Religious Experiences and Evangelism

God will never reveal spiritual truths contrary to His revelation in the Bible. Nor will He allow Himself to be identified with a false religion or reveal Himself in a fashion that is contrary to His essential nature as revealed in Scripture. Does this mean sharing our religious experiences is the best approach for demonstrating Christian truth-claims?

As we have seen in the previous blog articles in this series, religious experiences are personal, and it does not logically follow that they are always expressions of divine truth. Thus it is impossible to argue, on a purely subjective level, that one’s personal religious experiences are valid or invalid. We are dealing with feelings, not facts. Experience only proves that you had an experience.

This has a direct bearing on evangelism. If Christians can’t rely on religious experience as their sole source of absolute truth or to verify their truth-claims, neither can they rely on religious experience as their only tool for evangelism. It is difficult for many unbelievers to accept religious experiences as evidence of religious truth. This is why personal testimony based on past religious experiences—although an important ingredient in evangelism—often fails to convict unbelievers.

Christians are on the same wave length with other Christians. When we claim to experience, for example, the “peace of Jesus” or the “leading of the Holy Spirit,” other Christians know precisely what we mean. They acknowledge the truthfulness of this experience because it fits in their worldview and they too have experienced it. But an atheist can’t identify with this experience. He will interpret this “religious experience” as a response to natural phenomenon. To him, a religious experience is no more than a psychological episode created out of an emotional need. Likewise, deliverance from alcoholism or a healed marriage can be accounted for naturally, that is, in a non-spiritual way. An atheist will always vie for a non-supernatural explanation.

Religious experiences are always subject to a variety of possible interpretations, and these interpretations are largely determined by our existing worldview. We can’t expect unbelievers to feel the same convincing emotions we feel when they do not have the indwelling Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:14).

Changed lives provide compelling and powerful evidence for the truthfulness of Christianity. However, personal testimony is not the only, and sometimes not even the best. Of course it will be effective for individuals whom God chooses to convict in that fashion. But many unbelievers need supporting evidence to confirm or verify the reality of our religious experiences. They can’t emotionally relate with the experiences of others, no matter how amazing and spiritual such experiences are. Call them “tough-minded” or “left-brained,” they simply need more evidence than the accounts of personal religious experiences to convince them of the truthfulness of Christianity. Effective evangelism requires going the extra mile with such tough-minded individuals by providing them with the fact-based evidence they demand (i.e. through apologetics).

This brings us back to the need for an objective method to substantiate the alleged truth-claims ungirding religious experiences. It is up to the Holy Spirit to touch unbelievers’ hearts with truth. It is up to us to carefully examine these experiences to see if they are of God. It is not axiomatic that all religious experiences have their source in God. Psychological need, demonic deception, or something else may be the source of some so-called religious experiences. Hence it is vital that we seek and employ some means of discerning whether religious experiences flow from God or from some other source. As I’ve suggested, this objective qualifier is the Bible. Any alleged religious experience out of harmony with divine revelation cannot have its origin in the one true God.

But this raises another issue. Christians claim the Bible is the only qualifier for determining the truth or falsehood of religious experiences. But how do we know the Bible is qualified to do so? Is there a way to objectively demonstrate it? Moreover, to be legitimate, such a “truth-test” for determining the veracity of Scripture would also have to be unprejudiced and applicable to non-Christian religions and secular philosophies as well. In other words, it must be able to falsify religious truth-claims as well as verify them. Is there such an objective truth-test that applies to all religions and secular philosophies—including scientism? (The philosophy that all truth must pass through the grid scientific testing before it can be considered true or factual. See my book The Christian Combat Manual.) There is such a truth-test—and what it is will surprise many readers. ©

This brings us to part two of this series, TESTING TRUTH-CLAIMS FOR TRUTH, which will begin next week.