Danger in our dreams

In April’s Southern Cross, I critiqued the teaching about intergenerational spirits which has become popular recently. One reason why we are sometimes open to such teaching is that it comes associated with remarkable spiritual experiences. In ourselves, we can find no other explanation than that God has blessed us in a miraculous way, and therefore that the teaching itself must be true. But there are other explanations even for miracles and we need to be cautious and test everything by the word of God.

Let’s start by thinking about spiritual experience as such. Experience is highly valued – and with reason. It gives authority and authenticity. I may imagine what it is like to sail to Hobart in the great Boxing Day race, but I can scarcely speak with any authority about it unless I have made the trip. Imaginary water and real water are different.

Likewise in spiritual matters, experience counts. One of the things which distinguishes nominal Christianity from the real thing, is the lack of experience of the nominal Christian. A spiritual experience helps to assure us and make us more confident in God. Thus, for example, a striking answer to prayer is something which we treasure and which serves to keep us praying.

Spiritual experience is indispensable. But that is not the same thing as saying that we should seek it as such. We seek God and his will as revealed to us in scripture. Experience of the mercies of God follows from this. Our faith in God, must be shaped by God’s revelation of himself. We seek answers to prayer, not the experience of having prayer answered.

There are limitations to experience, even spiritual experience. In the previous article, I wrote about some of the perils of accepting the new teaching about intergenerational spirits and the way in which people are being taught that they have to deal with the alleged legal rights of spirits over them because of the commitments of their ancestors. I made the point that this teaching was not scriptural. It does not pass the test of being true to the Bible.

But many would reply that it works in practice, and that they have experienced real benefits from adopting it in their personal lives. Indeed some of the stories associated with this teaching are extraordinary. We can scarcely doubt the evidence of our own experience. However, life is not as simple as that.

Let us make the point by starting with the opposite - bad experiences. Not all experiences are pleasant or positive. Many times in life we experience painful and negative things. We may be impoverished; we may be starving; we may be sick; our relationships may be the source of immense frustration and anger; we may feel that God has not heard our prayers; we may have been abused.  If we are content to allow ourselves to be led by experience, we will come to the view that there is no God, or that God is malign. That is what experience may well tell us.

But, as Christians, we do not think that experience has the first or the last word. On the contrary, all human experiences need to be understood through the clear teaching of the word of God. We must be discriminating. The true Christian will strongly disbelieve what seems obvious about his or her experience in favour of the biblical teaching that God is love and is sovereign.

So, too, with apparently good experiences. Say we experience dreams or visions which turn out to be accurate predictors of events. There may be occasions when we can thank God for such an experience. But that is not the same thing as saying that we should seek them or incorporate them into our ordinary life or use them as a means for guiding our behaviour and the behaviour of others. There are a number of dangers in doing so, mostly based on our lack of understanding about what is going on. Just as it is wrong to conclude that a whole string of personal disasters mean that God is no longer in charge of our lives, so a long string of accurate dreams does not mean that God is wanting to relate to us via such visions.

It is possible, for example, that visions are unusual but natural events. It may be that something like ‘prevision’ exists and is shared by a small percentage of the population. I have certainly heard of a case where someone with no faith had had a dream. which proved to be true. about which horse would win a race at Randwick. They used the knowledge to lay a bet! There may even be occasions when God uses this strange phenomenon to forward his purposes. But it may also be the way in which evil forces draw us away from the true and public revelation of God in scripture to a private world of fantasy and power-seeking.

After all, the New Testament shows us that the work of evil people and the evil one can be accompanied by miracles and supernatural signs (e.g., Matt 7:22; 2 Thess 2:9-12; Rev 13:11-14). As well, extraordinary miracles are attested in all sorts of religions and cults. The difficulty with relying on experience of the miraculous is that it proves too much. If something strange and beneficial happens to us, it is good to thank God, but perilous to draw too many conclusions about the significance of the event. We may be drawn into dangerous waters. The interpretation of the miraculous is very difficult.

What I like about the revelation of the Bible is its public nature. We all know what God is saying to everyone. It suits the nature of the Christian faith as creating a fellowship of people travelling together. He makes himself clear, and his commands are mainly to do with the sort of people he wants us to be. It truly shapes our faith. Additional private revelations also shape faith, but the more they are relied on, the more our faith becomes exclusive and idiosyncratic.

Sometimes we take what appears to be a short-cut in order to save time, and it turns out to be the long way round or even perilous. The quest for spiritual self-defining experience is like that. As ever, what we need is to accept the life-experiences which God may give us, some of which may be extraordinary, but always to focus on the public revelation of his Son through his word, and to understand all experience from that vantage point. 

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