Are You Experienced?
April 10, 2024
Experiences come in different shapes and sizes, and so do our perceptions of them. Sometimes our experiences are ethereal, and few conclusions can be derived from those. Other times our experiences have an unavoidable impact on our lives, our thinking, and our choices.
The ethereal usually has little weight. The real is always much heavier. Yet, we often choose how much weight to give to each of them based on the slightest whim — like the mood we are in at that moment.
As simple as tasting something we perceive as awful, we make sure we don’t try it again. While unable to avoid some things, like a car crash, we also perceive some experiences as awful, but it usually leaves a whole new set of tangible conclusions and sets of learning, for example, avoidance techniques…
Experience can be a great teacher, if we are willing to learn from both the bad ones and the good ones. If we don’t we can become spectators of our own lives.
Belief is related to both real experience and the ethereal. What works in real life and what we choose to imagine makes for a foundation on which we build our philosophies, mindsets, our belief systems and especially how we live our lives.
While I think most people are realists, remaining pragmatic is a good thing, but we should not exclude the romanticist side — dreaming, if you will — which is the source of idealism and invention. After all, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” as Shakespeare posited, and so life can be a kaleidoscope of colors. On another extreme, the pragmatist can fall into becoming a cynical fatalist -perhaps even falling further away to becoming a nihilistic fatalist, inevitability absorbed into a colorless existence.
Now, belief has a sister, faith, and they have a cousin, faithfulness. They depend on one another in work and play as they grow. Likewise, depending on individual experiences and personal integrity, they are true to a family of beliefs — doctrines or dogmas — bringing a foundation of security and a structure of safety — or perhaps bringing an overly restricted mindset, called bigotry.
So, do our interpretations of our experiences work in our believing? We should differentiate between fact and fantasy. Yet, we need to use them both productively. We should demonstrate in our living their worthiness and their precious usefulness.
Application of our beliefs and our faithfulness to them is essential to test both them and our experiences. That is what faith is all about.
Well, we generally hope our beliefs are correct. Yet, isn’t that kind of hoping nothing more than wishful thinking, or the more exotic pipedreams? Just wishful thinking not really based on anything can spoil the family picnic. Let me ask it this way: Do we hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow, or do we put our hope in choosing to believe in our favorite TV Weatherman?
The Bible is the record of ordinary people who have both ordinary and extraordinary experiences. They chose to respond to those experiences in a variety of ways based on their perceptions and beliefs. Both their positive experiences and their tragic consequences were woven into the tapestry sewn together into a thick quilt. God’s intention was not only to keep them warm back then but to keep all of us who followed warm and snug in our futures.
Those who benefited most were living in the knowledge of the presence of God. Unfortunately many clung to their own prejudices, but those examples were also for everyone’s benefit — “learning experiences,” as I’ve heard it said. You see, we can learn from one anothers mistakes as well as successes.
Unfortunately, back then many never came to belief and many even turned to ethereal ideas they perceived as reality, their own untested perception of reality. They wanted to make their own quilts. They thought they had better ideas for the designs. Many only remained faithful to their own perceptions of their own experiences.
I see that as a constantly changing battle line with deadly skirmishes between the rewards of faithfulness and the consequences of estrangement.
I’ve been there, and it is a very lonely place to be. There is no victory — only stalemate. There is no enduring advance. There is no warming quilt.
I see no real differences existing between the experiences of the people of ancient Biblical times and the experiences of we modern people of today.
The lessons are the same: Live and learn.
After all is said and done, it is what evidence a person relies on to form perceptions and conclusions, beliefs, and actions. It is what and how we choose to interpret what we actually experience, and how we decide what and who we believe, and then finally, what we choose to act on.
So many choices; so little time…
Now, my faith and hope are not ethereal, although they used to be. I actually had no hope. No formed beliefs. Faithfulness to nothing… so depressing.
Thankfully, that situation changed.
The changes came from new experiences I have had and continue to have. For over fifty years, my life has continued to change for the better through a personal relationship with Jesus — Jesus who does oversee all my footsteps — both slipping backward, getting knocked sideways, forward, and face smashed onto the ground — all my experiences became enwrapped in a new relationship — the relationship God has always intended to exist with, not just myself, but with everyone.
Suddenly, I could see how God opened one door for me with His finger and closed off another with a mighty hand. He is continually making me into a better person despite my faults and failures. I need God, Jesus, and the Bible… They do just fine without me, but that Bible reveals that they choose not to live in separation. They joyfully choose to live with people who choose to live with them.
To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the devious you show yourself shrewd.
You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty. — Psalm 18:25–27, New International Version.
Yes, Jesus changed my life through a variety of experiences and in many positive ways, and he continues to do so — and that, for my own benefit, not his. He doesn’t need anyone, but he has chosen to love everyone.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16, NIV.
“So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us.” — Hebrews 6:18, New Living Translation.
“God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through?” — Numbers 23:19, ibid.
