Experience, Truth and the Word

I'm attending a Church of Christ at the moment. The sermon yesterday was on tithing. The pastor brought up an interesting point. He said (paraphrased) that "experience can only be trusted so far and that as christians we have to rely on the Word as the source of truth".

The problem I have with this at the moment is that everything is affected by our experiences. The way we interpret the word is based on our experience and knowledge. For example as we get older and our experiences grow, and we're at different stages in our life, we will interpret parts of scripture differently. Unfortunately (or fortunately??) there doesn't seem to be anyway around this. Churches have been debating various scriptures meanings for thousands of years, and that's not because they haven't had intelligent, godly people on the case.

At the moment I feel experience and intent play a huge part in the equation and cannot be so easily ruled out by "the Word". Not that I'm denying the importance of the Word.

As an example take Baptism. All Christian Churches as far as I'm aware place a high importance on Baptism. It is a requisite for membership into the Church and is an outward and public symbol of accepting Jesus' saving grace and the Spirit into your life. It sounds like something that should unite all Christians (and I believe it should) but it seems to do the opposite. Rather than being a common unifying expression of faith it often seems to be a wedge.

I feel that this stems from different interpretations of the Word, which in all honesty is often not crystal clear. And there are other examples than Baptism, this is just one dear to my heart at the moment.

Interpretations are based on individual or collective experience, so I feel it's a little simplistic and dangerous to dismiss experience. Plus isn't experience of God, through relationship with him necessary to understand his message and will for us?

In short I feel experience is a crucial element of christianity. I believe experience should be based on education including reading, thought, discussion, prayer, relationships, etc. And surely practicing and experiencing living as Christ did?

Gandhi said:

"Ones experience must be the final guide. The written word helps, but even that has to be interpreted, and when there are conflicting interpretations the seeker is the final arbiter."

What do you think of that?

How much abuse is too much?

I have a friend who is going through a bit at the moment. They aren't in the best place and are prone to getting stressed and reacting angrily and in a verbally and emotionally abusive manner. I have a feeling they are a borderline malignant narcisist. They have low self esteem, high expectations for themselves and others (in my opinion unrealistically high), are quite paranoid, self destructive and the list goes on.

The point is they aren't in a great place. I know this and when they have an outburst at me I don't take it personally. It doesn't cause me harm. It's really only harming them. Usually after an outburst they'll apologise.

The other night this happened and after apologising they then proceeded to have a go at me for putting up with their abuse. I personally think this is a bit of a responsibility dodge, i.e. rather than taking responsibility for my abusing behaviour, it's your fault for putting up with it. They also seemed to think that by "putting up" with their behaviour I am condoning it.

The question that's occurred is how much abuse should one put up with? Is it different for different types of abuse? Am I condoning their abusive behaviour by hanging around?

Personally I think that you should remove yourself from abuse that is damaging to you, be that physical or psychological or emotional.

Any thoughts?

Linking Eating Disorders and Domestic Violence??

I'm reading a book on eating disorders at the moment. It's very interesting. It's not something I personally have much of a concept of. Food isn't that important to me. I like it and I don't like being hungry or being stuffed till I feel like I'm going to be sick.

Anyways, I supose unsurprisingly it's not really about food, or that's not the root of the problem. Similarly to someone with an alcohol problem (for example), rather than the alcohol being "the problem" there is an underlying psychological problem. One victim of an eating disorder in this book describes how she didn't fit in at school, she felt like an outcast. She was searching for a solution and ended up fixating on dieting and loosing weight and that became a serious eating disorder.

A lot of social problems I would think can be attributed at least in part to low self esteem and confidence issues. Eating disorders, domestic violence (which I'm also reading about), substance abuse the list goes on.

Another thing reading about eating disorders has got me thinking about is the pressure we put on individuals in society to look and act in certain ways. Despite the feminist movement and admittedly the great advances equal treatment of the sexes has gone through in the last 50 years, women are still glorified for being beautiful, sexy, skinny, etc. There's surely a bit of a double standard. We say "we need to respect women" but in reality a lot of advertising doesn't demonstrate this. The female figure is used to sell stuff. Surely that's not respecting women for the right reasons?

Are advertising/hollywood/media hype fuelling many people to have unrealistic expectations they can never meet? Does this contribute to low self esteem which enables things like eating disorders?

And if this is the case how does society counter this? Surely socially we should be looking at the bigger problem and promoting self esteem, communication, etc. But how do you do that? I personally think there should be more basic psychology taught at schools. i.e. "this is how boy and girl brains work". Teach kids about eating disorders, substance abuse, etc.

It might work. It's a tough problem though.