This week I read a post by theologian Tony Jones where he expresses a profound lack of experiencing or hearing from God. I also heard the story of someone on their death bed who had a profound experience of God. I feel an urge to embrace and affirm both experiences. I know you are supposed to fall down on one side or the other as to what should be the "normal" Xn experience but right now I'm trying to formulate something that embraces both experiences. Something that does not say that one is correct and the other means either you're not really a Xn or you are somewhat delusional.
Personally I can relate most with the silent nothing (Tony Jones) experience of God. Perhaps other people have a different make up. An imaginative (not imaginary) make up where they are able to experience the reality of God through a far more imaginative or mystical experience. This is not to say the experience is not real just because it might not be able to be recorded on a video camera. Like the often very visceral experience of falling in love the revelation of God may also be very real. But for those of us with a different make up, it doesn't make our experience less real (perhaps like the love of a couple who've stuck at loving each other decades after the giddy excitement of first meeting has died down). For people like me it only seems less real or less "normal" if I have enough people telling me this is not the normal Xn experience or that I'm missing out. For people who experience God differently perhaps it's all about what sort of a person they are and how they experience the world rather than that God has arbitrarily chosen to speak to some people in one way and other people in another.
To be honest I love how I experience life, love and God in all it's complex vagueness and I wouldn't change it for the world.
2 comments:
Such a key question for me. Thanks for the link to Jones' interesting post and your own thoughts. I'm not familiar with Jones' journey - interesting to see he's on the 'progressive' category of patheos; he seems to indicate a recent crisis of faith for himself? Can you shed any light?
Mmm I'm not sure what the recent crisis of faith might have been.
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