I recently had a coworker ask me a question. While this is fairly commonplace, I was struck by the reply of my coworker. This man, a professing Christian, has experienced the death of several family members, two of whom have passed away recently. He asked me, knowing that I take my study of the Bible seriously, if I had ever heard that the ghost of a person may remain in the house in which the person died for seven days after death. I gave my typical response – which is to share what God’s Word has to say about the issue in question.
What the Bible has to say about ghosts, spirits, or paranormal activity will be the subject of a future blog post. The focus of this post is the response of my coworker when I explained to him what God’s Word has revealed, if anything, about his question. His startling reply was, “I know what the Bible says, but….” The Christian man then spent considerable time telling me about several personal experiences that he and others in his family have had with “spirits.” No matter how much I tried to redirect him to “what the Bible says,” my coworker wanted to tell me about the validity of the experiences.
One small, three-letter word can say a lot about one’s worldview. In this case, “but” is such a word. The word “but” clearly infers that in this case my coworker’s personal experiences trump Biblical revelation. This is a tenuous position in which to put oneself. I have come to understand that a Christian who is grounded in God’s Word should be expected to interpret personal experiences through the lens of God’s Word, not the other way around. Personal experiences are subjective, while God’s Word is objective. The main revelation of God’s truth – the Bible – is the objective lens through which each person (subject) should interpret the world around us. Many misunderstandings, superstitions, and even harmful teachings have a foundation in emphasizing personal experience over Biblical revelation.
I’m interested to hear what you think about this. Does personal experience, as real as it is or seems to be, trump Biblical revelation?
They act just like the apostles who told Jesus that he should call fire down from heaven to consume those that had rejected Him in Samaria. Jesus’ reply was, ” I came to save life, not to take it” People can sometimes get just as heard hearted and heard headed as these disciples were. Jesus even told them that their hearts were hard because they did not consider the miracle of the loaves and the fish, when they were so surprised at Jesus calming the storm.