An Undeniable Experience with God (Outline)
An Undeniable Experience with God
When God Shows Up!
· In America, “to know” is intellectual! In the Bible, “to know” is comprehensively personal!
· In America, rational and technical knowledge is valued, but for the persons who people the pages of the Bible, social, relational, emotional knowledge is valued!
“‘Experience is conscious awareness’ (Leff, 1978, p. 4). In a more global sense, experience connotes apprehension or feeling; a conception that includes intuition. Experience arises and operates within an interdependent complex of biological, behavioral, sociocultural, psychological, and environmental inputs. In one sense, ‘the quality of your life over the long haul may be conceived as a weighted composite of all your experiences’ (Leff, 1978, p. 4). We, however, weight experiences differently.”[1]
“According to Gallup polls (1989: 162-164), Americans admit to having a religious experience [about 33%], are very conscious of the presence of God [81%], or have felt influenced by a presence or power including God [43%]. Subsequent studies that have replicated the Gallup probings have generally produced the same results with the same percentages.”[2]
“Early in the existence of the Jesus movement (i.e. the Church), these experiences were discouraged and perhaps extinguished because of the Gnostics. These latter used their singular type experiences, that is, their personal trance experiences to establish their own authority over and against apostolic claims such as those recorded in Acts. To eliminate these claims, yet to maintain the letters of Paul and the book of the Revelation to which singular type, that is, personal trance experiences, contributed, apostolic authority established a canon or norm of Scripture for Jesus groups. From that time forward no other visions of Jesus had any significance for the community, especially when their message deviated from the content of the New Testament canon (Malina and Pilch 1998: 283).”[3]
“The experiences, of course, persisted and were reported in the writing of the Fathers of the Church as well as in the Mystical tradition up until the next major effort to discredit them that resulted from the Enlightenment.”[4]
The Enlightenment was the “philosophic movement of the 18th century characterized by an untrammeled but frequently uncritical use of reason, a lively questioning of authority and traditional doctrines and values, a tendency toward individualism, and an emphasis on the idea of universal human progress and on the empirical method in science” (Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary).
“Yet, since the human person has been neurologically ‘hard-wired’ for this experience, as contemporary brain research points out, the experience will continue as it ever has.”[5]
----
[1] A. Bame, Nsamenang, Human Development in Cultural Context: A Third World Perspective, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California, 1992, p. 33.
[2] John J. Pilch, Visions and Healing in the Acts of the Apostles: How the Early Believers Experienced God, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2004, p. 158.
[3] John J. Pilch, Visions and Healing in the Acts of the Apostles: How the Early Believers Experienced God, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2004, p. 158.
[4] Ibid, 2004, pp, 158-159.
[5] Ibid, 2004, p. 159.