Experience and Reason

Many people have found that their interest in Christ was initiated by an experience. Saul, later to be called Saul, was an ardent antagonist of the early church. He persecuted, imprisoned and attended the execution of those who had become followers of Jesus Christ. Then when he was travelling to Damascus to start a new scourge of Christians there, he had a life-changing experience.

“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’

‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul asked.

‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. ‘Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.’” Acts 9:3

It was after this dramatic experience that Paul put everything together in his mind, yet this vivid experience remained a vital factor for the rest of his life. Many years later, when arrested in Jerusalem, he gave a detailed account of this experience to a massed crowd. He explained why he had changed direction and had become a Christiani. Again at his trial before King Agrippa II and Festus he repeats this storyii. He then continued his defence by showing the King the Jewish Scriptures concerning God’s Messiah that Jesus fulfils and in this way he supported the early experience he had had.

The God depicted in the Bible is not just an abstract philosophical idea but an all-powerful being with personality who is actively involved in his world. Although he is all powerful and able to do whatever he wishes he has clearly chosen to allow this world to work according to rules he instituted. We call these the ‘Laws of Nature’. At times, especially when Jesus lived, these laws were suspended and real miracles occurred. Outstanding example of this is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the subsequent the gift of the Holy Spirit to all his church. This gift was a dramatic physical event associated with the sound of a violent wind, tongues of fire that separated to rest on each Christian and then the gift of courage so that they all started to tell those around them the facts about Jesus and they did this in the languages of visitors to Jerusalem, languages that they had never learned.

C.S.Lewis derided the idea that God can be trifled with or ignored with impunity when he wrote of Aslan,

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” iii

When God wants someone to belong to his people he acts. It is a basic doctrine in the Bible that God chooses those people who are to be his. We know we are one of the chosen people because we want to be forgiven, give up our independence and join others in God’s church to be the ambassadors of Jesus Christ. He calls people who are both religious and irreligious but it is not until we enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that we are secure or saved.

God calls us in a wide variety of ways, sometimes through experiences, sometimes through guilt and sometimes through logical conviction. It is an interesting finding that nearly all Christians can look back and see that God worked in their life through two factors - the presence of an obedient Godly Christian and an opening up to them of the Word of God.

C.S.Lewis’ story

C.S.Lewis was a brilliant scholar in Oxford. As an atheist he had many discussions with Christian friends such as J.R Tolkien, the author of ‘the Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. The notion of God kept going round and round in his head. It was when he was on a bus going up Headington Hill in Oxford that he was suddenly struck with the idea that there must be a God. He had become a ‘theist’ but still not a Christian. He studied, read the Bible, and discussed much more now. The Bible became a major book of interest. It was when he was on a journey coming back from Whipsnade Zoo that he came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was God. There and then he committed his life to him. He described himself as ‘the most reluctant convert in England’. Over the subsequent years he investigated all types of evidence, both objective, social and instinctive, and became one of the greatest apologists for the Christian faith. His books are still widely read and help many.

Augustine’s Story

Augustine was a bright but profligate youth. His mother was a Christian but he turned his back on all that. He had an illegitimate son but he knew that there was a deeper meaning to life. Augustine visited an aged and highly venerated priest in Milan called Simplicianus.  Augustine told Simplicianus of his theological agonies, and Simplicianus replies by telling Augustine about Victorinus, a famous and erudite translator of Neoplatonic books, books that Augustine had recently been reading. Victorinus had become a Christian. This story deeply affected Augustine as Victorinus was highly educated. The fact that a man of such philosophical and intellectual prowess should turn to Christ made Augustine "ardent to follow his [Victorinus'] example." However longed for peace with God but still could not find this. One day he was under a fig tree weeping in a garden with a deep longing for peace when he heard a child in the next door garden say repeatedly ‘Tolle lege’, ‘Tolle lege’, ‘Take up and read’, Take up and read’. He had never heard of a game with these words but as he had been reading but determined to follow the advice, thinking it was a message from God.

“So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle's book when I had left there. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away.

"Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts" Rom 13:13-14

No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”iv

Thus began Augustine’s Christian life. He was to become perhaps the greatest theologian the world has known. The inconsistent rough edges of his old life were put behind him. He now had a coherent world view that gave him peace and he determined to live for his Saviour.

