Religious Experience

A student recently asked me about the meaning of Religious Experience for Christians.  Here is my reply...

On religious experience: 

Many people have waxed eloquent on the meaning of RE from lots of religious perspectives, but if I understand you correctly, you would like to talk a bit about how the Christian specifically would look at RE.  I think there are a few important things to keep in view here: 

1.  Religious Experience for the Christian never means something contrary to revelation (Scripture).  In other words, we always interpret our experience in light of Scripture...not vice versa.  So, for example, if someone has a religious experience and claims to hear from God that they need to start a new religion (like Joseph Smith) or that contradicts Scripture (like Joseph Smith claiming that Jesus is not God) we would say that this is not from God.  This would correspond with the view that God is consistent, unchanging (in the sense he does not shift his purposes, change his mind on things, or contradict himself) and that what is revealed in Scripture is correct.  So Scripture acts as a litmus test of our experience.

2.  There are many religious experiences that Christians have and the meaning of these experiences could be diverse.  For example, here are some types of Christian RE:  answered prayer, healings, direction in life, changed life, powerful sense of God's presence, powerful worship experience, miraculous rescue from danger, sense of peace, clear leading on a decision, hearing God's voice in the Scripture, dreams, visions, etc.  Each could have slightly different meaning, but for the Christian, we would also "check" them with Scripture to see if they are consistent with what God has already revealed.

3.  In all of the RE of the Christian, though, there are some broad meanings that I think are helpful to consider.  First, if God reveals Himself in some powerful way we can have even more evidence for the fact that He exists, the fact that God hears us, and the fact that God is involved in the world.  These are very important teachings of Scripture and are powerfully evidenced by religious experiences.  They are broad categories of meaning that probably apply to just about all RE for the Christian.  Here are some passages in the Bible to illustrate: 

Psalm 18:6 "In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears."    

Psalm 5:3 "In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly." 

Psalm 55:7 "Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress and he hears my voice!" 

Hebrews 11:6 "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

Jeremiah 33:3  "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know."

The Bible is also full of stories of religious experiences of course as well like:

When Elijah has a contest to see which God is real between God and Baal he says, "Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord. The god who answers by fire—he is God.” Then all the people said, “What you say is good.”  I Kings 18:24  Great story by the way!!  God answers with fire on the altar while the idols, of course, give no answer at all.

When Paul encounters a vision of Christ he asks, "Who are you Lord?"  and then later "What do you want me to do?"  See Acts 9.