Talking Pigs and Experiencing God

“Imagine that I cart a pig into your living room and tell you that it can talk. You might say, “Oh, really? Show me.” I then wave my wand and the pig starts talking. You might respond, “That’s amazing!” You are not likely to say, “Ah, but that’s just one pig. Show me a few more and then I might believe you.” —V. S. Ramachandran

The point of this quote is that if you experience one pig talking you are unlikely to need more proof that it happened. No amount of non-talking pig proof would convince you that the pig you heard didn’t talk. Your experience trumps all.

People often have “God experiences” in life that they swear happened to them. They saw visions of dead people, mystical experiences of healing, direction-giving or seeing the future.

No amount of Biblical evidence will convince them it didn’t happen, it did and you can’t take that away. Soon experience is trumped over Biblical consistency. There is no longer a unified basis of conversation.

Sometimes it even works the other way. Scripture says in order to be a true believer you have to hate your family, money, self-promotion, etc. “Well, I never did that and I’m saved.”

Because our experience doesn’t back up what Jesus says we assume Jesus didn’t mean what He said.

Making experience trump the Bible is a sure way to get yourself off the strait and narrow. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. He is more than willing to use signs and wonders, dreams, experiences or lack thereof to get you to trust your life events over Scripture.

If Scripture is indeed our sole authority for life and practice, let’s make it that. I’m not against experiences; I’m against making experiences the final authority when experiences can be deceiving when God’s Word never is.

3 thoughts on “Talking Pigs and Experiencing God”

  1. That reminds me of two events: the Exodus and Christ’s temptation in the wilderness.

    In the Exodus, God clearly delivered them by His mighty word. But then things did not go so smooth: water was scarce, it was hard in the desert, food was scarce, at times they had to just sit there and wait without knowing what was happening. There was no more outward evidence, and so they lost their faith in the word.

    In Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, He had the powerful evidence of the spoken voice and dove at His baptism, and then He was “driven” into the wilderness. Then there was nothing…no food, no water, no command to leave. But He clung to the word and did not let the circumstances overpower His faith. It was a very difficult struggle, since He knew that the salvation of the whole world depended on His living long enough to do His ministry and death, yet here He was apparently left to die. It would have been so easy for Him to just walk out of the wilderness to His mother’s place and get some food. We underestimate these tests that Christ endured for us.

  2. Your understanding in a sense is right, but what you did is simply the same to what you’re pointing out. simply because you never even use a verse from the “SCRIPTURE”

  3. I actually mentioned and quoted parts of five different verses including linking to one directly.

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