three and a half years, the Messiah systematically dethroned religious, intellectual elitism and gave the Jewish people an experience of the Father that so vastly exceeded anything available in the Law and the Prophets that it rendered them obsolete.
It should be noted that the serpent of old did not leave a satanic tract on the doorstep of primitive man, but used a fruit-tasting experience to rob them of their destiny — a supernatural encounter that would, eventually, set all of mankind on a path of death and hell. Yet note how this loss was not restored. God did not command us to abandon all spiritual experiences as potentially of the devil. Nor did He prefer a strict regimen of sin-management, or wholesome teaching. He didn’t even prescribe the patterning one’s life on Jesus as humanity’s examplar par excellence. The “bad” Eden experience was restored by a qualitatively more powerful experience, one that simultaneously set humanity free, and released heaven on earth. We know the snake entered the garden. And we know that through sin, death entered the world. But listen, when the Holy Spirit was poured out, He arrived. Look at the book of Acts. Genuine experiences are the only solution to, and trump card, for false experiences. They are extremely dangerous, inducing heart attacks in the diabolical realm.
Living in Asia, I am surrounded by people who, despite their officially atheistic upbringing, have experienced supra-normal phenomena. And two of the most common Christian testimonies you will hear are conversions resulting from demonstrations of miraculous power, and an inexplicable feeling of peace in the heart. In fact, a sizable geographical shift is taking place in Christendom due to dramatic church growth in non-Western countries. By every missiological metric, supernatural experiences are a huge contributor to that growth. But it should come as no surprise that personal contact with God results in God-believers. Second-hand information is of no help to the church, or the world, unless it results in first-hand experience.
Hebrews mentions a critical aspect of the value of experiences in its fifth chapter:
“Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature — for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.”
The cure for inexperience in right living is to train your senses, physical and spiritual, to discern good and evil.
Seeing experiences.
Hearing experiences.
Smelling experiences.
Tasting experiences.
Touching experiences.
It is by way of an open-hearted, experimental lifestyle with God that we really ascertain the message of righteousness, the gospel of God. Beyond the born-again experience, we are free to hunger after and enjoy more — far more! Not as many as are necessary to validate God’s existence and then finished, it’s over. But as many as we ask for, seek after, and knock on!
Intimacy with God. Physical healing. Inner healing. Speaking in tongues. Spiritual dreams. Interpreting dreams. Visions. Jesus encounters. Angelic encounters. Weather-based miracles. Words of revelation knowledge. Communion. Prayer. Divine provision. Divine appointments — the list is endless. The opportunities are endless. All are emphatically grounded in Scripture, and possess so much biblical precedence that reading the Bible is like staring at a big neon sign that says, Encounter Me!
I realize that what I’ve written here cannot compare to anything that has or will be encountered in your own personal walk with God. So I will end by saying, grace upon grace to you in your journey. We are going to greater depths even as we continue to grow up in an extravagant kingdom!
Thanks for reading!
Falling From the Rich Man’s Table ← P R E V I O U S