The Rev William Haslam’s story

William Haslam had always been a religious man. He did his best to live as he thought God wanted him to. He was ordained and became a vicar in Cornwall, but he didn’t know God. He became very troubled and another clergyman suggested that the real problem was that he had never relied on Christ for his salvation and challenged him whether he was truly born again. That Sunday morning he felt particularly low but thought that he ought to go to his church as there would be many coming. He decided that they would just sing a hymn and then he would send everyone home. However as the hymn finished he decided to read the lesson which was from John chapter 6. When the reading finished he thought he could give a short talk on this passage. However as he was preaching he grasped for the first time that it was not what he did for God that mattered but what Christ had done for him. He was choked with a mixture of joy, peace and a new love for Christ. He later wrote of his experience. At the back of this book is a print showing a packed church with one of the congregation standing up and exclaiming,

“The pastor is converted.”

God remains the same and calls people today in all sorts of ways but still his Spirit usually works through obedient Christians who pass on the message of the Bible.

The following are the stories of two of my friends who became Christians through strange beginnings but these drew them to Christian friends and the Bible.

Nick’s Story

Nick is a very bright musician who had been brought up in an atheist home. At university, where he studied Chinese and Philosophy, he used to ridicule the Christians. Then something happened that was later to lead to a profound change in his life. He wrote,

“As a final year undergraduate, content in my modern, right-thinking humanist worldview I went to bed. Within a few minutes and still awake I found myself in the presence of God. After just the briefest of meetings the presence receded and I again found myself wide awake but with a worldview that had just been smashed to pieces. Such damascene conversions, like the Apostle Paul’s in the first century are unusual and deeply personal. Thankfully, only some of us are so antagonistic to Jesus and thick-skinned as to need such an obvious and personal kick up the metaphorical backside. Most Christians come to a living faith through natural means alone: an open mind and the rational appeal of the gospel.

I am not so naïve as to expect anyone to believe my story of the supernatural at face value, or think that it might have happened but not without scientific explanation. After all, it sounds rather absurd in our age does it not to say you met with the living God and that he spoke to you? With many years between then and now even I might be given to question its veracity; except that like an underwater earthquake it started a tsunami wave that is still running and which provides all the evidence I need to know it was for real.

A few days previously I had dominated the conversation amongst a group of friends where I had demolished the existence of God with my ‘proofs’, which were in fact just impressive sounding arguments of logic learned as a Philosophy student. A week later, the same group of friends found me strangely quiet when conversation returned to the subject again. Eventually being challenged to speak, I stated as simply as I could that I had changed my mind. I now knew that God existed although the details were well beyond my grasp. Do not underestimate the courage it takes for such a public admission and to lay yourself open to ridicule and incredulity – my friends who knew me did not as the look on their faces testified.

As for those details, in truth I knew that I had met with the Christian God but did nothing much about this revelation, and a fresh study of the Bible did not feature on my agenda. After having grown up at a time more traditional in its attitudes, and attended a school where We were familiarised with the Bible stories I thought I knew it already. And for a young man in his twenties in the vibrant sexual liberation of the 1970s the moral implications of the Bible would be uncomfortable. The clinching reason for lack of progress was that I had been told to keep looking, and I selfishly interpreted that as an excuse to prevaricate. And so life continued much as before except I now utterly rejected that the universe was the happy chance of blind, irrational forces happening to come together in an inexplicable harmony, and was quick to state it was deliberately crafted by an all-seeing, intelligent designer.

By the late 1980s I had secured a good City trading job, was married to a wonderful lady with two thoroughly talented and captivating children, home was comfortable and two cars sat on the driveway. Worldly success was mine but inside there was a growing emptiness and disenchantment. Life struck me as a meaningless treadmill of days without direction. As colleagues sought solace in drink and outbound pursuits I continued to try and soberly make sense of things. It was now that a seeming coincidence of conversations about God over a couple of months made me angrily tell him to keep off my back. But he had other ideas; I was being being told it was ‘time to sort out Jesus’. Exactly who is he?

Several years later I was referred to see a surgeon and needed an operation. I was somewhat apprehensive and the surgeon asked me,

“Do you have a faith that helps you at a time like this or aren’t you sure about these things?”

