The title of this piece is a bit of poetic license. I am combining the Psalmist’s challenge to “taste and see that the Lord is good….” (Psalm 34:8) with Paul’s admonition to “test everything”. (1 Thess. 5:21) The general thrust of these two verses is an invitation to seek God and truth and to test what we think we know.
Tasting suggests that we can experience that God is good, and testing suggests that we can measure, in some respect, that experience with God. While the existence of God is not susceptible to testing and measurement like we do with science in a laboratory or in physics (for many reasons), these statements are claims that we can in some sense measure, prove, and have confidence in our conclusions.
Both writers are talking about experience in these passages, something that is frowned upon as evidence in our modern, western culture. I will come back to that. First, though, I want to make some observations.
It should go without saying that tasting and testing requires some commitment to the process. Tasting is highly experiential. If we are going try to “taste” something, we have to engage in that process.
We cannot taste through another person’s experience. It requires our own engagement in the tasting, and that requires some willingness on our part to engage.
On the subject of being scientific about spiritual experience, we can and should listen to what others say who claim to have tasted that God is good. We can and should weigh the “results” and conclusions of various people who make these claims.
In that process, we could categorize, compare, and contrast the tasting and the testing and reach some conclusions purely on basis of the data collected. I have done that anecdotally for years, and I suspect I could find some more objective data pools of these largely subjective “experiences”. The larger the data pool, the more objective we can be in our analysis of them, though they are subjective for the individuals involved.
Tasting and testing, as we are challenged to understand it in the Bible, however, is more personal than that. We can study other peoples’ experiences for a lifetime and never really know what the experience is like in the “biblical” sense of knowing.
These thoughts today are inspired by the following quotation by CS Lewis from his seminal book, Mere Christianity:
“A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works; indeed, he certainly won’t know how it works until he’s accepted it.”
The emphasis on accepting something without knowing how it works seems to run counter to the way we do science, but I don’t think it really is. We do a lot of science on a hunch without knowing whether we are right or wrong. We might call those hunches educated guesses. We don’t know whether a hunch or educated guess is right until we put it to the test, and we understand it better in the process.
Science is the study of the natural world around us. Things like beauty, morality, spirituality and the existence of God are not in the same category, and not susceptible to the same kinds of proofs, as the natural world. But, that doesn’t mean that we can know nothing of those things, nor that we cannot be “scientific” about them.
Unlike the natural world, which is the typical medium for science, we are the medium for such things as morality, spirituality, and the existence of God. I am not saying that we can know nothing of those things through a study of the natural world; I am suggesting that we are the primary prism through which we see, test, and understand the more ephemeral subjects of morality, spirituality, and the existence of God.
That means, that we are the subject of our “experimentation” of these things in ways that are not true of the sciences. Psychology is similar to these more theological or philosophical subjects in this sense. We can introduce elements of the physical sciences into the study of psychology (and we do), but much of psychology eludes traditional scientific methods of discovery.
Of course, we tend to have less confidence in the “science” of psychology as a result. We have learned to trust what science (the study of the natural world) can tell us and to discount conclusions that elude traditional scientific method and analysis. Maybe rightly. Maybe not.
I often remember a joke my father told me when I think about the relative “ease” and clarity of scientific research compared to the task of more metaphysical study. It starts with a person seeing a guy across the street under a street light who appeared to have lost something. The Good Samaritan crossed the street and asked, “Can I help you?”
The guy explained that he lost his car keys. They both searched under the street light for some time, but they found nothing after. Finally, The Good Samaritan asked, “Are you sure you lost your keys right here?”
Without missing a beat, the guy said, “Actually, I lost them over there in the dark, but it is easier to search under the street light.”
While this is a joke, it seems to be similar to the attitude of some people who limit their focus to the study of the natural world (science); and refuse to consider the possibility that anything might exist that cannot be identified in the natural world.
