From Experience to Reality

2008-08-19

What we feel and think are often radically different from what reality is. Our experiences dictate often what we believe about God, the world, and ourselves. Recently I was pondering this as a teacher was discussing spiritual warfare and similar topics. He said something to the effect that we ought not trust in what our experiences say, or in what we feel. It only matters what the Bible has to say.

But here is the problem I was mulling over in mind... when we are reading the Bible, assuming it is God’s inerrant and infallible Message, how can we separate empiricism from objective truth? How do we divorce experience from what is the “really real” about God, the world, and ourselves? We all have biases we bring to everything we read, including the Bible. The pure and unadulterated written text of the Scriptures can easily be defiled and adulterated by the lenses through which I read the Scriptures. I decided subconsciously to dismiss this seemingly self-defeating statement from the teacher and just listen to the rest of the teaching.

What is the problem with my thinking? If we cannot really know what is the “really real,” then why bother reading the Bible at all?

Paul had something to say in this matter: “For this cause we also...do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Colossians 1:9).

Wisdom does not come automatically, for Paul would never have prayed for these Colossians who were believing in pre-Gnostic teaching at the time. A regenerated mind, which comes from God alone, will be able to know what that objective truth is. God has “delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13). We are no longer in Satan’s family; we were transferred into God’s family and are new creations in Jesus Christ. When we, having our own volition, choose to believe God’s message, to seek Him, and to forfeit our own beliefs about the world, then we can “walk worthy of the Lord” and really know Him. With the Spirit only is it possible.

Let us pray for each other, that we might really know God and His will, so that we might walk worthy of Him and be continually changed. If we are seeking Him, He will continue to show us the “really real” about all things.