Ideas are not truth, experience is truth. If all my experiences with God tell me that God is evil and that God is out to ruin my life, it is irrelevant whether God really is good or not, and whether the Bible says he is good or not. What we experience as truth, for us, is truth, and things only become real as we experience them to be real.
If someone is struggling to believe that God is good, telling them that God is good is only as good as a painkiller. Painkillers do exactly what they suggest, they kill the pain (and, actually, I think they don't even do that, they just prevent us from feeling the signals that our body is still sending). But they don't change the fact that there is still this deep, crippling wound. I think that only experience can heal that wound completely. And, if painkillers don't heal, they at least stop that pain from being all-controlling so that we can think and maybe feel right.
Of course, the trouble with experience is the same trouble that we have with writing: all experience and all writing is subject to interpretation. What is true in my life isn't what is actually true, it's what I interpret to be true, because that is what I live my life according to. What is true in my relationships isn't what is actually true, it's what I interpret to be true. Maybe everything in life is based on one interpretation or another.
That things are true only as we experience them to be true is what makes the Bible so amazing and so inadequate. The Bible is full of peoples interpretations of God, interpretations that God is good and the source of everything good in their life, interpretations that God is cruel and the source of all the suffering in their life. And this helps me understand those sections in the Bible where God is blamed for evil things, where God is depicted as a hunter that chases us down like prey to devour us. It isn't that God really is those things, it's that the writers of the Bible experienced, whether over long periods of time or during brief moments, that God is those things. They are true because they are experienced to be true.
As our experience of God expands, the Bible becomes more relevant. We can identify with feelings that God is cruel and out to destroy us, because we've interpreted him that way. We can identify with feelings that God is love and that everything he does, he does out of love, because we have interpreted and experienced him to be that. The Bible is amazing because it is a testament to God and to God's actions and character, testament of individual and collective experience. I just feel that it's inadequate because those experiences are real only as we experience them to be real. The testament is real only as it is experienced.
So where does faith come in to this? Faith doesn't negate experience, faith says that our interpretation of experience is fallible, that our interpretation of the Bible is fallible, that our knowledge is incomplete. Faith allows interpretation to change. It doesn't change events, it changes the way we see events. And, if anything, I think that my times of greatest doubt are also my times of greatest faith. Faith can't live apart from doubt.
God is greater than the Bible, God is greater than the God that we see in the Bible. That doesn't mean that the God of the Bible is false, it means that words are inadequate and incomplete and that God can't be contained in a book. Right now, this is my hermeneutic, my way of interpreting the Bible, and I feel excited about it and comfortable with the way that it is heading (but it's still incomplete).
4 comments:
one thing. in my experience, god is the hunter chasing us down, as well as the source of everything good. but i dont see these two ideas or views of god as mutually exclusive.
see if god is in complete control, which i believe he is, then hes gotta be in control of the bad hunter cruel devouring moments (ie.job) as well as the good times. sometimes i think he allows satan to have his way with us, and sometimes i think hes just chasing me down to teach me a lesson. i'm still now exactly sure where the distinction lies here, still working on that one in my head. but i dont think satan is just the guy that goes around doing all gods dirty work for him, i think god is responsible for causing our hardships so that we deepen our faith in some way, learn to trust him. or maybe its just that satan is chomping at the bit to do anything and everything to us so any leeway given by god to teach us something he jumps at. except that he's not omnipresent, or at least i dont think he is, or at least thats what i was taught growing up. maybe he's got a shitload of demons that are chomping at the bit just like satan. i hope the sense has not completely disappeared from my typing here. anyway, thats what i think. i could be wrong. its just my interpretation of my experiences.
i think you should use the word trust instead of faith for your hermeneutics. actually, maybe im just saying that to myself. sorry. i find faith has lost so much of its meaning from being overused and misused throughout the years.
trust is like the lovechild of the bible and experience. that made no sense, but i like the word lovechild in there, so im not going to erase it. ok, trust allows our interpretations of events to change. i like what you said there. very nice. and i might have to work on the rest of what im thinking. i just typed out something long but i got confused (its 3am maybe im just tired) so ive erased it and ill try again later, or maybe not.
interesting
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