Charles Darwin was more candid about these things than most modern materialists. He recognized his “inward conviction” that the universe is not the result of chance, but he could not make sense of metaphysical reality, which he confessed seemed like a “muddle” to him. (See Universal Design Intuition & Darwin’s Blind Spot)
Darwin ended up rejecting his “inward conviction” because he was not willing to trust it. He reasoned that “the mind of man, which has … been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, [cannot] be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions.” Though he had an inward conviction in the existence of God, he gave into his doubts;
“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
Darwin rejected his “inward conviction” by embracing his ability to reason. Ironically, however, Darwin failed to appreciate that his ability to reason also “developed from the mind of the lower animals”. He failed to consider, in the absence of God, why anyone should trust the reasoning of a monkey’s mind, if indeed there is any rationality in such a mind!
Indeed, CS Lewis was famous for saying that we have no reason to trust human minds on a naturalistic worldview. A naturalistic worldview undermines human rationality. Why should we trust random atoms firing in the soft fiber inside our skulls?
It may be ironic, also, that the most prevalent answer given by atheists in research done by Jana Harmon for her doctoral dissertation for why Atheists do not believe in God is the lack of subjective evidence. (See The Side B Podcast: Episode 3 – Unanswered Prayer & Atheism – Brandon McConnell’s story)
We blindly trust in what we “know” to be true and what we have experienced in most of our thinking. Yet, many people reject out of hand “spiritual experiences” because they don’t into categories we prefer. Perhaps, we do that because we have trouble, like Darwin, making sense of them.
We live in a culture in which science is king, and anything that is not easily susceptible of “scientific” inquiry (as we might define it) is discounted and dismissed. Many people won’t even dare speak of experience because of the suspicion that has grown up around subjective, spiritual experiences.
And for good reason! Scientific method is, perhaps, the most reliable tool we have for getting at objective truth about the world we live in. Science is a discipline that has been honed by careful methodology over centuries, and the reliability of the knowledge produced by science is evidence of its value.
We can all think of people who have fallen for wild stories about aliens, spurious spiritual concepts, and far-fetched ideologies because they were not skeptical, methodological or disciplined in their thinking. The smell of rotting flying spaghetti monsters seems to permeate the spiritual, theological, and philosophical trash heaps. (Not that there are any such things!)
Yet, the most prevalent reason why atheists do not believe in God (as observed by Jana Harmon in her research) is the lack of subjective proof. The Bible seems to recognize the need people have to see or experience for themselves the truth of God.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good….” That is the invitation – an open invitation – to all people.
One obvious, but underrated aspect of personal experience is that it is personal. Though my personal experience may not be very convincing to you (especially if you have not had a similar experience), and your personal experience won’t be very convincing to me, my personal experience resonates with me in ways that more “objective” facts simply don’t do.
This simple truism can be seen in then fact that children often don’t heed their parents’ warnings. They have to learn the “hard way” – by personal experience.
On the other hand, if your experience is like my experience, we have a profound connection that we can instantly understand about each other. Common experiences are validating. The more universal the common experience, the more validating it is, and the more we can have confidence in our own experience if it is shared with others.
The very nature of my personal experience is that it is part of my story. It fits into my story in ways that might make sense to me, personally, and the sense that it makes in my life is profound.
We live in keeping with our subjective experience and the intuition fed by it more than we know or care to acknowledge. This is true for the atheist and the theist, alike. The effect of our intuition and subjective experience is so great on us that Jonathan Haidt calls human objectivity a “rationalist delusion”. (See The Myth of Human Rationality)
We would do well to acknowledge that we are not as rationally driven as we think we are. Despite ubiquitous social media memes warning about echo chambers and confirmation bias, we seem to be more biased than ever!
As finite beings, we cannot help but be biased, and we might be strongly tempted to give up any hope at understanding objective truth altogether. We can only view the world (ultimately) through our own, individual, personal minds. My knowledge, experience, and understanding provides my filter through which I see the world. Do I dare trust it?
Our perspectives are all slightly different based on our personal knowledge, understanding, and unique experience. None of us know it all. The human race doesn’t know it all, and it likely never will.
We have the benefit of the knowledge, understanding and experience of those who came before us and shared with us, but that corpus of knowledge includes a hodge podge of disparate conclusions – if we are being honest. Sometimes, we have a hard time finding a real consensus on some very fundamental things (like whether a human fetus is a person), and human consensus changed often through history.
We collectively accept some things as fact, and some things as fiction. We often reject things that were once collectively assumed to be true. We collectively accept some ways of understanding and reject others, and those collective positions are always changing. We do not always agree on what the facts are (let along the correct understandings of those facts), and the “consensus” is constantly shifting and changing.
