Experientialism

I need to document some of the reasons I have long felt a certain "cognitive dissonance" with evangelicalism. One of the key problems for me has been that I have long watched the evangelical movement increasingly adopting the notion that truth is determined by experience.

It seems more and more that evangelicalism is steeped in feeling over fact, and relationship over reason.

Yet this presents a problem: If my “experience” is different from the prevailing flow, is there something wrong with me? In my early evangelical days, I devoured books by C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer and others, books that tried to show the reasonableness of Christianity, its historicity, that it can be demonstrated to make sense and be true to reality. I spent hours looking into apologetics from understanding the first chapters of Genesis to the evidence for the resurrection to the logical defenses of the existence of God. I thought everyone would find such things relevant, interesting, vital to a solid faith. To this day, that intellectual foundation has been the source of a lasting commitment to God and the scriptures.

As the years went on I found more and more that I was the exception to the rule. Today, the emphasis of evangelical Christianity is on “relationship”. If one has a good experiential “sense” of being in communion with God, that is the vital thing, perhaps the only thing. Evidence matters little, in part because more and more evangelical leaders have swallowed the mystical post-modern notion that our understanding is so imprisoned in our subjective perceptions that evidence can never be looked at objectively. As a result our churches are primarily built on methods of providing a positive "experience" and a good group of social acquaintances and emotional support.

When I was young the criticism of the church was that it was too much of a “social club”. Today, that is exactly what seems to be the desired goal in church growth strategies. Provide a good hook to get folks in the door and surround them with people who will smother them with affection, and you will have made a convert – at least for a time. It works. But it works for cults as well and has no necessary connection to the question of whether Christianity is true.

If one has an “experience” with something that is alleged to be of the Holy Spirit, then that is all the proof that person feels is needed of the validity of the event. But if one detects doctrinal deviation in the teaching and dares to call it to the attention of those in charge, he will be quickly dismissed or even denounced as one who “resists the Spirit”. I am not exaggerating in this case. I have been treated in this way more than once. Truth is no longer determined by reason and evidence. Truth is determined by feelings and pragmatic instant results. In this way parts of the evangelical church are not at all different from the worst of the postmodern fringe or the New Age cults.

I should stress that some of this is a reaction to the cold intellectualism of the “modern” period, where “head knowledge” ruled the day and had no connection to real life. But Biblical and historic Christianity must not be confused with modernism. Modernism at least shares the belief implied in scripture that there is an objective world that can be understood rationally. But modernism denies the source of that objectivity and had no way to sustain it. The men of the enlightenment tried to base everything on reason and in the end reason alone could not sustain the load. For historic Christianity, reason was a God-given tool, nothing more. And objective truth was not based on reason itself but on the God who created all of reality. For the radically postmodern mind, reason is an illusion. And many evangelicals today are products of this extreme postmodern mindset.

Postmodern people react against modernism with extreme skepticism toward reason. In one encounter, an evangelical friend told me that seeking theological education was a sure way to be influenced negatively by the “wisdom of men”. He was involved in a fairly extreme Pentecostal church. I asked if his Pastor had sought any theological training. He said no. I asked how this pastor managed, then, to prepare a simple sermon. His answer was that he did not need to prepare, the Holy Spirit just revealed the words to him as he spoke. I asked then, why did this pastor even need the Bible, the scriptures themselves?

His reply – “he doesn’t need the Bible”.

“That’s heresy”, I replied. At which point he started to reconsider his position.

Such an example may seem extreme to the evangelical in a middle-American small town church. It is not extreme at all in reality. One can find plenty of examples on the religious airwaves, on the religious bookshelves and one can be relatively certain that at least one church in most any town wanders near the edge of such experiential nonsense.

And the problem is it trickles down. We want an “encounter” with God, a feeling of being loved and accepted and evangelical programming has become adept at providing it. We provide a warm community, a carefully crafted Sunday morning service that makes us “feel” close to God. But the level of doctrinal and biblical illiteracy betrays the shallowness of the ultimate product.

As many as 91 out of 100 evangelical teenagers no longer believe there is such a thing as an absolute truth. How can one believe in God and not believe in an absolute truth? Does God both exist and not exist? One can reconcile that seeming discrepancy only if God is just a “personal experience” and not an objective reality. This is becoming the norm for evangelicals.

But a God who only exists in my head is no God at all, he is merely an idea, and such believers should be pitied, not put on a pedestal. As Paul said, “… if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Cor 15:14)