Ask the Pastors S6 E7: “Do non-Christians have spiritual experiences?”

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Welcome to Ask the Pastors a segment of the West Hills Podcast where you have the opportunity to ask your questions and receive biblically grounded, pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff. My name is Brian. I'm your host, one of the pastors on staff. I'm joined by Pastor Thad. Howdy. Our lead pastor Will,

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That's me

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And Pastor Austin. Fine. I'm responding to that. And thanks so much for tuning in. Today we're going to be addressing the question from Jack Passen. Thanks so much for your question, Jack,

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Miss you buddy. Yeah,

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Absolutely. And he asks, what is the wise response to give to a person who counteracts Christian spiritual experiences with those of other religions?

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I should say Jack is not dead. He just left. He went to grad school out in California. So anyway, we miss him. Great question. Wise response give to a person who counteracts Christian spiritual experiences with those of other religions. I'll go first. I think the last couple questions I haven't liked, so I've made y'all go first or asked you to, but this one I, I love Jack's questions. I think we just answered another one of his, was it two weeks ago? Anyway, great question and I think there's a couple things that for me I would want to say on it. I think the first thing to maybe be said here is that I believe that, yeah,

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Last week was when it aired

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Last week. Yeah. So I think that the idea of spiritual experiences in general is one of the weaker kind of apologetics, if you will, for any faith in some regards. Certainly kind of unverifiable if we can say that. Spiritual experiences. So I was in this car crash and I saw this bright light and heard this voice and that sort of a thing, like your own personal experience of this spiritual dramatic whatever, or I heard this voice or had this vision, this stream. Those kinds of things are great, important. I mean, we hear about 'em actually often in the Bible. People have spiritual experiences often in the Bible. The whole book of Revelation we were talking about a lot last week is a vision that God gave John. And so it's not to certainly diminish their importance. I just think as far as an apologetic goes or a defense of the faith to someone else, they are often unconvincing because someone's response is often just going to be, well, that's great for you.

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I'm glad you had that dream and that now you feel closer to God or know his revelation, his truth so much more clearly for yourself, that's fine, but unless this is someone that you're just so close and you just trust implicitly, how do I know that that is true? And I didn't get that dream. I didn't have that experience of being taken up into the third heaven. I mean, there's just so many in scripture that we hear about that again, are important. I mean, Paul had this spiritual experience that he's conveyed to us. And so a lot of people are going to read that in second Corinthians 12 and be like, well, good for you Paul. I'm glad you had that experience. So I think that should be said. I do think at the same time that one of the things that is distinctive about many of these spiritual experiences that we hear about in our faith in the Christian faith is that they are actually verifiable with, and I'll just maybe focus in because we've been the whole episode just talking about the resurrection.

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  I mean, the resurrection is Christ's resurrection. Ascension is the most foundational, formative, important spiritual experience that has ever been recorded in human history. And yet it is not just spiritual in the sense that it was this, again, disembodied kind of subjective, mythical, whatever story, but you have, I mean, Paul says in one Corinthians, five more than 500 people that Jesus appeared to and then James and John and me, and then you have Downing Thomas literally putting his fingers in the nail holes and you got four different gospel writers you got. And so you have multiple, sometimes apologetics called multiple attestation. I mean, you have many people, not just this personal experience, me and Jesus and I had this dream and this vision, but you've got a whole community of people and you've also got, frankly, you've got some people would say, well, they were predisposed to want to believe and make up a story or this or that, that maybe is all fine and good and flies until they start getting killed.

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  I mean, when the start getting rounded up and murdered for their faith in Jesus and they're not willing to renounce their faith because they have had this personal spiritual experience of the resurrected Jesus. I think now you have something that comes closer to a convincing apologetic where you have to got to at least answer for that you got to account for why did you have hundreds of Christians who were willing to march to their deaths rather than just say, yeah, no, I made it up. I mean, it was a dream, it was an experience and maybe I just ate a bad burrito. Like no, they would not renounce Christ in their experience of him. So I say that to say, I think to go to Jack's question about how we counteract Christian spiritual experiences with those of other religions. I mean the resurrection is the most, as I said, formative foundational, Christian spiritual experience.

