24/50: Is that you, God?
This song is a long time Warner family favorite.
“One time, there was this one time
When I swore God, she spoke to me
And she told me, oh yes she told me
Of all the wonder that she could bring
And I said,
Won’t you, won’t you fill me up with it, wont you fill me up with it,
Won’t you fill me”
One of the core questions that emerged for me after the spiritual transitions I experienced was: how can I trust spiritual experience? My conversion in the backyard at three, a rededication at winter camp when I was 13, the call to be a missionary when I was 21 — all of these occurred within theological frameworks that I no longer hold, and I even find some of them wrong and harmful.
Did it all happen inside my head? How do I know what is God, what is me, what is the context and culture influencing me? Can I ever trust an experience of the Divine ever again?
I don’t think it’s an accident that I landed in a denomination known for rigorous study and for being overly cautious when it comes to emotional displays of spirituality. I’d rather have a skeptic’s eye toward what we think is an experience of God. I like having robust theological checks in place before conclusions are reached. I will never again believe something that someone says just because God told them.
I recently read Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book, Jesus and John Wayne, which describes how religious experience has been coopted for politics and power in the United States. It was a chilling read because I lived through, bought into, and participated in a good chunk of what she describes. All with a sincere heart that wanted to please God.
I’ll reiterate this quote from John Fischer:
“When faith is all connected up to your childhood identity–your sense of reward and punishment, your standing in society, your own place in the world–it’s hard to reach into that switchboard of interconnected relationships and come up with a line that is truly your personal possession, a faith you would hold on to if all the rest were taken away. And even if you did have ahold of it, it would be hard to know for sure–and hard to tell it from everything else.” (Making Real What I Already Believe)
That is true on an intellectual and theological level for sure, but it is felt even more viscerally on an experiential and spiritual level. Can I ever again let myself go and “feel” God?
I don’t have an answer to this question but I have found a few ways to hold it.
First: I think God “remembers that we are dust,” (Psalm 103:14). God is not waiting for us to have a perfect theological understanding before we experience transcendence. I think God loved the fact that my 3, 13, 21 year old selves were doing the very best they knew to do. And I can love them for that too.
Second: I have come to new ways of spiritual experience that I trust. Silence, tears, laughter, trembling lips, time-tested spiritual masters like Thomas Merton and Catherine of Siena, embodied meditation — I’m learning to listen for the “sound of the genuine” as Howard Thurman named it. And slowly, I’m learning to trust it again.