[Kathrin Halder, of IGNIS (a Christian psychology educational center in Germany), and fellow Society member provides us with some thoughts on the role of experience in the Christian life.]

I don’t know about you. But in my Christian upbringing I was trained to cherish the Word and Christian doctrine over everything. I was urged to read the Bible, to bathe in it, to have my entire mind filled with it and to trust it more than my feeble human experience (so e.g. never saying that miracles could not happen, even if I had never experienced it so far).

Well, no Christian would probably want to argue about the importance of the Word and doctrine, about its predominant role in contrast to human experience. Nevertheless today I want to dare to advocate the importance of experience in the Christian life.

For one I don’t see the Word and experience as a strict contrast. As Immanuel Kant pointed out in his famous saying “words without experiential correlations are empty.” Words as well as the Word could not even be understood without experience. Would we really understand what the Bible would mean by grace, love or forgiveness, if we had never made any experience with somebody being gracious, loving or forgiving in our life?

And is it not actually the Bible itself teaching that God wants to lead us into an experiential relationship with Him and with the truth given in scripture? Would the Word not remain grey theory, if we clung to the mere word without seeking experience? Does a one-sided way of teaching that we live in faith and not in sight lead to an anemic Christian life, where we stop reaching out for things like physical healing? Just because we don’t “need” it we may try to prove to ourselves that we trust in the scripture itself without the necessity of experience.

I believe that a healthy, balanced inclusion of experience provides some helpful hints to find wrong interpretations of the Bible. For example, does somebody interpret the biblical call to be overcomers as living a life without problems in some constant stoic tranquillity? Experience could assist in finding out about that error. When problems, deep feelings of anger, or unrest and fear come, we rightly interpret that we don’t fully live the life of an overcomer yet (what most definitely is true). But on the other hand that experience also leads us to an honest cry to God that something is wrong, that something doesn’t work in this life. And thus God might be able to correct us, to show us that he means to be present in our trouble, for us to pour out of negative emotions before God as we come close to His comfort and solutions for the situation.

I love the Word, I cherish it deeply, it will always have the predominant place in my life, but I have also come to respect the importance of experience in my Christian life, of dissolving wrong contrasts between the Word and experience. And sure enough my life has become less anemic!