Religious experiences, particularly those with a high emotional
content, are very complex. Protestants generally, particularly
Anglo-Saxons, are somewhat afraid of their emotions. They have a
‘reserved’ approach to worship, and a somewhat rationalistic approach to
faith and doctrine. Very few could be accused of ‘being drunk with new
wine’! Religious experience is for them a private matter. At the other
extreme, for some Christians their religious experiences are for
constant public demonstration.

Now feelings are important, and experience is important. And so is
rationality. Friedrich Schleiermacher has reminded us that we know God
primarily through our experience; for him, a ‘passional’ experience of
religion made more sense than a purely intellectual one.

I doubt whether any great idea gets hold of us without our feeling
something. But feelings can fluctuate wildly, and they must never be
used to test our spiritual state!

But, that said, we must confess that with our new openness to the
Spirit many are experiencing some quite dramatic encounters with the
living Christ. What are we to make of it all?

In the passage we read together, 2 Cor. 12:1-10, Paul describes his
greatest ‘agony and ecstacy’. Because his opponents were bragging about
their visions and experiences, and claiming as a result to be ‘one up’
on the apostle, Paul very reluctantly describes his ecstatic experience
too. Circumstances have forced him to do it, and so in a strangely
oblique way he speaks of himself in the third person. Paul was entirely
passive – almost a spectator and hearer, without any volition of his
own.

Paul’s reticence about relating his spiritual experiences is seen
again in Gal. 1:15,16. There he describes his dramatic conversion
experience in an objective, almost impersonal way: ‘God in his grace
chose me, called me to serve him, decided to reveal his Son to me…’
When you read 1 Cor. 12-14 carefully, you’ll find that Paul doesn’t
belittle unusual spiritual experiences or explain them away. He simply
wants to put them into proper perspective.

It happened 14 years before – just previous to his first missionary
journey. He was ‘caught up’ (cf. Philip’s experience in Acts 8, and 1
Thess. 4:13-17 where the expression is used again) to the ‘third
heaven’, Paradise. He isn’t sure whether he was conscious or asleep,
whether ‘in the body or out of it’…

The NT is deliberately vague about giving us details of the
afterlife. A veil conceals these magnificent mysteries. Although the
rabbis talked about seven heavens, the Bible describes three: the
atmosphere with its clouds; the sun, moon and stars; and finally God’s
abode. Human language is simply inadequate to describe the glories of
God’s heaven, but we are learning, I think, that there really isn’t such
a vast distance between this life and the ‘life after life’. None of
the six ‘resuscitations’ in the NT tell us anything about what’s over
there. (‘Where were you, Lazarus, those four days? There is no record
of reply/ which, telling what it is to die/ had surely added praise to
praise!’).

So Paul, too, can’t tell us about these ‘unutterable utterances’.
It was an experience intended for Paul alone, not for communication to
others. There he’d experienced both ‘visions’ – mental pictures with
definite shape and form – and ‘revelations’ – truths understood by
special insight.

Why is Paul reluctant about telling us of his special experiences of
God? Surely we ‘praise Him’ in the recounting of such happenings don’t
we?

Perhaps the following reasons may be suggested for Paul’s reticence:

(1) Such testimonies can be misconstrued as boasting. Pride – even
the semblance of it – is deadly for a Christian. In fact Paul’s ‘thorn
in the flesh’ was given to him to prevent his ‘being puffed up with
pride’ (12:7). There’s a sort of proud exclusivism conveyed by those
who’ve been ‘touched’ by the Lord in a special way. This is often
unintentional, but comes across in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle
ways. There can be a tendency to classify others into ‘those who have
it and those who don’t’. Such people give the impression – even though
they don’t consciously mean to – of having ‘arrived’ whereas the rest of
us are somewhere else in our ignorance and immaturity.

The corollary of this if, of course, that (2) other faithful
believers, who haven’t had ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ may be) can be most
discouraged. They feel out of it, or perhaps they’ve been in the wrong
queue when God has been dispensing his gifts. Some of them give up in
despair. Others becaome ‘charisphobiacs’, developing an unbiblical
theology denying any interventionist possibilities as being from God.
(‘The baptism in the Holy Spirit, tongues etc., are not for today’s
church’ etc.) Still others become ‘experience chasers’, going from
meeting to meeting, speaker to speaker, hoping that someone will at last
lay hands on them and give ‘it’ to them.

