On Emotion and Experience

I met a couple Mormons the other day. They were missionaries from Arizona or somewhere - young men in ties who seemed just a little bit uncomfortable asking me what I thought about Jesus. I felt a sort of brotherhood with them somehow, or at least I felt like I could understand them. We chatted for a bit (or rather, they quoted their carefully rehearsed speeches in response to my questions) and they handed me a Book of Mormon, which I promised to read, at least in part. They in turn promised that if I earnestly asked God to show me the truth, he would reveal to me that this stuff was true through some indescribable yet unmistakable feeling - a "burning in my bosom", if you will. Both claimed to have personally experienced this assurance.

I confess I was a little disappointed when reading the suggested passages evoked no discernible stirring in my spirit. Not that I expected something - I know better than to expect anything from gods and religions - but there's always that possibility that if something worked for someone else, it just might work for me. Of course, 2 years ago I would have been eager to expose these men's faith as a sham. Today (for better or for worse) I've lost all such desires. I envy them. If there's anything behind their words, they've got more emotional/spiritual/warm fuzzy-type stuff out of their religion than I ever have or (it seems to me now) ever will out of mine.

I recently read Surprised By Joy, by C S Lewis, I think mostly in the hopes of being, you know, surprised by joy. Lewis talks about how he's had moments of what he calls joy (basically, some kind of beautiful, intense longing). Of course, because of the subjective nature of feelings I can't say for sure that I've never personally experience this "joy", but I don't think I have. I didn't get much out of the book.

Then the other day I dipped into a book of apologetics. The guy started off by explaining that the bottom-line reason that we Christians know that this is the truth is the prompting of the Spirit in our hearts, or some such thing. He also claims that the only way a non-Christians can ever convert is throught the Spirit convicting them, and the only way that someone can avoid becoming a Christian is by ignoring what God has revealed to them in their heart to be true. This stuff makes me so mad. If you've got a feeling that your religion (be it Christianity or anything else) is the truth, and somehow you just know that this feeling is from God, then good for you. I say that seriously. If your faith and life are built on what your heart tells you is right or on some wonderful or dramatic event that happened to you or anything like that, that's terrific. As long as you're reasonable and consistent and try to do what you feel is best, I have no quarrel with you. If your beliefs cause you to act cruelly towards others or to chase me around with your holy book because you think you've got to convert people, I may try to get you to change a few ideas. I'll probably share my own viewpoints with you and see how you react, but I won't get mad at you. If you tell me that I'm a terrible sinner and everything that's wrong with me is my own fault and all I have to do is "get right with the Lord" or some such thing, I'll hear you out and I'll give your opinions honest consideration. But if you start telling me what I feel, I will become frustrated. I am a 19 year old born-again, Sunday-school-raised, Bible-school-educated, water-baptized, (formerly) conservative/evangelical/literalist, study-Bible-toting, church-going, blood-bought Christian, and I feel nothing that might be confused with presence or the promptings of God. I don't care who you are or what your favorite religious book says - you have no right to tell me what I feel.

If you're one of those who bases your religious or moral beliefs on some kind of feeling, again, I don't disrespect you, look down on you, or think you're wrong or stupid. But consider this: there are countless people of countless different faiths who are convinced that their own beliefs are true because of some emotional, spiritual or apparently supernatural experience that bears a remarkable resemblance to your own. Suppose you're a Christian. Suppose you speak in tongues or you have a sense of God's presence or [insert the experience of your choice here], and on this basis you believe that Christianity is true. Suppose one day you run into someone like my Mormon missionaries - people who profess to have nearly identical experiences with God. The only difference is that they believe in some completely separate, incompatible faith. What do you do?

Your first option is to assume that they're lying. For reasons that a good and honest person like yourself cannot fathom, these people are deliberately trying to deceive you by claiming a spiritual experience they've never had. Your own experience with God assures you that A B and C are true, and anything that suggests otherwise - rational arguments, scientific evidence or the experiences of other people - is simply wrong. Not only that, but since God is a merciful and fair God, he has blessed everyone with identical (or at least compatible) spiritual experiences, feeling and intuitions. Therefore, anyone who suggests anything contrary to what you believe is a liar and deceiver who willfully rejects the clear truth that God has made known to them. You need not give their claims another thought.

