Experiential religion

On the importance of experiential religion

If we aren’t communing with Christians then we’ll forget what it is to be Christian. If we don’t have others to love, to pray for, hope for, to forgive, to sacrifice for—then we’ll forget all of the virtues known in Christ alone.

There is a trend whereby anxious observers of the cultural moment pose as bishops fighting heresies, rather than brim with the hope of eternal life. Such isn’t Christian behavior. If we’re Christians, we will understand that it isn’t our job to bring the hammer down on those outside our communion.

In the Bible, God has a mission to reach the doubtful. I have trouble with the sorts of believers who have neither sympathy to spare doubters, nor the right sort of curiosity necessary to seek treatments for the sick (i.e., those doubters). If they really saw God so clearly that they couldn’t even fathom having uncertainty, then they’d see Him as the one who reaches those who doubt in Him. We cannot demand that our brothers and sisters in Christ sustain belief.

What sustains true Christian faith isn’t fear of alienation from the group by breach of contract. The reason I believe is because I know that what is described in the Bible is what happens to us. There are certain ways of living that work better for everyone and there are hopes or fears we all share. Only Christianity fully accounts for the reality of these experiences without treating them as illusions of one kind or another.

To commune with other Christians we must love people—even sinners. Loving others doesn’t require us to deny that they’re sinful; but neither does it require us to beat them with what we perceive to be their own cloudy, broken, mask-shards of personality. We really are simply to love them.

Finally, I think it’s only natural to ask what, or whom, it is we’re meant to experience as Christians. Where is God? To answer briefly: There’s a big misunderstanding about what faith is because the disaffected keep saying in one way or another that God isn’t anywhere to be found. But the Christian truth is we’re not meant to see anything more than any atheist—and that’s essential to biblical understanding. I find it problematic to say the least that so many apologists speak on end to the evidence of God in the world. We walk by faith, not by sight.