In the middle of that great muddle, the Bible offers the bold invitation to taste and see (for yourself) that God is good. The Bible also invites skepticism: test everything. The Bible invites us to the experience and to test the experience at the same time.
If you are going to do it, you have to give it a fair shake. Be “scientific” about it. As with any scientific undertaking, the experimentation should be set up for the possibility of success. No scientist does an experiment that is set up to fail.
The experimentation also must be appropriate to the thing being tested. If we are testing the concept of a personal God, we should not set up a test designed to calculate chance probabilities or a test designed to test an immutable law like gravity. A personal God isn’t going to act like rolls of dice or gravitational pulls.
You would want to up set up a “test” designed to detect the existence of a person. Not a human person, albeit, but a divine one.
Indeed, we are invited to seek (Matt. 7:7), and we are invited to pray. (See Bible Verses about Prayer) We are even invited to notice God trying to get our attention. (Rev. 3:20)
As with anyone doing science, you can’t expect your first attempt to produce the results you are looking for, and you have to brace yourself for the possibility that your experiments may not “work the way you intended. You need to be analytical and open to accept the results that follow – not just the ones you expect or prefer.
This is what it means to test everything. We are very susceptible of seeing only what we want or expect to see. The Bible even acknowledges this when it says in very stark terms: the human heart is deceitful above all things. (Jer. 17:9)
In short, seeking God is like doing science, at least in respect to the need for thought, care, patience and a balance of healthy skepticism and informed expectation.
Yes, skepticism: what is the benefit of believing anything is true when it is not? Yet, the point of experimentation is to test a premise, and there is no point to testing a premise without giving it a fair shake.
If you have read this far, and you do not believe in God, or are not sure that God exists, or you have believed in God, but you have doubts, perhaps you will accept the invitation to taste and see in the spirit of testing everything. What could be more important than determining whether God actually exists?
Innumerable people have claimed to have connection and relationship with God. Set aside the fact that there are differences in the conception of what God (or the divine) is like. If there is something to these claims, wouldn’t it make all the difference in the world to know there is some basis for that claim?
If there is some basis to that claim, which I believe there is, you can sort through the “muddle”, however difficult it seems, with the same kind of “scientific” approach as you test the premise of God. The process of inquiry may not be the same as the process for inquiring into probabilities or laws of nature, but the “difficulty” is no reason to abandon the attempt.
Indeed, the difficulty may be overblown. I believe it isn’t as difficult as we make it out to be. The greatest difficulty, perhaps, is keeping your own desires and preferences in check. The greatest difficulty is being honest about your subjective experience and letting the evidence guide you – including the comparison of your experience with others.
While personal experiences other people have may not (and probably should not) be convincing to us, they can be helpful in identifying how people set up their own “experimentation” in determining whether God exists. We can identify patterns and things that “work” or do not “work”.
I have collected many such stories that I have called Journeys to Faith. Many of those stories are told by people who were non-religious, including atheists. I have collected many stories told by people of extremely diverse backgrounds, from non-religious people to religious people, including people of all religious backgrounds.
The diversity of the backgrounds and the “journeys” to faith from so many different cultural, educational, socio-economic, and personal backgrounds is invaluable in being able to identify the common threads that run through those stories. Patterns emerge that might be helpful to you.
Jana Harmon, who I quoted above in this article, turned her doctoral dissertation into a more readable book that you might also find interesting, if not helpful. (See Atheists Finding God: Unlikely Stories of Conversions to Christianity in the Contemporary West) The stories of atheists who claim to have found God are, perhaps, most compelling because of their dramatic change in thinking from atheism to theism.
A the end of the day, however, you can only make the determination for yourself whether sufficient evidence exists for God. If God exists, what other say people about Him are irrelevant to you and your connection (or lack thereof) with God. Therefore, I invite you to test for yourself, personally, and see whether God exists.
As an example of someone who did this (after 30 years of trying to find meaning and make sense out of the world from a rationalist, materialist worldview, listen to Dr. Stefani Ruper’s story. What she found when she decided to step beyond rationalism and logic into an experiment with believing made all the difference to her:
Navigating by Faith 