Pastoral Ponderings ~ The Friendship between Doctrine and Experience

I have often thought of doing a video where I would take a couple of old books to represent Bibles, and portray a scenario where someone would tear out of the Bible all the pages that describe relationship with God in terms of experience. To be fair, this would also require that someone else tear out of the Bible all the pages that describe God in terms of doctrine. The point would be to illustrate how much experience and doctrine are woven together in the Scriptures, showing us how doctrine and experience ought to be woven together in life. Take either one out, and the Bible is no longer the Bible. Of course, the video would end with the disclaimer that no real Bibles were hurt in the making of the production.

The video would revolve around two people discussing the two sides of the doctrine vs experience debate. One person would exaggerate doctrine without experience, while the other would exaggerate experience without doctrine. Both would use their Bibles to show how God is represented in their preferred manner. Mr. Doctrine would read beautiful expressions of what God is like. Mr. Experience would read the moving descriptions of God’s activity. By focusing on the one-or-the-other approach, they can never come to any kind of agreement.

After a while, a third person enters the scene. His name is Mr. Accord. He listens long enough to understand where Mr. Doctrine and Mr. Experience are coming from, and then makes a suggestion. He tells Mr. Doctrine to tear out all the pages of Scripture that describe God, or relationship with God, or the life of the people of God, in terms of experience.

“You must begin at the beginning,” Mr. Accord insists.

Mr. Doctrine opens his Bible to Genesis 1 and ponders the description of God’s work in creation. “Hmmm…” he considers quite reluctantly, “it appears that this chapter describes God doing things, so that would need to be removed.”

“Only fair,” Mr. Accord affirms.

“And the second chapter, elaborating on God creating Adam and Eve,” Mr. Doctrine continued, “that would definitely be an experiential description.” And out came chapter two of the Bible.

By Genesis 3, Mr. Doctrine was feeling a strange mix of shock, reluctance, and resignation. Eve’s deception, and Adam’s fall into sin, were clearly described in terms of their experience. This page had to go.

And so it went all through the Old Testament. Mr. Doctrine realized that page after page of the things he believed, and loved, were described in terms of experience between God and his people. He had never realized how much he knew about God through the things that God did, or the things God said in the midst of something he was doing.

So the threesome journeyed through the pages of Scripture, tearing out the pages describing God’s work through Noah and the flood, the dispersing of the people at the tower of Babel, his calling of Abraham, all the pages showing the early decades of Abraham’s descendants growing into the twelve sons of Israel, Joseph’s experience with his brothers, and his rise to prominence in Egypt.

Mr. Doctrine was humbled by the realization of how many pages he had to remove from his Bible because they revealed God through experience. He had never noticed this before. He was shocked at how little of his Bible was left when the experiences were removed. By the time he got to the gospels, and realized that everything Jesus did was expressed in terms of some experience, he was weeping uncontrollably at how much of his Bible he was losing because the doctrines he loved were revealed through the experiences of God and his people.

When Mr. Doctrine reached the end of his Bible, and was left with so few pages that contained doctrine written in purely doctrinal terms, with no experience woven through the descriptions, it was Mr. Experiences turn.

Strangely, although Mr. Experience had seen how many pages Mr. Doctrine had to remove because they involved experience, he was not brimming with confidence that he would fare much better. He had already noticed that the stories that had encouraged him to value the experience of knowing God also contained teachings of truth that he had missed, or ignored.

As Mr. Experience turned to the first chapter of his Bible, he realized that the experience of God creating the world was filled with doctrine regarding creation, and the origin and identity of man. The second chapter expressed the details of God’s experience of creating Adam and Eve, but it was full of the doctrine of man as male and female, their relationship to one another, and to the world around them. The third chapter was the horrifying experience of Satan luring Adam and Eve into sinful disobedience, but it contained the doctrines of sin, and judgment. It even introduced the doctrine of redemption, as one would come who would crush the serpent’s head through the bruising of his own heel.

The further along Mr. Experience moved through the pages of Scripture, the more he realized that each experience was framed with truth about God, things that were measured by the nature and perfection of the Triune. He could not look at Noah’s flood without seeing descriptions of what God is like, and what he thinks of sin, and his willingness to judge what is contrary to himself, and to his purposes for the world he created. He could not read about the tower of Babel without seeing that it only made sense when measured by the nature and purposes of God. The calling of Abraham, the birth of Isaac, and on through the twelve sons of Israel, and Joseph in Egypt, all revealed what God was like, and what his people were like in relation to God.

The book of Exodus showed what it meant that God was a covenant-keeping God. It revealed his power and glory in delivering his people. The rest of the books of Moses described life in relation to God in so many details that Mr. Experience could not miss how many things laid the foundation for the little bit of doctrine he had considered. Even traveling through the wonderful experiences of the gospels, and the book of Acts, forced Mr. Experience to acknowledge that doctrine was everywhere.

By the time Mr. Experience had completed his journey to the last page of the book of Revelation, he too was weeping at how much of the Bible he had lost because he had limited his understanding of God and his work to his enjoyment of experience.

Mr. Accord was not quick to speak, since both men had already arrived at the desired conclusion. However, he noted that both men were looking down at the tattered remains of their Bibles, unable to look up and acknowledge each other. While their minds had come to far more agreement than either had ever imagined possible, both were struggling to let their hearts share in the experience.

It was not long before both men had moved from their introspective conclusions, to the uncomfortable awareness of the other person. First they could only look as far as the tattered Bible in their opponents hands. However, even this acknowledgement had a humbling effect that denied any possibility of gloating. Both had lost too much to think that they had anything better than the other. No matter what either one had left in their hands, both knew there was far too much lying on the floor at their feet.

         

“It would be very hard to put this all back together,” Mr. Accord observed.

“Yes, very,” Both Mr. Doctrine and Mr. Experience agreed.

“Do you think you both might be ready for one of these?” Mr. Accord asked, as he held out two complete Bibles.

“Yes, very,” Mr. Doctrine and Mr. Experience again responded.

As the two men took their new Bibles, both held them as a treasure that had been theirs for a very long time, but had lain hidden under the extremes and limitations of their distorted views of God and his word. They felt the wonder of finding something new, and the grief of knowing it had been theirs the whole time.

“Anyone for a Bible study?” Mr. Accord suggested.

Both Mr. Doctrine and Mr. Experience broke into smiles as they opened their hearts to the wonderful opportunity just presented to them. Their godly sorrow over their limited and divisive understanding of God’s word suddenly turned into the joyful hope of looking at Scriptures together, and discovering how doctrine and experience as revealed in God’s word would lead them to the experience of living out the doctrines of God in real life.

“So, where would you like to begin?” Mr. Accord encouraged.

“How ‘bout in the beginning?” both suggested.

“After all,” Mr. Experience observed, “it does feel like we are starting all over again.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Mr. Doctrine affirmed.

And so began a wonderful relationship of truth spoken in love, building a fellowship of God’s children who were all the worshippers in spirit and in truth that God had been forming for longer than anyone knew. The Church learned what Mr. Experience had to offer in ways that Mr. Accord helped to see was fully in line with what was shared with Mr. Doctrine. And the Church grew as it built up one another in love.

© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com