I've come to sense a rising dissatisfaction in myself about certain viewpoints of those in the Church. By "the Church" I mean those in my limited sphere of influence, those within the church experiences that I've had since the beginning of my 10 year journey as a committed follower of Christ.
My dissatisfaction is that I see a growing trend of people "thinking away the Holy Spirit". The phrase that has been rolling around in my head, through probably not proper English, is "intellectualism". It's where understanding, perceiving, and judging spirituality through a cognitive lens is the end-all of our Christian walk.
Before I go further, please understand that I am not saying "throw away your brain" regarding faith. Please don't think that I in any way want people to stop thinking about Christ, His works, the Holy Spirit, theology or ANY of that. God instructed us to love him with every part of us, including our brains. In fact, I think that meditating on God is an act, a part of life, a discipline that can bring us closer to him.
But what I am seeing is that people are too willing to trade experience with God for an intellectual commentary about God. To have a collection of facts regarding Jesus is like having a collectable baseball card about Jesus. You can know all the stats you can possibly get about Jesus but never have an experience of meeting Him. Or worse yet, having met Him once at the moment of salvation and then gone on to be satisfied with collecting those cards and stats about Him, rather than a life-long, ever deepening relationship with Jesus.
And I feel like what has been happening among my local Christian community is that we judge experiences with Jesus based on the stats we've memorized. We discuss and argue and discern with knowledge that we've accumulated secondhand, none or little substantiated with current, intimate experiences with Jesus. Yes, Scripture gives us a foundation of truth on which to base our faith because it gives us a backdrop of the heart of our Father. It gives us a wealth of knowledge and a myriad of insights into God's character, into who Jesus is, who the Holy Spirit is. If the experiences that we have do not line up to the heart of God and line up with His character as outlined in the Scriptures, then we obviously need to be careful.
But please, let's not stop at the Scriptures! Let's carry the Scriptures with us as we run into the loving arms of our Father! I want to see God hit home runs, just like it says on His card! I want to talk with Him about what He's done and I want to be with Him when He sets more records.
