In his Gifford lectures of 1901-1902, the psychologist William James explored “the religious propensities of man.” They were later published as The Variety of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature.
Theologians also study the variety of religious experiences of human beings, but take into account the divine actions which necessarily are involved in them.
“In him we live and move and have our being.” No one’s experience can be entirely unrelated to God and may even be specially influenced by the promptings of his Spirit.
A person’s religious experience is also shaped by many other factors—his or her personality type, culture, language, education, health, and the time and place in which he or she lives. That’s why such an experience could range, for example, from seeing a vision to having a new idea.
Every person is unique, no matter how many similarities he or she may have to another. Accordingly, every person’s religious experience is unique, no matter how many similarities it may have to the religious experience of another.
Some religious experiences are subtle and hardly noticed; others are dramatic and life changing. The Bible relates many stories of special religious experiences—for example, Jacob’s dream, Moses and the burning bush, young Samuel’s voice in the night, the annunciation to Mary, the call of Matthew, the conversion of Paul.
When Martin Luther King said, “I’ve been to the mountaintop,” he was alluding to his personal, life-changing experience of God that sustained him for the rest of his life’s journey, as did the experience of Moses.
Sometimes key religious experiences involve extraordinary tranquility and beauty; they can also be disruptive, painful, and difficult. If God and his actions were easily comprehensible, God wouldn’t be God!
It’s hard to generalize about the nature of religious experiences, but, as some spiritual writers observe, often in the early stages of one’s religious development they are characterized by “sensible consolations”—positive and pleasurable thoughts and feelings, something like falling in love with God.
As we grow and mature, the overwhelming attractiveness of the initial experience is gradually tempered, as choice and commitment gradually deepen a relationship which may have begun with more strong feelings and pleasure.
Discerning the action of God in our lives at the time it happens is very difficult. Usually it’s only in retrospect that we become aware of it and appreciate it—just as looking forward on a ship in motion it may seem very slow, but looking backward at the ship’s wake makes you realize how far and how fast it has been traveling.
There’s an often quoted Portuguese proverb, “God writes straight with crooked lines. My favorite understanding of it is something like this: we often choose a way, a direction, a purpose that we think is right and what God wants—but then we are disappointingly and frustratingly blocked and thwarted and have to strike out in a new direction.
The process may keep repeating itself as gradually we’re herded by God into the direction he really wants us to go—even though almost every stage of the journey may have its painful failures, dead ends, and requirements of mid-course corrections.
We necessarily again and again may need to revise, redirect, and reconstruct our lives.
16 June 2019