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  And if we look at how it compares to the foundational spiritual experiences of other religions, you think of the prophet Muhammad receiving the revelation of the Quran from Allah on the mountaintop. I think the formative miracle for the Muslims spiritual experience, you've got this guy who's illiterate who comes down with this whole book or whatever. I think you can look at that. And one obvious difference is that's one guy versus more than 500. So if we're just looking at credibility like what's more credible that this one guy made up the story and truly knew how to read and write all along and then just decided to start doing it on a mountaintop or whatever one day and convince people to follow him, that's different than 500 people saying, yeah, we saw this guy come back to life. Same thing with Joseph Smith,

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  Revelation

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  Of the Book of Mormon. He goes out in the woods conveniently by himself, and the angel Maroney appears and he finds these golden tablets and this and that. And so I do think that there are objective things we can point to in some of these Christian spiritual experiences that do differ objectively from some of these formative narratives that come out of other religions as far as this miracle or the supernatural revelation or spiritual experience. I say all that to say, okay, that's all true. I think Jack's question probably he's thinking less about the foundational, mythical, supernatural spiritual experiences that forge the religion itself in hearing his question, why is response to a person who counteracts Christian spiritual experiences with those of other religions? I think he's probably thinking more of on a personal level, on a personal basis of someone who says, yeah, I'm a Buddhist because I pray and I have this deep feeling of spiritual connection to the Buddha or something like that.

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  And so how do you or mystical experiences of Sufism in Islam or something like that? I think, so what I would want to do, and I'll try and be quick here and then let you guys talk. So I think three possible explanations for me for how I as a Christian make sense of these spiritual experiences or in some cases so-called spiritual experiences within other religions. The first possible explanation obviously is that it's not really a spiritual experience at all. It's not credible, it's not supernatural. Again, you ate a bad burrito, you smoked some peyote, whatever. I mean, there are physiological ways of inducing a so-called spiritual experience. When is a dream just a dream? I mean versus a dream from God. I mean, you could look at some of the dreams in scripture and say, okay, clearly God, scripture says God gave this dream to Joseph for this reason or whatever, versus when did you just have a dream?

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  And God's not really trying to reveal something supernatural to you here or special. Don't read too much into it. Don't change religions over this bizarre dream you had last night. So I think do think there's probably a lot in that camp where it's just like, and frankly on the Christian side of it, I mean you start Googling for spiritual experiences in religions and you're going to see a lot of, I saw the Virgin Mary and this loaf of bread, I went to Taco Bell and this imprint on the burn of the tortilla looked a lot like the face of Jesus. I mean,

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  Pay a lot of money for

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  That. That's a lot of, and so I think we need to be honest enough in the Christian community to say, yeah, we're also not immune from these kinds of claims to, oh, it's a miracle and everybody because of this tortilla now everybody should objectively become a follower of Jesus. So I think there's that. The second possible explanation is that maybe there is something supernatural going on here, but maybe it's not from God. The Bible is very clear that there are real spiritual experiences to be had and real spiritual forces at work in our world that are not all godly and good. We wage war. Paul says, not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities and cosmic forces of evil and the spiritual places. So these spiritual even you look at what chapter is it in Deuteronomy where Moses basically equates these gods, quote, gods lower case g gods of the other nations, the pagan nations of the Canaanites and the Amorites and the Babylonians and all that.

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  He equates them with demons. And they're basically, there's parts in the Bible, and you think of the book of Isaiah where Isaiah says, these so-called Gods, these idols, they're nothing. They're lifeless, they're nothing at all. But then there's other places where it seems to say actually there is something to these gods. And I mean, you think about Pharaoh's magicians, they did miracles. They threw their staffs down and they turned into snakes too. Now Moses is snake eight theirs up because God is more powerful than the forces of evil, and that's what that shows us. But there is real dark

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  Stuff that should not be messed with. There's a lot of stuff in the Bible about you don't play around with the occult and witchcraft and Ouija boards for this reason. And so I think that there is something to be said for, yeah, you might've had a spiritual experience, but where'd it come from? I mean, what forces behind that? And so I think that, and there's a lot of people, and I think frankly we have to take it seriously is like when you see certain things, spiritual things come out of other religions, what is the force behind that?

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  And so anyway, I think we have to maybe be careful about not literally demonizing everything that comes out of other religions, because I do think there is, there's good there. And so this gets to my third category or a third way of explaining, understanding what could be going on there is that I think we also for me have to leave room for the possibility that there are spiritual experiences that people have that are not Christians, that are actually of God. And frankly, for the purpose, God's intended purpose there is to lead them to him. And you can think about Cornelius. I mean the Romans insur in the book of Acts chapter 10, I think, where he gets his dream. Peter gets a dream. Peter's a believer in Jesus. And so he gets a spiritual experience, go talk to this guy Cornelius, or go to this town and I'll tell you what to do.

