The Experience of Christ

[Cal]

Originally Posted by aron

I've seen some take the logical conclusion that Mary is the Mother of God. Because Jesus is God incarnate and Mary is the mother of Jesus. Logical.

Don't trust your experiences.

Reason (logic) and experience are the only tools we have to discern reality. We have experiences, we analyze them and we draw conclusions. Then we repeat. This is true at all levels, from the mundane to the sublime.

You can re-run the experiment, but Descartes already did it. He tried to reduce knowledge down to the basics of what he could confirm, and he came up with I think (an experience) therefore I am (a logical conclusion). You might disagree with him, but my point is that the basis of his conception of reality was built on two things: experience and logic. So if you are going to mistrust both, you don't have anything left to go on.

I know you don't mean to throw them out totally. I'm just saying you can't get along without them, so you'd better try to make friends with them as best you can.

I'm not "bent out of shape" about it, as you've said some here are.

I know you are not. You are not as opinionated as OBW, which makes you easier to converse with. You understand that discussion is a two-way street. You are proof that a little graciousness goes a long way, something some of us would do well to learn.

So simply opening our mouths is no guarantee that we either experience, or gain, the Christ of God.

In my experience any time we try to come up with foolproof technique for being a Christian it always ends up making us look like fools. There is no guarantee of anything, other than God is good. It isn't that God isn't solid, it's that he's always nudging us toward genuine reliance on him by taking away our substitutes.

The very act of trying to ascertain my position on the ledger sends me backward. I simply cannot ascertain, on a day to day or moment to moment basis, if and how much I am "gaining Christ". That will be left to the Bema. So I let it go. I have other things to pay attention to.

Don't get distracted.

I think that was OBW's message. Maybe he didn't phrase it nicely enough for some. But there was a point being made, there.

I told him I understood some of his point. I just disagreed with all his conclusions. I get it that anything can become a distraction. But that includes trying to formulate airtight cases in reaction to Witness Lee. OBW gets so caught up in building his arguments against Lee that he becomes unreasonable, and when you call him on it then he says you are attacking him. Anything but admit he could be mistaken. There's never an "Oops, my bad!" with him. It's always somebody else's fault when there is a misunderstanding.

OBW's reaction to Lee is to distrust spirituality. He thinks in terms of fruit. What he forgets is real fruit is of the Spirit. It's not just of our trying to be fruitful. You cannot produce the fruit being a good Christian without a relationship with God, which is by definition experiential and spiritual. So again, you'd better make friends with those things as best you can. Because if you dismiss them enough you'll eventually miss their benefits.

An analogy might be a liberal who distrusts capitalism, or a conservative who distrusts government intervention. Each will spend a lot of time bad-mouthing those things they don't like, as OBW repeatedly bad mouths "inner life" and "spirituality" and "experience of Christ." The more extreme the person the more he will bad-mouth the other side and give his side a break. But if both persons were truly honest they would admit and make peace with the fact that both capitalism and government intervention are necessary. It's a mistake to try to destroy the other side of an argument to try to prove your side. Emerson wrote that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Every rule has an exception, including this one.

[Cal]

I would say that if you don't like the idea of "experiencing Christ" then by all means try to avoid all experiences of Christ.

If you detect anything you are experiencing in your life that could in any way, shape or form be characterized as "Christ" then run away from it as fast as you can.

Because if you are experiencing something and realize that something is Christ then that would mean you are experiencing Christ and you can't have that.

Follow these simple rules and you can be sure you never experience Christ.


See how magnanimous I can be? No one can ever say that Igzy isn't looking out for them.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Igzy

I would say that if you don't like the idea of "experiencing Christ" then by all means try to avoid all experiences of Christ.

If you detect anything you are experiencing in your life that could in any way, shape or form be characterized as "Christ" then run away from it as fast as you can.

Because if you are experiencing something and realize that something is Christ then that would mean you are experiencing Christ and you can't have that.

Follow these simple rules and you can be sure you never experience Christ.

Let me rephrase my argument. There was once a guy who killed a lion, after fighting with it in a snowy pit. Now, the lion was real, the snow was real, the pit was real, and the fight was real. But if the guy stopped at some point and said, "Gee, I am having the experience of fighting a lion in a snowy pit" he would have lost. No time for that. Just time to fight. The time for claiming is after the battle is over (or the proverbial race has finished).