Your second option is to assume that they're deceived. Through some fault in their character or some weakness in their will, these people have tricked themselves into believing that their feelings are assurance from God when they're really just self-constructed illusions or tricks of the devil. These people are to be pitied, reasoned with, and hopefully brought to understand the error of their ways. This second view often arises when the first becomes difficult to maintain. Maybe you've met someone who believes something contrary to you on the basis of their experiences, and yet is so loving and sincere that you cannot believe that they're depraved liars bent on deceiving you. If they are not liars, the next easiest thing is to assume that they're confused.

The obvious problem with the second belief is that it raises the question of whether you're to confused one. The first explanations for conflicting experiences is safer because you can be reasonably sure that you yourself are not a depraved liar. But if a good, honest person like your friend can be mistaken about which experiences are God-given assurance and which are illusions, why not you? Perhaps your friend is right and you are wrong, or perhaps neither of you are right. How can you know? At this point, you may turn to apologetics to reassure yourself of the truth of your position, or you may seek experiences of greater and greater spectacularity to reassure yourself of their authenticity.

But maybe you wake up one day and you just can't believe it anymore. Somehow it just doesn't seem reasonable that your own experiences are infallible while others are fraught with delusion. You're frightened by the implications of everyone's experience being just as valid as your own, but you've simply run out of other explanations. You come reluctantly to the conclusion that all such spiritual experiences are nothing more than psychological tricks. Or maybe it is the case that some experiences come from God while others arise for different sources, but it's impossible to know which are which. The only reasonable thing to do is mistrust all experiences.

That's the progression of my thinking on experience. I ended up being very skeptical of anything anyone tells me about their spiritual life. It's frustrating and crippling, because anything anyone says about religion (except from a purely intellectual view) is immediately labeled as bullshit, or at least as utterly unprovable and therefore of no value. Any Christian song that mentions feelings, particularly some kind of sensation of God, is scorned as a tool to perpetuate the self-deception.

Recently I've begun to think that there might be another approach. What would happen if I wasn't so critical of spiritual experiences - mine or anyone else's? What if I viewed experience not as something to be analyzed for validity and truth but simply as stimulation or energy which can be put to use? It's so difficult to determine whether some charismatic occurrence originates in God or in something else - what if it doesn't even matter? I recognize that the relationship between God's will, our wills, and other factors in determining events is complex in the extreme, so why have I been trying to label the source of all feelings and occurrences as either us or God? I know that spiritual experiences count for little if they do not don't change our day-to-day lives. Why then am I so concerned with whether someone speaking in tongues or singing a worship song is "genuinely moved by the Spirit"? What if I met Mormons who have feelings confirming their faith and instead of being either troubled with the implications or dismissing them as depraved or deceived, I praised God that their feelings have a positive effect on their lives? What if I found myself in a Charismatic event that reeks of manipulation and self-deception and instead of scorning the participants' simple-mindedness I let myself be inspired by their sincerity and joy?

Of course, there's a time for analyzing experiences. Since claims of super-natural feelings or occurrences are often such an integral part of people's justification for their beliefs, it only makes sense to think critically about their claims. But I think too often I let my skepticism get in the way of just appreciating the experience. In any case, I believe the effect that a spiritual experience has on a person's attitudes and actions is far more important than the experience itself.

I'm searching intellectually for truth, but I realize that I'm not smart enough to find it. I am flawed, as everyone else is. I believe that what matters most is not whether our beliefs are accurate, but what we do with them - how we let our beliefs affect our lives. If you think that what you believe is critical, and also that God is just, you must believe that God grants all people the ability to perceive truth and to know that it is true. If this is the case, then those who believe differently than you must be doing so with the knowledge that they are lying to themselves and turning their back on God. If you don't believe that all people who believe differently than you do are doing so dishonestly, you cannot also believe that the truth or falsehood of our believes is of ultimate importance. (That's my basic argument for universal, or at least not Christian-limited, salvation.) I've said that stuff before. The new part is that if it's neither necessary nor possible to determine the "legitimacy" of all spiritual feelings and experiences (that is, whether they are from God), then it's ok not to worry about it and just appreciate (or be critical of, as the case may be) the effect that they have on our lives.