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  And then you get Cornelius. He's a pagan. I mean, it says he feared God, and so he's maybe predisposed or whatever ever, but he's not a believer yet. And yet he gets this dream, he gets this spiritual experience, and then God uses that to lead him to himself, to Christ. And so I think we certainly have to leave room for that as well. And so for me, even if I were to hear about a spiritual experience that this atheist had or this Muslim had or this whatever, had I leave enough room in my understanding of God's common grace and God being bigger than the boxes we would maybe put 'em in to say God does work in and through and amongst people that do not yet belong to him, and he does it specifically for the purpose of wanting, trying to draw them to him.

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  I mean, you look at what happened for the Ninevites when Jonah went and talked to them, I mean, they clearly had a spiritual experience and were cut to their hearts. It says in order to repent and to be brought to the true and living God and to renounce their fake Babylon or asy, sorry, Assyrian gods that they had been worshiping, but oftentimes that can get misinterpreted mean, and someone who's a Buddhist who has a spiritual experience probably going to attribute it to Buddha, even if it's Yahweh trying to get him to wake up and come to him. So anyway, I guess that is how I would personally mentally process what is or could be going on in those kinds of spiritual experiences and other religions. Yeah,

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  Stuff

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  Y'all want to add to that?

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  Yeah, I was looking at a book by the title of Strange Rights by Tara Isabella Burton, and so she's looking at kind of the rise of new religion in a godless world is how she titles it. So only 7% of Americans identify as outright atheist that leads the other 93% up for grabs in some kind. 27% of Americans fall into a big bucket called the so-called spiritual but not religious, or sometimes they're called the nuns. But listen to these numbers. Among that group of people, 46% of them talk to God, and 13% say that God talks back to them. 48% say that a higher power has protected them throughout life. 41% say that it has rewarded them. 28% say it has punished them, 40% of the spiritual but not religious or the nuns experience a sense of spiritual peace and wellbeing at least once per week.

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  47% believe in spiritual energy, 38% believe in reincarnation. So they're not traditionally religious in the big categories. We think of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and so forth. But they're not secular either. They're not like the kind of Richard Dawkins, the tough man, atheist of the end of the 20th century. They know that there's more to the existence than you can find that's in a laboratory. And so what I would say there is a benefit for the Christian apologist and because here we can have a point of contact, and I'm going to talk a lot about the same things that you just said will, was that we can affirm a spiritual reality of some kind,

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  And we can also build a bridge, I think with someone that talks about spiritual experience and mysticism to say that the Christian life is not merely mysticism it's fact. It's not mysticism, but it's also a lot more than just intellectual experience or a bodily experience or an emotional experience either. It is in fact in part spiritual experience. Now we also use that term spiritual experience in more than one sense. In some sense we mean it kind of like how they mean it in sort of an immaterial way, but the way that we ultimately find its definition is like in Paul's usage of spiritual is talking to that which is empowered by in communion with the Holy Spirit of the person of the Holy Spirit. So we use it in more than one sense there. So kind of first point, a lot of people that are out there on the street are in full agreement that there is such thing as spiritual experience. Most of Americans are so unless we think that most of them are secular in the pure sense, they're really not. And just even the numbers about half a week are talking about a spiritual experience on a weekly basis. So we have a point of contact there, yes, spiritual experience, but also no, because to your point will is that ours isn't grounded solely in a kind of subjectivism or an I journalism, meaning that it's what I intuit. But we do feel something.

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  On the other hand, it's not complete institutionalism either. It's not only handed down by the church. We believe that our spiritualism comes by revelation. There's an objective reality to our spiritual experience because of the revelation of God. Another resource I was looking at in this was a book that came out just this year by a guy named Ross Ough, and it's called Believe Why Everyone Should Be Religious, and if the 20th century gave us mere Christianity where CS Lewis could kind of start there, this guy sort of sees, I kind need a preamble to a book like that. That's more like Why religion as such? Why would you even consider being religious at all? I've not read the entire book. I've only looked at portions of it that I needed for some other studies, but he's appealing that people should kind of get off the whole spiritual but not religious and saddle up with a religion of some kind.

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  He at the end makes an argument for his own religious ilk, which is Roman Catholic, nevertheless. But exactly to your point, it was actually interesting that you brought this up, will was he makes the exact same point and I think the seventh or eighth chapter, and he says this, don't mess around with demons might seem like too basic a message to require the structure of an entire religion to convey and reinforce. But in fact, what happens in horror movies, the people who go into that room and open that book or hold that seance with predictably disastrous consequences also happens in real life.

