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I think most people are skeptical of other people’s experiences. It’s only natural to be skeptical of experiences we have not had and do not share. When people have had experiences in common with or similar to us, we are much less skeptical. It’s also natural to assume the validity and legitimacy of experiences that we share in common or similar to the experience of others.

We have an affinity for people with whom we have shared experiences and for people whose experiences are similar to ours. Shared experiences bind us together. Those shared experiences affirm us and become part of our individual and common identities.

We let our guards down with people with whom we have shared experiences, and we can “be ourselves” with them. We want to affirm them because they affirm us.

These are all good things in and of themselves, but the affirmation is not always positive. Shared experiences can form the basis of co-dependency that is unhealthy and even destructive.

If we spend all our time with people with whom we share experiences, we can become insular and narrowminded. If we don’t venture beyond those circles of commonality, we may find ourselves in an echo chamber of conformation bias that blinds us to the false stories we tell ourselves and reinforces our narrowmindedness.

Common experiences can also have the opposite effect. People who spend significant time in other countries and with people not like them tend to be more openminded, more humble, and more accommodating of people who see the world differently.

As Christians, the common experience of being “in Christ” with people who are very different from us in ethnicity, native language, economic strata, age, etc. is mind and heart expanding. The usual commonalities that define us – like Jews and Gentiles, male and female, slave and free – give way to a greater identity that we find together in Christ.

Being in Christ should be a defining commonality for Christians, though we often default back to commonalities that are of lesser significance. We need to guard against that.

Jesus challenges every Christian to stretch ourselves in these things – to strive to make our shared experience in Christ the commonality that is preeminent in our lives. That commonality should be the one thing that unites us, though we may have little else in common.

Jesus also urges us to stretch back from that one commonality to engage a world that does not share that one common, all encompassing identity that unites Christians around the world. Jesus bids us to go out into the world to share the Gospel with people who do not yet share that common identity.

In doing that, we need to use other, lesser commonalities to bridge the gap, to make connection, to open doors to sharing the Gospel. Jesus is our ultimate example. In Jesus, God became flesh so that He could share in our humanness and, therefore, to connect with us so that he could share the good news with us.

We often become insular in our Christian community, however. It’s comfortable there, and the effort to connect with people who do not share the most important aspect of our lives is hard work.

We sometimes vacillate between the groups of people with whom share certain commonalities like chameleons, fitting in where we go. It’s hard to maintain our distinctiveness as Christ followers among people who do not know Jesus. Yet, this is our calling.

The religious community in the first Century was insular. The religious leaders criticized Jesus for making those human connections with the world – the tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners of his day.

If Jesus was born today, I am convinced he would be criticized for hanging out with the LGBTQ community, Muslims, and atheists. The people in those communities would be just as critical of Christ followers as they were in the 1st Century, yet our commission is to bridge the gap to share the good news. I don’t think the dynamics were any different when Jesus walked the earth in the flesh than they are today.

We cannot let our experiences define how we operate in the world. They can be good and bad, positive and negative, helpful in living out the Christian life and unhelpful, depending on our perspective. They can define us and bind us in our closedmindedness, or they can be tools for making critical connections in furtherance of the plans and purposes of God.

My thoughts today are inspired by something Preston Sprinkle said in response to a questions posed by a listener to his podcast, Theology in the raw. Sprinkle gets much criticism from within the Christian community for his efforts to bridge gaps with the modern world – especially the LGBTQ community.

I appreciate his heart and his attempts to make connections with the “sinners” of the world. Of course, we are all sinners. We know that, but we have a hard time putting it all in perspective. It’s difficult and sometimes messy work trying to remain pure and undefiled in the world and to “go into” the world at the same time with the Gospel.

One thing that he said seemed important enough for me to write it down. He said:

“I don’t determine my theology from other peoples experiences. You can’t. Which experience are you going to choose to determine it? .. . But I do think listening deeply to other people’s experiences should shape how we think theologically, how we hold on to our theology. Listening well to other people helps us put our theology into the conversation with real people.”

If you will indulge me, I am going to try to break down what I think he is saying. I think it is critical to our role as ambassadors of Christ to get this right.

Many people (including Christians) place a premium on personal experience that is not in keeping with a biblical worldview. We want to affirm other people in the way we also want to be affirmed. This is dangerous when that affirmation is contrary to the revealed truth in Scripture.

When we rely on personal experience uncritically, we risk putting ourselves above others, above God’s word, and above God Himself whose character establishes what is good and (by definition) what is not. Jeremiah warns us that the human heart is deceitful; it tricks us; and it leads us astray if we are not properly grounded. (Jer. 17:9)

Our theology cannot be rooted in the experience of others or even in our own experience. At the same time, our experiences can be a powerful witness and influence when they align with God’s Word and God’s purposes. We overcome by the blood of the lamb and by the word of our testimony! (Rev. 12:11a)

We need the affirmation of experience. God recognizes this when He invites us to taste and see that God is good. (Psalm 34:8) But, that affirmation doesn’t always run with the way we feel. Thus, the people who overcome are those who do not love their lives so much that they shrink from death. (Rev. 12:11b)

Following Christ means remaining true to Him even when we feel like shrinking back. When we push past the desire for self-preservation and self-defense is when we find the commonality (experience) with Christ that affirms our connection with Him.

Experience is a powerful thing. For many people in this meta-modern world today, experience is what defines people and gives them identity. Many people today are influenced more by their experience then by moral codes, faith, rational thinking, and even science (though they might pay dutiful homage to science).

This is the case for the LGBTQ community in which the experience of same sex attraction or gender dysphoria drives personal identity and worldview. The experience of hurt and hypocrisy from family, church community or church leaders define many peoples’ relationship with God, Christianity, and faith.

As Christians with a calling to be outward orientated in our roles as ambassadors for Christ, we need to be mindful of the influence that experience has in how people view us and relate to us. Thus, I think Sprinkle is right that we need to “listen deeply” to people.

We cannot brush off and ignore the role that experience plays in how people view us and view the world and be a good ambassador of the Gospel. While our theology cannot be so fickle as to be driven by other people’s experiences, we cannot lead with our theology and hope to make any connection with someone who has no personal connection with it.

I think this is what he means about “how we hold onto our theology.” Our theology needs to be flexible enough to allow us to connect with “real people” where they are at – just as Jesus was flexible enough to engage with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners.

We should’t have to compromise our theology to to do this, just as Jesus didn’t compromise his theology to connect with those sinners he was accused of being too close to and to comfortable with.

I think it’s safe to say that if the way we “hold onto” our theology doesn’t allow to us to get close to people who don’t presently share our worldview, then we are doing something wrong. The way we are implementing our theology is getting in the way of making the critical connections with people that are necessary for us to be the ambassadors Christ calls us to be.

I don’t claim to be good at this, but I see the walls we put up that box people out and prevent the real connections that are vital for the good ambassador of the Gospel. The experiences people have are real, even if too much emphasis is placed on them as a foundation for truth.

We have to be able to have conversation with people. We have to be able to connect with them. We need to trust that God is at work in ways we do not see and cannot know.

Jesus always loved first, and he shared the truth of the Gospel from a place of love and grace. Jesus loved the woman caught in adultery, first, before he told her to “go and sin no more.” Love is not subservient to truth; truth is subservient to love.