If you claim the experience you lose. If you fight, you may win (and have the experience of winning). Either way you'll have an experience. But if you try to lay claim it, while you're having it, you lose.

But if your goal is writing and publishing books I'm sure there's a book in there somewhere. But God may not count books being published as experiences of Christ, at the Bema. So don't count your books published as experiences of Christ.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

Let me rephrase my argument. There was once a guy who killed a lion, after fighting with it in a snowy pit. Now, the lion was real, the snow was real, the pit was real, and the fight was real. But if the guy stopped at some point and said, "Gee, I am having the experience of fighting a lion in a snowy pit" he would have lost. No time for that. Just time to fight. The time for claiming is after the battle is over (or the proverbial race has finished).

If you claim the experience you lose. If you fight, you may win (and have the experience of winning). Either way you'll have an experience. But if you try to lay claim it, while you're having it, you lose.

But if your goal is writing and publishing books I'm sure there's a book in there somewhere. But God may not count books being published as experiences of Christ, at the Bema. So don't count your books published as experiences of Christ.

Then why would anyone say to "slow down and smell the roses?" Obviously when your life is at stake, fighting off bears and lions, that is not the best time to reminisce the good times, but when it is all over, get out your selfie stick and get a pic with your latest "kill."

[Cal]

Originally Posted by aron

I've seen some take the logical conclusion that Mary is the Mother of God. Because Jesus is God incarnate and Mary is the mother of Jesus. Logical.

Don't trust your experiences.

Just to review. Here you are making a logical conclusion based on your experience with your experiences. You have determined from your experiences that they are not trustworthy. But you had to experience their untrustworthyness to come to this conclusion. So there is at least one experience you trust, that of experiences being untrustworthy. Therefore your statements are contradictory, because you have both trusted an experience and used logic to formulate a conclusion about it.

So please clarify your directive to not trust logic or experience. You might want to rephrase your statements to make them less black and white. Obviously we must trust logic and experience to some degree.

[aron]

Originally Posted by Igzy

You have determined from your experiences that [experiences] are not trustworthy. But you had to experience their untrustworthyness to come to this conclusion. So there is at least one experience you trust, that of experiences being untrustworthy. Therefore your statements are contradictory, because you have both trusted an experience and used logic to formulate a conclusion about it.

So please clarify your directive to not trust logic or experience. You might want to rephrase your statements to make them less black and white. Obviously we must trust logic and experience to some degree.

I do trust logic. But only to some degree. And I very much enjoy coming to the meetings and being disabused of my logical constructions. And also on this forum, as well.

Our senses are tricky: we shouldn't rely on them as purveyors of reality. Secondly, our interpretation of what our senses deliver us is also flawed. We are logical, yes, but only partly so. That is why the "flock" is such a safeguard. WL and WN both over-rode all safeguards and the result was ruinous.

So I saw OBW providing a "not so fast" safeguard to the all-encompassing notion of "experiencing Christ" and I simply wanted to say "amen". I don't think it's something that can be proven or disproven. It just doesn't appear to add value, and by the time you've hung all the cautionary flags on it, what is the point? It's just a distraction from the plain words that are in front of us.

Concepts are great. I love them, actually. I can churn them out daily. But at heart I'm still a sinner struggling home to the Father. My concepts won't deliver me. They have limited, temporary use.

Let me give an example. A few months back I got interested in the "grey area" between angels and the Holy Spirit. It became evident to me that there was possibly some overlap, that when John wrote of "spirit" in the apocalypse he may have meant the ministering spirit (angel) and not the Holy Spirit. So I put my verses out there, and my thinking, and was pretty soundly disabused of the notion. So I dropped it. I could either start my "church of Aron" where everybody agreed with me, or I could put my concepts on the shelf, possibly never to return, and simply go on. No big deal. I do it every day. I think, but try not to become captive to or emotionally invested in my thoughts. I don't trust them implicitly.

