Experiencing Doctrine

"Experience must always be tested by doctrine, not doctrine by experience." I read these words in a journal article I was reviewing during sermon preparation. It got me thinking about my own experience. There have been times when what I experienced did not jive with what the Bible teaches. For example, the Bible insists in multiple places spanning both Testaments that God "will never leave or forsake" his people. There was a time in 2006 when all my senses and all of the circumstances of my life were shouting out to me, "God has left you; He has forsaken you!" Looking back, I see that even though my experience told me God had left me high and dry, in reality He had not. It was a test, a peirasmos in the full sense of the word (for all you Greek scholars out there), and it was what I needed to get serious about this whole Christianity thing. What I thought was God's utter lack of care for me was in actuality the most caring thing God could have done for me. I don't know how to put this other than...my experience was wrong, but doctrine was right.

This month's Toastmasters magazine quips, "We are all bad judges of ourselves." I would agree and go a step further: We are all bad judges of our immediate experience. I look back on many events in my life that I didn't think were beneficial at the time, but in 20/20 hindsight I can now see how they were indeed a part of God's plan for me. I wouldn't have all the wonderful things I have now--Jessica, Brodie, and my faith--without them. My doctrine allowed me to understand my experiences in the proper context. But had I let my experience define my doctrine, where would I be now?

We live in a very experiential age. I don't mean to say that experience is null and void, because obviously that is just plain silly. And I don't mean to say that one should unquestioningly assert biblical precepts, experience or no. But I do mean to say that we should interpret our experiences in light of revealed Truth (for that is what the biblical metanarrative is) and not vice versa. In our postmodern era, this is a counter-cultural call. It isn't popular. It isn't what itching ears want to hear. But it is the truth.

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, a though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. - Habakkuk 3:17-18