I briefly mentioned how I had been an atheist but had had this strange experience of God whilst a student, but that I was still unclear. He then simply said,

“Perhaps this will be an opportunity to think these things through.”

The operation went well and I got on well with the surgeon. However as he was discharging me he said,

“Would you like to come and join a small group of us who meet to read the bible each week in my home?

Three weeks later I found myself quite unaccountably and inexplicably in a Bible study at the home of a Christian. Those there were people like me with lots of questions, some with impressive academic qualifications and positions of responsibility in their careers. Here was the opportunity to consider Jesus and his claim to be the God whom I had met. I found myself intellectually intrigued, but also challenged because the evidence in favour of Jesus being for real quickly overtook those against. Even the clever words of Richard Dawkins and his ilk could not prevail here.

At heart, the Christian truth is profoundly simple in that it starts and ends with a person, - Jesus. But the depths of this truth will keep the human mind occupied for a lifetime. When he says, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’, he is saying he is the defining point of all things. He is the prime mover of the physical universe and all it contains and he is the only true premise of all rational argument about the reality of our lives. Like a visual illusion when you finally see it, the Christian gospel is so obviously right and true in every respect, describing the world and my life as it really is. Without Christ, the world remains an illusion and nothing that happens makes any sense or has any intrinsic value. No wonder that our young people, raised in a godless time, are so nihilistic.

Remember I was an affirmed atheist, but it is now my conviction that other atheists and humanists would come to say the same if they only stopped to let the Christ of the Bible speak to them too and to weigh the evidence with the same scale and measure they use for other matters. It is ironic that in order to deny God the atheist knows exactly who God is that is denied, and nurtures an irrational inner anger towards him when the object of their anger is supposed not to exist!. Furthermore the atheist always speaks with precious little knowledge or understanding of the Bible and its doctrine and so gives away an ignorance as blind as those beloved memes and forces of chaos.”

Dave’s Story

“I have an unusual claim to fame – I believe I am the only person who has ever played in the national football Jewish and Christian Cup Finals!

I was born to a typically east end Jewish family in 1952. My family weren’t ‘religious’, but I went to Hebrew classes and believed in the God of Israel. I also proved to be one of the best Jewish footballers of my generation playing for Britain in the Maccabiah Games and in several national cup finals.

However, after my bar mitzvah I pretty much ignored God for the next 25 years.

Then at the age of 38 in 1990, just like the queen, I experienced my ‘Annus Horribilis’

In the space of 12 months I was divorced, lost custody of my two young children, was made redundant three times, lost my home and was left virtually penniless. Unsurprisingly this left me near suicidal and in an attempt to sort myself out I started to read the book ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’.

As I worked my way through the book, one Sunday evening I came across a chapter about praying directly to God – which as a Jew I had never really done before. I went to my room and prepared to pray. Suddenly and for no obvious reason I saw Jesus standing in front of me.

I know that sounds a little wacky when written in cold black and white, but it really happened and that one moment changed my whole life. Yes, me, a tough east end Jewish footballer, just like the apostle Paul, had received an appearance from the Lord Jesus himself.

And believe me it was Jesus (but don’t ask me how I knew, I just did) and it was a vision (not a dream or something I had imagined). After initially feeling very frightened, I then had a warm feeling as if someone was putting their arm round my shoulder and telling me everything was going to be alright.

And how true that proved to be!

The next day I went into work and told my story to Steve - a new friend I had made who had told me that he had become a Christian. A remarkable series of what I thought then were ‘coincidences’ but now know to be God’s providences unfolded.

Steve proceeded to present me with a new Bible that he had just purchased for me. I read the New Testament for the first time and found my heart strangely warmed and sensed that what I was reading was true.

Steve said he and his church, which was many miles away in Thame Oxfordshire, were praying for me.

Steve discussed my problems with a Christian leader at his church. It just so happened that the person Steve talked to had himself been helped to become a Christian through the friendship of someone at college who lived in Letchworth, North Hertfordshire, where I was now living. He suggested I phone this person whom he felt would help me. I did phone and was immediately invited round for a meal and a friendship and answers began to flow.

My new friend encouraged to join a course that he was just about to start, to look at the evidence of Jesus’ claims to be the son of God, our Messiah and what he taught.