And I have a habit of phrasing my statements out in black-and-white simply to see if they can stand. I like the challenge. Many of them don't stand, very long. The objections to them arrive, and qualifiers to preserve them pile up hard and fast, and eventually I don't take them too seriously as representations of objective truth. The whole "experience of Christ" as a concept seems to fall in that category for me. Doesn't matter whose idea it was, initially. It really doesn't stand up well, on its own.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by aron

So I saw OBW providing a "not so fast" safeguard to the all-encompassing notion of "experiencing Christ" and I simply wanted to say "amen". I don't think it's something that can be proven or disproven. It just doesn't appear to add value, and by the time you've hung all the cautionary flags on it, what is the point? It's just a distraction from the plain words that are in front of us.

If he had just said that I would have said amen, too. But he went on talking about "stew" and that speaking generally about the experience of Christ wasn't supported in the Bible (a claim which some of the verses I shared contradicted). He just took it too far. It may not appear to add value to you, but it does to me. So why make a big deal about it? And it's not "just a distraction" and is the plain word. There are verses that clearly talk about a general experience of Christ. Read the list again. As I said, any verse that talks about "knowing God" is talking about experiencing God. It's talking about knowledge that comes from experience.

I don't think saying "experiencing Christ" carries any more risk than saying, for example, we should "cut off our hand" or "sacrifice our bodies" or "hate our own selves." Each of these carries risk of misinterpretation and with that possible serious consequences. I don't see how saying "experiencing Christ" is more risky, and there can be no argument that those other things are in the Bible.

[awareness]

Good post Igzy ....

Originally Posted by Igzy

Reason (logic) and experience are the only tools we have to discern reality. We have experiences, we analyze them and we draw conclusions. Then we repeat. This is true at all levels, from the mundane to the sublime.

So true ... and we have the awareness reading these words as a "tool" to discern reality. Reason and logic are extremities of that/this.

You can re-run the experiment, but Descartes already did it. He tried to reduce knowledge down to the basics of what he could confirm, and he came up with I think (an experience) therefore I am (a logical conclusion). You might disagree with him,. . .

Yes. So a rock doesn't think and therefore it isn't?

but my point is that the basis of his conception of reality was built on two things: experience and logic. So if you are going to mistrust both, you don't have anything left to go on.

Isn't that when faith kicks in?

In my experience any time we try to come up with foolproof technique for being a Christian it always ends up making us look like fools.

True that ... this post an exception.

It isn't that God isn't solid, it's that he's always nudging us toward genuine reliance on him by taking away our substitutes.

That's what got me where I'm at today. God has pulled all the rugs of substitution out from under me. That's been a type of experiencing Christ to me.

You cannot produce the fruit being a good Christian without a relationship with God, which is by definition experiential and spiritual.

Where does Gal 5:22 say that? It doesn't say there's no other way to have or gain any of those fruits.

Emerson wrote that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Yet Waldo consistently, according to his "English Traits," believed in "whiteness," or the superiority of the white English Saxon.

Yet he might have something to add to our discussion of experiencing Christ:

Emerson had come to accept the idea that the highest, most trustworthy knowledge consists of intuitive graspings, moments of direct perception, free mental acts of cognition and recognition, a series of mental activities that, as he now realized, could be summed up in the word reason. Customarily he used visual imagery for these acts of knowing, calling them insights, perceptions or visions.
- "Emerson: The Mind on Fire" by Robert D. Richardson Jr.

And I think we need to cut OBW some slack. Sure he's a thick thinker but all in all he's a pretty great guy ... as far as I've seen.

[Cal]

Originally Posted by awareness

Good post Igzy ....

Yes. So a rock doesn't think and therefore it isn't?

Questions of being are the privilege and curse only of self-conscious beings. Rocks are spared this.

Isn't that when faith kicks in?

Faith to me is an extension of reason and experience. Eventually we all believe what those two have led us to. Since God is a logical conclusion gathered from the experience of existence, failing to have faith in him is a fatal denial of reality (according to our Christian faith anyway).

Where does Gal 5:22 say that? It doesn't say there's no other way to have or gain any of those fruits.

It just says they are of the Spirit. Presumably you can't get them without getting the Spirit, however He's gotten. What are you going to do, get bootlegged copies?

[awareness]

Originally Posted by Igzy

It just says they are of the Spirit. Presumably you can't get them without getting the Spirit, however He's gotten. What are you going to do, get bootlegged copies?

Glad you said presumably. I've know non-believers with those fruits. Not that they had all of them. Then again believers don't seem to have all of them either.