Truth Vs. Experience

As a society evolving in a culture called post-modernism you are bombarded constantly with messages like, “Image is nothing, obey your thirst!” (Sprite) Or, “I’m lov’in it!” (MacDonald’s) Or, “Never stop growing. Never stop!” (Milk) These advertising messages all have one common thread, as with so many just like them, and that message is: That your experience defines what is real. If you thirst—THAT is real—and what your thirst compels you to drink is TRUE or REAL! We can say that the orientation and desire of your thirst is more REAL than the image or even the substance of what you drink. If you are “lov’in it” then THAT is real to you. If you are merely being told what to eat THAT is not real to you, but the oppressive force of authority. If you’re eating it, and you’re lov’in it, then it is real and true whether it contains any nutritional value or not. And the one sure thing to keep you growing, according to the Dairy world, is milk! Milk is always working inside of us to give us healthy and strong bones. Like anything else that you experience that causes growth, milk is real! Your experience either validates the worthfulness or worthlessness of any given thing. EXPERIEINCE is everything, and we cannot know what is true anymore without IT. Therefore, there is no relevancy to such things as authority or objective truth unless they are validated by experience. Almost every advertisement you see on TV or on a billboard targeting you as users of their product are saturating you with that message, consciously and unconsciously. Do not accept authority based on someone else’s claims, but prove any and all authority before you call it true—by your own experience. Now whether you drink a can of Pepsi based on the image it presents or you drink a can of Sprite because it will truly satisfy your thirst is quite trivial; but the message Sprite is proclaiming goes way beyond its own product to a “worldview of life”. The worldview that Sprite is proclaiming is that inward desire and thirst are the authorities that validate what is true for us. Our desire to experience something defines what is true for us. So if you don’t desire or thirst for something it is irrelevant. It ain’t happening and it ain’t true! So if you don’t thirst for God, He isn’t true, and you therefore have no obligation to accept the claims He makes of Himself or the demands He makes of you. And if you don’t desire to come to church on Sundays, then worship must be phony and a grand waste of time because experience defines for you what is true! And if you have no desire to read the Bible then it has no claim of truth over your life. It cannot. Your experience determines what is true, and you have no desire to read the Bible, so it must not be true. Others may find things to be true that you don’t, but unless you yourself experience IT to be true—IT is not! This high view of EXPERIENCE will one day regretably and sorrowfully lead us to the awful experience of God’s judgment and wrath! That is an EXPERIENCE we don't want to patake of before validating it as real! Then it will be too late: "As it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" (Heb.9:27) This is not an idle threat to scare people, but a profound declaration of mankind's position before the God who says, "I AM!" (Exodus 3:14) It is the plunge of a harpoon into our guilty consciences and weary souls that is followed by the sweet gracious words, "...so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time apart from sin, for salvation." (Heb.9:28) Jesus said, “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life…” So Pastors and Bible teachers have the difficult task of trying to press upon the Church and culture the authoritative claims of God that are objectively true outside of any experience you may have of Him. God is objectively true—whether you experience Him or not! God’s Word is objectively true—whether you thirst to read it or not! God’s church is the embodiment of His truth—whether you desire to be apart of it or not! Remember this today that God will judge and validate all our experiences, but our experiences will NEVER ultimately judge or validate Him! If you can accept God’s self-acclamations of Himself, presuppositionally, you will be the richer and happier for it! God is true and let every man be a liar (Rom.3:4)!