The Devaluing of Scripture and the Rise of our Experience

In modern Christianity there has been an increasing devaluing of scripture with a subsequent emphasis on promoting personal experience and transitory, earthly benefits of following Christ.

Being a Christian has become, therefore, a state in which we commune with a very non-specific and poorly defined presence of God. As is fitting since subjective, personal experience is presented as the infallible, unquestionable rudder by which our walk with God is steered.

In order for us to esteem so much our own experiences it necessitates the lowering of scripture so that it sits in subjection to how we feel. Instead of our bibles being used to validate our experience, it is our experiences (and their often prideful and/or culture-focused influences) which, ultimately, validates the bible.

This is a terrible thing and has lead to a prominent expression of Christianity that is more in line with a secular spirituality draped in the echoes of church tradition and which uses the bible as a reference book. It is the end result of a lifting up of how we feel about things rather than a dedication to what God has told us and how that ought to rightly influence our feelings.

If, however, our bibles are the actual, inspired words of God given to us by the Creator of the universe and all existence then we need to properly frame this in relation to ourselves and our churches. A dedication to pursuing an experience at the neglect of the loving boundaries of scripture is actually an outworking of our own sinful assumption that we and our inclinations should be in charge.

One popular outworking of this way of thinking is the tendency for using scripture to back up an already decided upon conclusion. Context and authorial intent are often scrapped in order to shoehorn a verse or two into a pre-constructed opinion. The reality of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is used as licence to assume the experience of inspiration which supersedes scripture. The result is referred to as an anointed word and is propped up with a weak frame of biblical texts without the necessary work of proper exegesis using a historical-grammatical hermeneutic.

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."
(2 Timothy 3:16-17)

We should have a high view of the bible and a low view of our own opinions. It is given to us so that, through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we can rightly divide the word of truth. Not as the means by which we validate our whims and experiences.