Richard Dawson, 16 September 2014

The experience of being filled with the Spirit continues to be viewed with some suspicion by many Christians today and not, perhaps, without reason. The Reformed tradition has tended to view experience per se, as a necessary evil and something which shouldn't constitute a major part of the faith journey. After all, isn’t so much of what we experience subjective and so untrustworthy? It is then, so it is said, the drill and not the thrill that counts! If we think this we couldn’t be more wrong. The perceived disjunction between experience and truth so often trumpeted in theology and philosophy is just wrong if it means that one can have one without the other. There is no truth without experience because our very being is an ‘experiencing being.’ No one can separate their own knowledge of the world from their experience of it even if, at times, their interpretation of that experience is faulty. Knowing is experiencing. Perhaps the most poignant and clear expression of this in the Gospels comes in John 14 after Jesus has announced that He will leave the disciples. At this Philip decides that to be sure of what Jesus has said he will need to see the Father… “Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” What does Jesus point to as their source of knowledge of God? That He has been with them… in other words, experience. God has made us to experience Him.