Scripture and Experience
September 18, 2022
There are three different ways to allow Scripture to interact with our experience of life. The first is to come to Scripture with our experiences firmly in mind, and interpret Scripture in that light. At its most extreme, this results in saying things like, “Scripture says Jesus was raised from the dead, but every fool understands that the dead stay dead, so what Scripture really means is that the disciples had formative spiritual experiences of Jesus after he was dead.”
Sometimes this is more subtle. We read the poetry of Psalm 104, describing God as the creator and sustainer of life, actively involved in even the thriving of wild creatures, and we step back and explain how God does all those things through science. It’s such a small thing it barely merits mentioning, but it is still us teaching the text, rather than the text teaching us.
At some point, this interest in teaching the text becomes an entirely different way to allow Scripture to interact with our experience of life. We see ourselves as so different from those people back then, that we no longer see Scripture as relevant to life today. If I have to teach Scripture about my experience every time I open it up, why even open it in the first place? The authors of Scripture are dead—they can’t learn anymore.
There is a third way to allow Scripture to interact with our experience of life—we bring our experiences to Scripture and allow Scripture to interpret our experiences. We use the God-breathed language of Scripture to help us understand the world around us.
We’ll still use the language of today. We’ll still look at creation and see the water cycle and food chain and so on. But our primary language, our heart language, our native tongue, is Scripture. Science is true, but the deeper truth, if you want to know what’s really going on, is the claims of Scripture. Yes, the food chain, but more true than that—“These all look to you, to give them their food in due season…” (Ps. 104.27).
So, too, in times of unjust suffering, we cry out with the words of Job or Psalm 22, or find solace in the gospel of Isaiah 52. In times of greed, we use the description of idolatry in Isaiah 57 to show us what our greed really looks like. In times of persecution, we see Nebuchadnezzar or Darius around us. In times of joy, we might use Psalm 30 or Luke 1.46-55.
None of these are perfect fits for our situation or experience. They don’t simply give voice to one emotion—they meld suffering with hope, shame with instruction, joy with humility. They give us language to express our experience, but also language to interpret that experience by. They proclaim, but they also teach. In this way, we add our experience to the experience of God’s people throughout history, and learn to see God in the book of our lives.
—John Coffey