On this course we were shown a video giving the testimony of Helen Shapiro, the retired pop star, and I realised that a Jew could become a Christian.

By the end of the course I realised that the experience I had had with the vision of Jesus was supported by very good evidence that the claims of Jesus were true. I learned how I could be put right with God by the very Christ who had appeared to me. We read in the Bible what being one of God’s people involves. I had no qualms about giving my life to God by asking Jesus to be my own Lord and Saviour.

And oh how my life changed from that point on. Spiritually, I found peace and purpose and meaning to my life. Materially, I got back into the job market and soon got back to a level of financial security. Emotionally, I met and subsequently married my beautiful wife Heather who had become a Christian at the very same time as me!

Even sportingly, at the age of 40, I started playing football again for a Christian team and got to the national Christian cup final to achieve that unusual claim to fame that I mentioned at the beginning.

It did take me a while to reconcile how you could be Jewish and Christian at the same time but the more I learnt about grace and that Christianity is not about a religion but a relationship with Jesus the more I came to terms with it. Of course eventually I came to realise that I was in fact a ‘complete Jew’ and had great joy in going back to my Jewish roots and seeing the richness of my heritage of being one of God’s chosen people.

I became a committed Christian, was baptised and was wonderfully mentored personally. When Heather and I moved to Chessington because of work, we soon became involved at the local evangelical church. I started to help with Christianity Explored courses and was involved in volunteering at the newly built Community Centre. I was soon asked to become a Deacon.

It seems as though God had a plan for my life that completely took me by surprise.”

Such visionary experiences are uncommon and in any case experiences, visions and the like are never enough to substantiate an idea. They must be supported by reason and evidence. Any faith must be evidence-based. Jesus confirmed this when discussing with Jewish people his claim to be the Messiah where he also insists that the evidence is overwhelming.v New religions throughout the world have sprung up when people claimed they had received divine messages their followers failed to verify the claims.

Most of us are attracted to Jesus when we see the Christian life being lived and then have the Christian message explained. Some are so attracted to Jesus and what they have seen in others and learned about him and his teaching that the intellectual questions are not an issue. Others want to have the ‘i’s’ dotted and ‘t’s’ crossed before they make any decision about the place they will give to Christ in their life. What matters is not the route to faith but the change real faith brings. This is a major piece of evidence

The Evidence must be checked

One of the main reasons I was inclined to investigate the claims of Jesus was because of what I saw in some Christians lives. They did seem to have a friendliness, openness and integrity that was attractive.

Charles Bradlaugh was a Victorian atheist who opposed Christianity. One day he challenged a Christian minister, Hugh Price Hughes, to hold a debate, comparing Christianity with atheism. The minister agreed on one condition – that Mr Bradlaugh bring with him a hundred people whose lives had been changed for the better by their commitment to atheism. If he did so, Mr Hughes would also bring along a hundred people whose lives had been changed for the better through knowing Jesus. Knowing that Mr Bradlaugh could not fulfil this demand he offered to drop the number to first fifty, then twenty, then ten and finally one! Understandably Mr Bradlaugh had to withdraw his invitation. He could not produce one man or woman in whom his beliefs had brought about a real improvement of character. Atheism has no moral power to improve peoples’ lives, whereas Jesus is continually doing this. Such evidence is valid.

Sacred Hearts was a film about some girls living in a Roman Catholic orphanage during the Second World War. One of the girls admitted to the rather austere nun in charge of her that she had lost her faith. She told the nun,

“I have lost my faith; I just started to think and I lost my faith.”

To this the nun replied,

“Well, stop thinking and your faith will come back!”

What awful advice. If something is true then it will always bear honest investigation. The girl should have been advised to weigh up all the evidence, evidence from science, evidence about Jesus and the evidence our instincts give us. Then she would see that the Christian story is true and that she casn get right with God. The problem is that most people don’t want to look at all the evidence because, deep down, they don’t want God to be their God.

i Acts 21:40 -22:22

ii Acts 26:12-18

iii C.S. Lewis, ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’

iv Aurelius Augustine, ‘The Confessions of St. Augustine’, book 8, chapter 12 para 29

v John 5:31-47 and John 8:12-30