My good friend Dena recently brought to my attention this quote from this book:
“It takes immense courage to trust our own experience and to be willing to pay the price if we are wrong – and we just might be! Why do we piously admire kingdom people like Mary and Joseph and then not imitate their faith journeys, their courage, their non-reassurance by any religious system? These were two uneducated lay people who totally trusted their inner experience of God (angels and dreams)…Mary and Joseph walked in the courage and blind faith that their own experience was true – with no one to reassure them they were right. Their only safety net was God’s love and mercy.”
I’ve been pondering the role of experience in the life of faith, and realizing that no matter how solid our Bible knowledge or how concrete our theological doctrines, we still come back to experience over and over again. Is this a comforting realization, or a terrifying one? Or both?
Ephraim Radner, Part II
Last month I shared with you Part I of my interview with my friend Ephraim Radner on his book Church. I’m happy to share Part IIwith you this month! Enjoy the rich conversation.
What I'm Reading...
I’m really excited to be using this book for a class I’m teaching at Fuller. Wright’s goal is to challenge common Christian notions about life after death, and I find his thought to be deeply refreshing and challenging. He nudges us to reconsider the biblical text, and to take our bodies and this world more seriously than contemporary Christian thought often does.
Also, if you’re interested, check out this debate between N.T. Wright and Messianic Jewish theologian Mark Kinzer.
May we press into the role of experience in the journey of faith, and seek to experience God more deeply day by day.
