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To a visitor who claimed he had no need to search for Truth because he found it in the beliefs of his religion, the Master said: "There was once a student who never became a mathematician because he blindly believed the answers he found at the back of his math textbook and, ironically, the answers were correct."
Spiritual truth is not a matter of just getting some facts right. One can be far from the experience of truth and quote daily any one of the ecumenical creeds of the Church. A pastor can preach and teach weekly, and he can still be far from the experience of truth. A professor in Christian religion can have an intellect close to his subject and a heart that has never known it. A person can attend Bible Study weekly and read devotionals daily, and never have an inner relationship with the truth. But, in contrast, a person can have little intellection of spiritual matters, while being filled with the knowledge of the heart.
Note the wise words of Pseudo-Macarius (c. 400):
Those who speak about spiritual topics without tasting or experiencing are like a man who, walking in a desert, has an overwhelming, raging thirst, so he draws for himself to satisfy his thirst a picture of a fountain flowing with water, while all the while his lips and tongue burn for thirst. If one were to lecture on the sweet qualities of honey without ever having tasted honey, he would be ignorant of the power of that sweetness. In a similar way are those who talk about perfection, about joy or freedom from passions, yet lack personal experience and knowledge of them.
I Peter 2.1-3 speaks of personal experience by the analogy of tasting, and provides such personal communion as motivation for healthy relations in Christian community:
So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation--if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Hebrews 6.4-5 contains reference to a direct and in-depth experience of Spirit. The text speaks of persons who have “tasted the heavenly gift,” “shared in the Holy Spirit,” and “tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come.”
Knowledge, to be true knowledge of the good Word of God, must pass through the heart. The mind can lead us toward truth, only the heart can lead us to be transformed by truth.
Reflection
1. Reflect on ways that you daily seek to experience the Presence of God.
2. How do you experience the Presence of God with others in worship?
*The opening story is from Anthony de Mello; quote of Pseudo-Macarius is from his Homilies, in Trans. and Ed. George A. Maloney, "The Classics of Western Spirituality"; Scripture is from the ESV.
**OneLife writings are offered by Brian K. Wilcox, a United Methodist pastor serving in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. He writes in the spirit of John Wesley's focus on the priority of inner experience of the Triune God; scriptural holiness; ongoing sanctification; the goal of Christian perfection (or, wholeness). Brian lives a vowed contemplative life with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, in North Florida. OneLife writings are for anyone seeking to live and share love, joy, and peace in the world and in devotion to God as she or he best understands God.
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