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?
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2 comments:
Interesting post. I will start by quoting how you finished.
"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?"
I think this is the key. This isn't 'just' experience, but qualified experience.
I think the 'wariness' about experience is that sometimes the way we interpret our experiences 'lie'. Without going into detail, I had a pretty zany 'experience' a few years back that, at the time, I interpreted in a specific way. It was an experience in an area of my faith that I didn't know much about, so was pretty challenging.
To cut a long story short, through discussion with people of faith with what I called qualified experience, through my own reading, prayer and reflection, I discovered that what I THOUGHT the experience meant was entirely contrary to the truth.
If I had just taken my experience and ran with it, I would have VERY quickly had some heretical theology within me that could have caused serious damage.
So, whilst it IS true that our experience affects HOW we interpret scripture, their are ways I think that we can qualify our experiences, and from that make sure that the way we interpret our experience DOES line up with scripture.
Make sense?
Well said Middo. I would also add that this is one of the reasons sharing experiences and discussing them with friends, small groups, even blogging etc (i.e. fellowship) is so important.
Second opinions and alternative interpretations help clarify and also indicate when you're missing something.
:)
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