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  In other words, if someone wants to go out and explore the spiritual landscape as a pioneer on their own, they do run the serious risk of actually encountering evil forces. And so yes, there could be some that it really is the divine gods trying to move their heart outside of an only secular material world and to pursue and seek him. But there's also real danger of that. Going back to Isabella Burton for a moment, she has a whole chapter just on witchcraft, and I'm quoting her here where she says, as a spiritual practice, witchcraft may be the biggest thing since yoga at approximately 1 million, there are more witches in the United States than Jehovah's Witnesses. So gigantic rise in witchcraft. Now, for the person that's not listening to this and shaking in their boots, this is not the pure satanic, it's like satanism we're talking about.

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  It's more like a countercultural anti-revolutionary meets feminism, meets girl power, all kind of merged into one. Nevertheless, there's also a sense of don't play with matches here, and there is some playing with matches going on. So my points are what is the whole point of spiritual experience if someone that's non-Christian trying to counteract it, if it's only for some kind of personal therapeutic end, that's problematic. And we acknowledge that our experience spiritually goes far over and beyond just some kind of personal therapy. There is a reality of spiritual experiences, even if it's encountered by those who are not a part of the Christian faith. Yet there are a lot of dangers there. And there could be to your point as well, good ones pointed them towards the reality of the triune God, but it's then upon us to clarify where do spiritual experiences fit in with the Christian tradition and the Christian experience?

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  That's helpful, thank you.

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  Yeah, similar to both you, I think those categories are really helpful. And I would argue predominantly my interaction with individuals who have come with some sort of sense of spiritual experience. I'd probably put in the not credible, not supernatural, reading too much into a dream that I've had that doesn't seem to promote another purpose, apart from making someone feel better self therapeutic,

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  Which is hard because often by the time people come to us as pastors, it might be their testimony and they, I've had that experience at least, I don't know if you allall have where somebody's like, let tell you about this turning point in my life. And they tell me something that I'm like, yeah, I hope that's not what your whole faith is staked on. Because I mean, yeah, what if somehow you, I don't know, it maybe seems flimsy. I hope that that was the kickstart for you to get in the Bible and hear about these other really credible spiritual experiences that Paul and Peter in a way had in Jesus that, anyway, so

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  Sorry. Go ahead. And I think with that though, there's that behind the question of what's the purpose of this? And you pointed to in your, is it credible, is it supernatural? Is it from God? It's used to point others to him or to further the kingdom of God to build it up just like spiritual gifts, they serve a purpose apart from just serving ourselves. And so that's a kind of category in which I'm thinking like, okay, does this serve a larger purpose than just perhaps making one feel comfortable in it? On the other side though, that's my personal experience with individuals on the other side talking to other people who've interacted with other folks with supernatural experiences. They would categorize it mostly in the, this is a supernatural, but not from God. Typically when I, coming from someone who's served on the mission field, like who's interacted with which doctors and things like that, where they're like, no, I promise you this is a real supernatural thing that I would've not wished upon anyone, but I experienced it and I can tell you, as a matter of fact, it is not from the Lord at all.

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  And so that's probably more of what's out there that I'm tended to lean into, that this is a supernatural thing if it is, and it's probably not brought about by God and choosing to promote the opposite of trusting God, drawing someone towards God. And so to get to Jack's question with that, what is a wise response to give a person who counteracts Christian spiritual experiences with those of other religions? Probably just look not to your spiritual experiences, to convey with someone and lean into what it is that's actually changed. If you're going to talk about spiritual experience, talk about your salvation and not in the spiritual reality that I was once dead in the trespasses of sins, but now I've been made alive with Christ. Now the Holy Spirit dwells in me. Yes, that's a spiritual experience we can point to, but also as a result of that, here are the changes that have now manifested themselves in my life is one way in which as I'm thinking about, okay, I'm not one who I would say has tons of spiritual experiences, dreams, visions, things like that. But what have I experienced? Okay, the salvation being united with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. What now has that done for me and what can I point to as a result of that spiritual experience, if you want to put it that way.

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  That's good. Yeah. Two other just comments that I wanted to make in this discussion that I'm not sure specifically go toward answering the question, but just as we're talking about this whole idea of spiritual experiences and other religious that I feel like are important for us to recognize, one is that as much as like you said that I think there can be a danger, and I don't want to hinge so much of my own faith on this need for spiritual experiences, that again, I think the most important spiritual experience that ever happened was Christ's death and resurrection, and that should be enough. And obviously we're not in that camp of Christendom that says, if you're not speaking in tongues and being slain in the spirit every week, you're not doing it right and you're not really saved or something. But at the same time, I guess I would, the flip side of that is that I think we do need to recognize that if you have not had at least one spiritual experience, you are not a Christian because salvation is a spiritual experience like being brought from death to life.

