Faith - iii - the 'Experiential' approach

Today we want to consider that which is the other side, the other extreme of faith. Originally, experience, to put it simplistically, was the hallmark of Liberal Protestant Christianity and theology. It was seen as the means of understanding Christianity's relevancy in a 'modern' world where miracles and the supernatural were rejected outright as violations of the closed system of nature and rationale thought. If the very and most mysterious tenets of the faith were to be discarded, experience became the very essence of faith in Jesus Christ.

In our own modern/post-modern world, experience does not necessarily mean the same thing, or function for the individual believer in the same manner. No, instead, experience has to do with transcending the transcendent - that is, it is a manner of "feeling" something in the midst of worship, prayer, or anything else that can come under the label of "Christian". Today experience is an important hallmark for many self-proclaimed 'emergent' churches and Christians, as a subtle (or not so subtle) way of diminishing the importance of doctrine, while at the same time, supposedly uplifting the centrality of the dynamic of relationship between humanity and God.And this is the very problem of this second extreme. It is enslaved to a set sense of feelings; and it holds true faith captive to the expectation of those feelings being continually experienced in an ongoing manner. For those feelings not to be experienced, whether in the context of worship or any other "Christian" activity, is to invalidate the power or validity of an event which in truth is subject purely to God's sovereign act.

This approach to faith, too, sets up a false dichotomy that pits the intellect against experience. This particular extreme puts God as the object of our determinations, and the individual as the subject who determines what is real, what is valid via their own 'experience'. Humanity becomes the real authority on what is real. Individuals become the arbiter of truth as it transcends their emotions and feelings. This becomes. then, an Ebionitic Christ, being driven by the flesh, rather than the Spirit of God. Experience, a repetition of these all-important "religious" feelings, becomes the god that is worshipped, not the Triune God of grace, revealed in Jesus Christ. Our faith must be rooted in trusting in the both the veracity of Scripture's testimony of who Jesus is, and what He has done, and that He is as good as the Scriptures tell us He is (that is, the love of God in Jesus Christ for humanity). Only a faith that transcends any "feelings" is a faith that is in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.