Confession of a Hard-liner Turned Soft Mystic

Why I accept the Bible as God's word

Many times, from pulpit or lectern, I have taught on faith. Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” From this I assert that a faith that won’t fail may be based only on that which is true, and that ultimately we can only know something is true if God reveals it. In other words, no one was there at creation except God, and yet we know what happened. The only way that we know is because God told Moses (or told someone who told someone who told someone…who eventually told Moses).
For many of us the only sure source of revelation is the divinely-breathed-Bible. This has been my basis of faith, namely that the Bible says “x” is true. I affirm the last two sentences, but here is the crux – every piece of scripture is born of someone’s experience with God.
Moses says God told him certain things and I believe him. The prophets claim to have been speaking what God told them, and I believe them. The Gospel writers contend that the Holy Spirit brought back to their minds the things Jesus taught them. John claims to have been given a vision – all of these things are experiences that I have chosen to believe were real. When I choose to believe scripture, I am choosing to believe in the reality of the writer’s experience with God. So my question is this: why did I disbelieve my parishioner when she claimed that Jesus came to her when she was living on the street, and yet I readily accept the testimony of people who lived between two and four-thousand years ago? Who is to say that one person’s encounter with God is valid and another’s isn’t? I have wrestled with this for a while and I have a couple thoughts/suggestions:
1) To a certain extent I test a person’s experience pragmatically. Does what they claim God said work? If there is a God, and I assume there is, then he must know what he’s talking about. For the most part scripture’s claims are readily acknowledged as true (even by unbelievers) with regard to their daily functionality. For instance, a soft answer does turn away wrath while shooting the bird at the guy who just cut you off on the interstate is likely to end in a fender-bender, lying does break down social structure, and loose living does damage the people groups who indulge in it.
2) Often, scripture writers who claim an experience with God are not alone in their claims or there are external proofs offered. Moses had hundreds of thousands of people hear God and see his activity. Given God’s power and wrath, one could assume that God would smite him if he misrepresented him…oh, wait, he did there at the end, and Joshua told us about it.
Neither of these answers ultimately satisfy me. Obvious arguments could be leveled against them, and they don’t really answer the question of why I am partial toward Moses’ experience with God over against my parishioner’s. The theological answer that works for me is found in John 6:65, “And he was saying, “For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to me, unless it has been granted him from the Father,” and John 6:37, “All that the Father gives me shall come to me, and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out.” It strikes me, from these verses, that our faith begins by an experience, of which we are typically unaware. And contrary to many testimonies, it is not us having a meeting with God, but is God having a meeting with us. I like the way Paul puts it in Galatians 4:9, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God…” The emphasis is on being known, rather than knowing. Once I have accepted the experiences of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Peter, Paul and Mary (and the other Mary), then I find myself bound by the writings God led them to produce. Within those documents I find the means to evaluate other person’s experiences, as well as the basis for disbelieving those who would claim private divine encounters, the contents of which typically run counter to that presented by the former.
This has become my only explanation for my belief in God and the scriptures attributed to him. He made me believe and pulled me into an experience with him, one that has suffered problems and questions, but has withstood them. I have begun an experience with him that will continue even after this body is dead. This certainly doesn’t make me a true mystic, but for the theologically straight-laced little Baptist boy from Indiana, I have taken a step that some may find dangerous…I have embraced experience. In the end, experience is more valuable than I ever realized.

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