Author: kevingdrendel

I am sixtiesh, an English Literature major in college and an attorney by profession. Faith informs my life, and this blog is about my faith journey.

A Whiff of the Eternal

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mitchteemley's avatarMitch Teemley

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What if the sense of smell did not exist? After all, no one can hear, touch, or see the aroma of new ground coffee beans, or the misty balm of jasmine blooms. Without the sense of smell we would never know that scents existed. In fact, were there rumors of such things, we would dismiss them as myths.

But what if a few people had the sense of smell? Many would label them liars or lunatics. And those who believed them would be scorned as simpletons.

This is the way it is with the things of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:14 tells us, “The natural man,” the person who believes only what may be experienced with the five external senses, “cannot discern them. They are foolishness to him, because they can only be spiritually discerned.”

After completing her monumental analysis of the world’s great mystics, the British psychologist and philosopher…

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Whose Side Are We on?

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Where will Christians stand in history as we look back? Some would say we were on the wrong side of slavery, the Holocaust and Apartheid, but Christians were most definitely on the right side of each of those evils – at least, some might say, the real followers of Christ.…

Source: Whose Side Are We on?

Can Personal Experience be Proof of God?

For the writers of the books of the Bible, God was not an idea adopted by the mind, but an experienced reality which gave significance to their lives

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Dr. William Lane Craig is a Christian philosopher of the highest caliber.[i] He has multiple doctorate degrees and has taught at various colleges and universities. He is a prolific writer, and has debated most of the well known, outspoken t atheists, agnostics and skeptical thinkers of the world on philosophical, theological and other issues.

In the short clip below, which is a segment from a longer interview on the various arguments (proofs) for the existence of God, he discusses an additional basis for knowing that God. This basis, or claim for the existence of God, is personal experience.

This is not an argument for the existence of God based on logic, and it isn’t an objective, evidentiary proof. It is more like a personal proof or confirmation of the existence of God distinct from (not contrary to) reason.

A personal experience with God isn’t a substitute for reason, but neither is reason a substitute for the experience.

The main ways that Dr. Craig usually discusses the proof of the existence of God is logic, scientific evidence and philosophy, but he insists these aren’t the only proofs we have.

We might be apt in the western world to discount personal experience and to be suspicious of it, and for good reason. Charles Darwin was suspicious of his own intuition, being the product of evolution from lower life-forms.[ii] A good friend of his got lost in the morass of spiritualism, and that experience of seeing his friend chase down the rabbit holes of irrational, spiritualistic notions influenced Darwin to distrust his own intuitions.

Of course if Darwin was consistent, he shouldn’t have trusted his intellect any more than his intuition, as both human intuition and intellect are the product of evolution from lower life-forms. If human intuition is tainted by its development from lower life forms, so is the human intellect. It didn’t occur to Darwin, apparently. that his intellect suffers the same weakness according to his own reasoning.

As for personal experience, even though we have some warrant for being suspicious, we shouldn’t be completely dismissive. We shouldn’t trust our experience, alone, but how does it fit into the proof we have of God?

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The Importance of How We View God and Ourselves

He who is forgiven little, loves little.

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depositphotos Image ID:31614317 Copyright: DesignPicsInc
depositphotos Image ID: 31614317 Copyright: DesignPicsInc

The story of the sinful woman who wipes Jesus’ fee with her tears and anoints them with oil is a tender but rather uncomfortable story. [i] A Pharisee had invited Jesus to eat with him at his house. While reclining at the Pharisee’s table, a woman, a known sinner, came up behind him.

Where did she come from? How did she get into the Pharisee’s house? Was she, perhaps, a daughter of the Pharisee, one of whom he was not very proud? was there something else going on? We don’t know.

When she came up behind Jesus, she was weeping, and she began to wet his feet with her tears. She wiped his feet with her hair, kissed his feet and anointed them with oil. A greater display of open, unabashed affection is hard to imagine. Thinking of the vulnerability and openness of her affection is even uncomfortable.

The Pharisee was taken aback, as we would be, mumbling to himself that surely Jesus must know who this woman is. Her reputation was well known, at least to the Pharisee.

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