Perception and Experiential Faith

So, is your faith based on absolute truth or is it a Christianity based on subjectivism and empirical experience? Are you rooted in the truth of Gods word and the revelation of that word or is your faith based on evidence of experiences?

An Experiential Faith
For a young Christian, one of the most common struggles is that they experience the highest of highs... exhibiting much passion and exuberance, only to struggle with the lowest of lows.. days or weeks later. They are left confused, wondering why it is that their faith is so volatile when their experiences seemed so genuine. Its a constant roller coaster ride. They go from revival to revival, retreat to retreat, depending on it to fuel their passion once again... and try to hold out the best they can till the next time they can "experience Jesus" in a powerful way. Faith is based on experience and emotion... and they perceive God mainly through the lens of experience and emotion. I can speak first hand of this.. and even now find myself victim to this. We are such emotional and experiential beings... that it even trumps ration and logic at times. Problem is that perception and experience are always changing and also relative to the person decoding that experience. There are so many human variations and factors at play and each time, God is different. Even though it is an immature faith, for me personally, it set the stage for where my faith is today... wherever that is. I look back fondly upon my genuine experiences and my "honeymoon" phase of my faith. It has been and continues to be one of the most exciting and passionate times of my walk with Him. However, it is also important to realize that our faiths are not complete and that there needs to be a continual growth period... and continual maturity in our walks. This cannot happen without Gods word, and a continual thirst for fresh revelation of His word.

More and more we celebrate our differences in society.. and most times rightly so. We champion creativity and originality... individuality and uniqueness. We've decided that we need more tolerance for such individuality, originality, and creativity, so we've come up with whole philosophical ideas and schools of thought to support it. Subjectivism, empiricism... whatever you think is good is good... whatever floats your boat is acceptable. It is a form of self and human idolatry. I am not bashing individuality and originality... nor creativity as God has made us each unique and creative. However, when it is championed at the expense of absolute truth and at the expense of God's word as well as His supremecy, it becomes problematic for us all.

Search for Truth
For a non-Christian, or even more specifically an atheist, there have been a series of experiences that have led that person to deny the existence of God. Because we are finite beings with finite knowledge, we cannot know for sure the beginning and the end. We cannot know for sure where to start our search for or against God. At some point we develop our own presuppositions and go from there. Evidences builds in the form of experience, and available knowledge but it is NOT the absolute starting point so to speak. May times, when Christians and non-believers argue about God, they do so with vastly different presuppositions and biases. They try to fill the disconnect but at some point, rarely do they end up seeing eye to eye and even more rarely is an atheist converted due to a human debate.

As a Christian, I absolutely believe that God's word is the undeniable and absolute truth.. that it is the beginning and end.. the foundation that does not change throughout time and space. I am presupposed in all my life's thoughts to Gods existence, and His supremacy and absoluteness of His word. The more and more I study Gods word, and the more and more God reveals to me truths of His character, the stronger and stronger this presuppositional thought becomes. My faith is viewed not only through my experiences but the ingrained truth of God's word. Quick explanation... even though there really cant be a neutral basis to debate my presuppositions of Gods existence and the truth of His word, I am afforded this through the avenue of my faith. I am as the bible says, saved by His grace, through faith. To me that makes it golden, though to an average non-believer, my faith is just strong subjectivism, and doesn't afford any more creditability to proving Gods absolute being. But again, that is based on a finite knowledge and a supposition/starting point of neutrality that isn't really neutral. Remember, perception is deceiving because it has so many human elements... many of which I've talked about already on this blog, such as the heart. Simply put, our experiences aren't the end all, be all of truth... and we cannot live thinking so, nor even apathetic to our perceptions of truth.

Ultimately, experiences lead us to God, but in it of itself is still a human element. The experience leads to the truth that is out there to be discovered, but many mistake the experience as the basis for their faith. While alter calls and the sinners prayer play a big part, it is not the starting point for salvation nor faith. They direct us to the Truth of who God is, and who we are in our roles in His glorious redemptive work.

Pride

As Christians, we know that God despises the Proud. (James 4:6) We are taught to pray against it and model humility, just as Jesus did. But even non-believers share a similar sentiment on pride. In society, the proud, arrogant, and boastful are often despised. Hearing about someone go on and on about their high paying job, their great big house, their 3 car garage that isn't fit to hold all of their expensive cars... is universally nauseating to hear. Even more, we hate those who are dishonest about their boasting... Those who bump up their salary by a few figures, those who round up their SAT scores, those who constantly exaggerate their accomplishments, waiting for someone to pat them on the back. Truth is, when pride rears its ugly head in its most raw form, it is despicable to anyone who comes across it. Pride by nature is just flat out ugly and uncomfortable. It is a natural response. While the bible is very clear on Gods feelings towards pride, it only takes a little human observation to see that Pride carries with it a negative connotation. Then, it is only made bearable because we as humans have learned so well to dress it up and fabricate it as something else. We've taken whats inevitably within us all, and merely packaged it so that it is presentable to others. And guess what group of people have perfected the art?

When we look at Adam and Eve's fall in the garden of Eden, we see Pride's marks all over it. It is in a way, the true raw reason we are unable to naturally commune with God without Jesus's merciful intervention. One definition of pride is "a self worship which causes someone to think more highly of themselves as he or she ought." Remember the one who is dishonest about their boasts? Those who exaggerate their accomplishments? In a spiritual sense that is us. We give ourselves way too much credit in the realm of our morality, and we often presume entitlement towards salvation. When we are broken of our pride, we are able to see sin... and through repentance, receive salvation. It is a completion of our desired identity... and a new citizenship toward a place God originally wanted us to be.

But even after salvation, we are in constant battle with our pride. More specifically, it keeps us from being truly used by God. A topic I especially want to expound upon is the "pride of the hurt"... the "pride of the victims", so to speak. Alot of us who have endured suffering, insult, or hurt use our pain as justification to remain calloused and ineffective in our walks. It breeds fear, anxiety, and paranoia to a certain extent. We believe that we deserve more, and that we ARE more than that which has been said about us.... or that which has HAPPENED to us. And again, we give ourselves more credit than we deserve. It is in a way, a shattering reminder of who we are and our lack of true identity. As hard and barbaric as it may be to see, the truth of our depravity is that we don't deserved more than death, we don't deserved anything but insult and judgment... we don't deserve anything less than that which Jesus endured on the road to calvary. Yet when we are faced with insult, and when we are faced with life's hard problems... we become too easily hurt and try to use the pain as justification to be more selfish, to be more defensive, and to be more calloused. I see it in my life and in the fears that I have to do bold things for God... as well as the believers around me. Some are more sensitive than others by design... some more prone to emotional and verbal hurt. But as Christians, we must still recognize that even emotional and verbal hurt is a result of sin. Perhaps we are sure the blame should be on someone else, but we are all universally responsible for sin, and vulnerable to it. Sin which entered through Adam, festers throughout creation so that it groans for freedom and hope of liberation. There are always times throughout life when we are burdened and weary. God invites the burdened to find rest in him (Matthew 11)... He encourages the weary to find hope in Him (Isaiah 40). But in order for the body of Christ to be more effective, the church needs to be not only a hospital where people find healing, but also a place where we are surrendered and empowered so that we don't waste our lives defensive, calloused, fearful, and scared as a result of our pride.