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Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” (Genesis 18:20-21)
Experiential knowledge is different than intellectual knowledge. The above verse shows this. God knew about the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah, but He still said that he would go down and see it for Himself.
If intellect is different than experience, it should impact the way we read the bible.
In Radical Christians and the Word of God: Authority, Bruxy Cavey states:
Jesus says (in John 5:37-40) that it is possible to follow the Bible, love the Bible, study the Bible – and never hear the voice of God. Furthermore, it is possible to memorize and meditate on the Bible, and never have God’s “word dwell in you”. Let this sink in. Unless we use the Bible as a pointer to Jesus, and then come to JESUS for our life, we are misusing the Bible.
Having said this, below are some ways that we can gain experiential knowledge of and a friendship with God, rather than only intellectual knowledge.
- Become other-centred. Invest in others and simply do the good that we can.
In Soul Keeping, John Ortberg states:
“Despite the rise of the mental health profession, people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to depression. Why? Martin Seligman, a brilliant psychologist with no religious ax to grind, has a theory that it’s because we have replaced church, faith, and community with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning. That’s the self. We’re all about the self. We revolve our lives around ourselves.”
Moreover, Ezekiel 3:18-21 shows how we have a responsibility to share the truth of God, when we know it.
When I (the word of the LORD) say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself.
“Again, when a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before them, they will die. Since you did not warn them, they will die for their sin. The righteous things that person did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the righteous person not to sin and they do not sin, they will surely live because they took warning, and you will have saved yourself.”
- Discern the heart behind the words that someone is saying, rather than being legalistic about the technical meaning of the words; or hear what the person actually meant, and not just what they said.
In Discernment, Henri Nouwen stated:
Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words. As long as we read the Bible or a spiritual book simply to acquire knowledge, our reading does not help us in our spiritual life.
Moreover, Brene Brown said:
The good news is that a growing number of researchers believe that curiosity and knowledge-building grow together- the more we know, the more we want to know. The bad news is that many of us are raised believing that emotions aren’t worthy of our attention. In other words, we don’t know enough and/or we aren’t sufficiently aware of the power of our emotions and how they’re connected to our thoughts and behaviours, so we fail to get curious.
- Notice how what we know about how God works in the bible, impacts what we see. Because of the important concept of “sola scriptura”, there can be a tendency to make other elements that guide the Christian life like: reason, experience, and tradition; constantly line up with a specific systematic theological understanding of the bible. When we do this, we can inadvertently “throw out the baby with the bath water” and miss something important God may be trying to show us. Instead of doing this, we can also look for how God’s character that is seen in the bible, changes our own lives, the lives of others, the community we are in, and the world at large.
One example is seen in Romans 1:20:
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
What are some other ways that we can gain experiential knowledge of God, rather than only intellectual knowledge?
Thoughts 