The Idol of Experientialism and Emotionalism

Mark 8:22-35

Mark 10:46-52

In the movie "Frequency" a young man is playing with a short frequency radio when an unusual occurrence in the atmosphere allows him to speak to people not only from a long distance away, but also to people in the past and specifically his own father. What is heart wrenching about the movie is that the father of the young man had died when the young man was a child. Not only was the young man able to talk with his dad while he was in the present and his father was in the past but he was eventually able to prevent his father from being killed. Having lost my father when I was three years old I could relate to the desire to talk with the father and I could also envision the possibility of preventing my father’s death. If I could speak to him in such a way I would tell him not to take that plane. In the middle of the movie I was weeping.

Some of you will remember the television show, "Eight is Enough." The first year of the show the woman who played the mother of the children, died. The producers decided to write her death into the script. A later episode showed how the family was struggling to celebrate Christmas without their mother when they found a gift she had wrapped earlier for one of her sons. While the son stood bawling as he opened the present I cried as well envisioning finding a gift like that from my mother who had died.

I share these examples with you because I wanted you to know how sensitive a guy a really am. And I wanted you to have a clear example of how experience and emotions can collide together to deeply change a person. Having lost my parents when I was three years old I have experienced what no one can fully understand. That is not a statement of arrogance but of recognition that we all respond to events in life differently. Even if you lost your parents at a similar age my experience would be different than yours. My experience caused me to view the movie "Frequency" and an episode of "Eight is Enough" in a much different and moving manner than most of you. That does not mean, mind you, that you should conclude that either the movie or the television show was of good quality. The movie’s premise was preposterous and the television show was only trying to tug at the audience’s heartstrings.

Emotions and experiences are powerful forces in our lives. They mold us in deep and profound ways. And yet, when emotions and experiences are placed at a level of authority, meaning they dictate what we believe or how we live instead of the Holy Scriptures or the Holy Spirit, we have a problem. We have an idol.

I have placed emotionalism and experientialism together as one idol because I perceive them to inform one another. That is to say that we become emotional about what we experience and because of what we experience our emotions are moved. What happens when emotions and experiences are given too much authority is a conviction that settles in our minds which concludes that everyone should have similar emotions and experiences to our own for them to be legitimized as human beings. For example, if I have a relationship with my wife where both of us enjoy one another’s company so much that we agree to never go on a vacation without the other we are tempted to believe that all other married couples, if they truly love each other, should feel the same and agree to the same. If they don’t we will likely conclude they are not as in love as we are. Such a conclusion is overtly unwarranted but because our emotions are so strong about something we can’t imagine someone feeling any different.

Let us look at a biblical example. From the gospel reading we rehearsed the story of the blind man from Bethsaida being healed. The particulars of the story are important. People brought a blind man to Jesus. That does not mean he did not want to come on his own volition, but their help is unique. They wanted Jesus to touch him but Jesus did more. He led him out of the village appearing to want to perform the miracle in private. He began by spitting on the man’s eyes and placed his hand upon them. He then asked, "Do you see anything." The man replied describing the ability to see figures of men. They looked like trees walking, he said. Jesus followed this up by placing his hand on the man’s eyes again. After the second touching the blind man was blind no more.

Two chapters later, in the gospel according to St. Mark, we read of Bartimaeus being healed of blindness. Instead of the being brought by others Bartimaeus is alone by the side of the road, begging. Instead of the people asking Jesus to heal the blind man as they did in Bethsaida, the blind man, Bartimaeus is yelling out to Jesus. His request is not to be healed, exactly, like people from Bethsaida requested, but to receive mercy. It could be argued that a blind man yelling for mercy is the same as him yelling to be healed. I do not completely agree with that argument because there are many other aspects of a blind man’s life that are cause for mercy. A call for mercy first and foremost is a necessary recognition that we are fallen and sinful people. We deserve nothing from God. Whatever we would receive from him would be a gracious act, an act of mercy. Though many people rebuke Bartimaeus for crying out to Jesus, he is not detoured. He cries out again, "Son of David, have mercy upon me!" By calling Jesus, "Son of David" Batimaeus is displaying a keen faith that recognizes Jesus as the King, the Messiah that in prophecy was said to come through the bloodline of King David. Jesus hears this statement of faith and wants to meet Bartimaeus. When Bartimaeus comes to him he asks him what we would assume is an obvious question. The man is blind. Jesus knows this. What else would a blind man want but to see? Jesus obviously wants to hear the request for himself, and the question he poses is also proof that the Bartimaeus’ first request for mercy was recognition of his sin.

After the request is made Jesus does not spit on the eyes of Bartimaeus. He does not touch Bartimaeus. He does not ask Bartimaeus what he sees. He simply says, "Go, your faith has healed you."

If the Spirit of God simply wanted us to know that Jesus healed the blind he could have guided Mark to write down one story and tell us that Jesus healed others as well. Because he tells us these two stories in detail, and tells them close together we are required to look for deeper messages than only, Jesus healed the blind.