Now I don’t want to be insensitive to those faithful Christians who,
thoroughly fed up with their fragile emotions or spiritual dryness want
more of God. All I’m saying is that because Paul had a Damascus Road or
a ‘third heaven’ experience, he’s not suggesting we have to have one
like that too. In fact he’s saying quite the opposite! There’s a great
danger that because some of our friends have taken ‘a great leap
forward’ in their relationship with God, we get the impression that he
works only in this way. He doesn’t. His more usual pattern is ‘little
upon little, line upon line, precept upon precept’. He’s a grower, not
a technologist! The Biblical images describing his tending us are
agricultural and sometimes maternal. He can baptise us dramatically by
his Holy Spirit (and you ought to be open to that possibility) but the
normal christian life is one of steady growth, not ‘great leaps
forward’.

(3) Some people who’ve had an ecstatic experience claim more
authority, insight or knowledge as a result. Paul’s detractors in the
Corinthian church had this problem. And it’s common today, too. The
typical world-travelled speaker in some quarters is someone with,
perhaps, a ‘gift of faith’ who’s assumed that such power entitles him to
exercise a teaching ministry as well. He may well have both gifts, or
he may not. Some of the founders of modern sects have claimed superior
spirituality (and even canonical authority) because of their visions and
‘revelations’.

When we read Paul’s letters, the overwhelming idea he’s conveying is
that the Christian life is (4) a life of disciplined obedience,
hardship, struggle, not of continuous ‘mountain-top’ experiences!. The
Biblical people encourage us to believe that God is with them in the
valleys, and that the Christian life is sometimes a real struggle, a
‘fight’, a conflict. Of course, again, that doesn’t mean ‘peak
experiences’ aren’t important in our emotional and spiritual
development. Abraham Maslow and others have taught us that probably 70%
of all humans have had unusual experiences they can’t explain, and for
most these have been most meaningful.

(5) But we mustn’t place too much emphasis on ‘feelings’. They
don’t always correspond to the facts. The concordance tells us that the
word ‘feeling’ only appears 3 or 4 times in the NT. Seeking God’s gifts
because we want ‘fulfilment’ or ‘warm feelings’ is a dangerous
motivation. The testimony of all the saints is that sometimes they just
don’t FEEL like praying, for example. But they also tell us that when
it’s hardest to pray is the time to pray hardest! Some of our young
people who got their HSC results last week told me they ‘felt’ they’d
done either better or worse than they had. But the examiners aren’t
interested in their subjective feelings, but in their objective
performances.

(6) Finally, Paul says (12:6) that private spiritual experiences
can’t be verified by others. It’s our Christian character that matters.
The Christian life is a life of obedient commitment and loving service
to Christ and others. Any experiences we have are means to those ends,
not ends in themselves.

Derek Prince describes two lives as analogous to two gardens.
Christian A has been ‘baptised in the Spirit’, but his life is full of
awful weeds. Christian B has a beautiful garden, with shrubs and flowers
displaying a gorgeous array of colour. ‘A’ has a garden hose, but never
uses it, ‘B’ only a watering can, but has a daily disciplined habit of
removing weeds and watering his plants. If ‘A’ had not depended on his
spiritual experience alone, but combined the resultant power with ‘B’s’
discipline, there would have been quite a different result.

In fact, the history of the church throughout the world is sadly
replete with examples of powerful Christian leaders who have failed
miserably because their spiritual experiences led them subsequently into
a kind of false security. Or else their ‘power’ gifts caused them to
misuse their position of authority. Whoever thinks they are standing
firm had better be careful they don’t fall (1 Cor. 10:12). It is
possible to proclaim ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things he says.

There are many Peters today who want to stay on the Mount of
Transfiguration. Thank God for the mountain-top experiences you’ve had.
But don’t stay there!

Related Articles:

• Henri Nouwen – more wisdom
• LIVING A WHOLE LIFE (Richard Rohr)
• Faith and feelings
• Beautiful video with a comforting message…
• Wisdom from Henri Nouwen

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