Perhaps you are unaware that it is recorded elsewhere a meeting between the one time blind man from Bethsaida and Bartimaeus a few months after they both had been healed. Hearing from mutual acquaintances that each had been healed by Jesus of blindness, they shared their stories with one another. When the man from Bethsaida found out that Bartimaeus had cried out to Jesus for mercy he began to wonder whether his own healing was complete for he himself did not cry out for mercy. When Bartimaeus found out that the man did not cry out for mercy he began to wonder whether the man had truly met Jesus. Bartimaeus explained how he was healed in an instant and could not understand why it would have taken longer for the man from Bethsaida to be healed. When the man from Bethsaida explained how Jesus had spit on his eyes and found out that Jesus did not spit on Bartimaeus’ eyes he began to wonder if Bartimaeus had ever met Jesus for as far as he knew Jesus always spit on eyes when he healed them. The men departed very skeptical of one another. Each went to his hometown and started his own church. The man from Bethsaida named his faith, The Church of the Spittites and Bartimaeus named his faith, the Church of the Non-Spittites. Thus denominationalism was born.

Of course I made that story up. I did so with the hope that the lesson is clear. A persons experience and emotions that were felt as a result of experience do not need to be the same and someone else’s. It is dangerous, as dangerous as worshiping an idol, for a Christian to believe that particular emotions and experiences are normative.

An older couple I once ministered to had three daughters. The oldest daughter had a child out of wedlock and did not attend church when I met her. The middle daughter had a faithful confession of our Lord. She was involved in Bible studies, regularly attended worship and spoke boldly of her faith. The youngest daughter was a skeptic. She confessed a faith in Christ but was not faithful in her attention to the teachings of Scripture. Getting to know the daughters individually I concluded that each of them approached their faith according to their personality and conditioning caused by their mother. Their mother had a strong personality meaning she spoke her mind and spoke it often. Their mother also had an outgoing faith. She shared her testimony often. Part of her testimony told of a time when she swore she heard God’s voice. She did not hear it internally, but audibly. When she tells the story it is very convincing. If you told her she must have imagined it she would throw you out of her house. How this affected the oldest daughter was traumatic. Because she had never heard God’s voice she wondered out loud if God existed and if he did she wondered if God cared about her for he had never spoken to her audibly. The youngest daughter thought her mother was a bit crazy. The testimony was so far out of the norm that she believed her mother to be gullible. This allowed her to perceive most other Christians as gullible. The middle daughter understood her mother’s testimony to fit her mother’s personality. She knew she did not have to have a similar experience and she knew that those who said they had such experiences, although she doubted them, could still be genuine believers.

In an example such as this the immature in faith become confused because they do not know what is normative. The skeptical in faith perceive those who rely heavily and experience to be a bit wacky and gullible. Either way, experience in this case, did not help the witness of Jesus. Because faith is the substance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen most of us have not heard an audible voice or seen a figure of Christ that assures us we are saved. As the two blind men being healed differently reveals, there is not a normative way that God operates. There is, however, a biblical way. That means that there are biblical examples of God not acting in a normative manner and the non-normative manner of God is never inconsistent with his character.

Let me close with another example. In the late eighties and early nineties there was reported among Christian circles stories of what became known as "The Toronto Blessing." The "Toronto Blessing" began in a charismatic church in Toronto, Canada and was given a special title because some unusual things occurred there. During the services more than a few people would break out into hysterical laughter. This phenomenon became known as "Holy Laughter." At the same time other people were making noises during the service that resembled wild animals, such as a roar like a lion. Many people swore by these experiences believing them to be expressions of the Holy Spirit. Once the rumor spread churches across the United States started witnessing bouts of "Holy Laughter" and animal noises.

It may not seem possible for someone like me who has never been to Toronto, nor have I heard anyone make an animal noise in a worship service, to say that these manifestations are phony or not of God. Who am I to question another person’s experience? I can, however, do just that, question some ones experience, if said experience goes against Holy Scripture. Christians are instructed regarding worship in 1 Corinthians 14 to do everything decently and in order. "Holy Laughter" in the middle of a service is not decent or orderly. Neither is the making of animal sounds. This behavior might send an individual up to a higher emotional level than others but it is not conducive to corporate worship as it distracts those who have their attention upon a person’s hysterics rather than upon God.

This sermon has included many examples or we could say, many experiences. Each of them is measured against the ultimate standard for Christians, which is the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as recorded in Holy Scripture. That is enough. How we come to a belief in Jesus is not to be measured by anyone else’s experience. Any experience that is contrary to the plain teachings of Scripture, however, should be scrutinized. Just because someone claims to have experienced something does not make him untouchable. The standard is God. The standard is what God has revealed of himself. No man needs more than what God has revealed and not man needs an emotional experience to be confident in his salvation.