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  That is not just, I came to a point in my Sunday school education that I trusted mom and dad enough that, okay, I'm going to check the theological boxes. I mean, if you are truly saved, then you have had one very eternally formative spiritual experience. And maybe for you it didn't feel like Paul on the road to Damascus, and you didn't literally fall off a horse and get blinded and have scales over your eyes. But spiritually speaking, that has to have happened to you. You have to have been shaken from the path that you were on and the sin that you were trapped in enslaved to and brought to the light and seen the light and been freed. And if that hasn't happened for you, then again, I mean, I don't care what tradition you were raised in, and you can come and hum along to the songs.

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  And again, I'm not necessarily trying to say anything about our expressions of worship and who's truly in the spirit and who's still in their flesh, but I just think that needs to be said that Christians are people that have had spiritual experiences. And so I want to say that. And then the other thing I wanted to say is, as you were talking that occurred to me that I think so much of how we process a spiritual experience, really the experience itself is subjective, but then how we actually interpret it and process it is also a subjective experience. And here's what I mean by it, is that you and me having, or me and someone having the same exact same dream last night, literal dream last night while I was asleep, I might interpret that one in somebody else another way. So for instance, I've told this story before, but just I think it's relevant in this conversation.

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  One of my favorite students at Culver, the boarding school before we came to St. Louis, not a Christian, he came to our youth group a couple times, but he was really more involved in, we had basically a debate club, a spiritual theological kind of discussion for him that would meet weekly and we'd discuss just interesting topics, and he didn't have to be a Christian, so it was more apologetic in nature. Anyway, he would come and debate with us Christians and ask questions. And so he had drunk the Kool-Aid on the Richard Dawkins materialist. What you see is what you get matter. That's all that exist. But eventually I convinced him, why don't you just pray and ask God if he's real to show you and just see, I mean, just talk I, you're going to feel silly talking to the ceiling or whatever. Well, I've told this story.

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  He did one night he told me, he told me the next day he came up, but he told me last night, he said, I got to tell you this. He said last night I prayed like he encouraged me to, I asked God if you're real, prove it. He said, as I was drifting about to fall asleep, I said, I felt all of a sudden just cold and something in the room changed. And I sat up in bed and I looked over and on top of my dresser, there's two bunk beds, you and a roommate, and then you had a desk and sort of a dresser in the corner. He said, I looked on top of my dresser and sitting on top of it was this dark shadowy figure, and all the hairs on my arms and legs were standing up, and I blinked, and I laid back down in bed, pulled my covers over, and I was like, what? Eventually I fell back asleep.

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  Wow.

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  And he said, I woke up in the morning and I was telling myself that was weird. I must have already been asleep, and I must have dreamed that. And then my roommate woke up and said, did you see that thing sitting on the dresser last

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  Night? Really?

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  Yeah. He said, did you see that? And he came and told me, and I was like, so now you're a Christian, right? You ask God to make it clear to you that matter is not all that spiritual experiences happen, and there are spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly and earthly places that heaven and earth touch. And I mean, you had an experience of that, and he explained it away. It's like, well, I don't know. Clearly I was praying and I was predisposed, and I am trying to engage with your roommate and this and that. And again, I think I just say that to say people who really want to believe that the mind is a powerful thing in both ways. I mean, you can convince yourself that things are there that aren't and see an angel and a demon around every corner. But then by the same token, others are going to disregard and things that frankly, I really do believe that God still allows us to have some of these supernatural experiences again for the purpose of leading us to him.

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  And I know some people, I don't know, I think you can go, it's kind of like CS Lewis said with the demonic, like two mistakes. You either disregard it altogether or you get way too caught up in the occults or whatever. I think it is true in spiritual experiences as well. Again, you can get so caught up in it that if you're not speaking in tongues and s slain in the spirit, you're not really a Christian. You can also so disregard it that you just don't even have a category. And I do lament some of that in the Christian world.

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  I've read a couple of those books, or at least read the reviews or whatever of the folks that have the not near death experiences, but I mean, what do you call it? I died for my 15 minutes in heaven or whatever, and they go and they experience heaven and they come back and they write a book about or whatever. I don't know. I mean, I guess there's room for skepticism there of, I mean, that makes a great book and you can sell a lot and feed your family for a while. And so there's probably room for being skeptical, but also the camp of Christianity that looks at things like that and says, no, that can't happen or that doesn't happen. I have a real issue with, because I just don't see anything in scripture that would lead me to believe that God doesn't still allow us to have spiritual experiences these days and desire to use those experiences to lead us into a deeper relationship with them. And obviously, I mean, to me, that's what worship, like corporate worship. I mean, we are hoping and praying that when people are at West Hills on Sunday mornings, that they are having spiritual experiences with the Lord that this is not just good lyrics and a good 1, 4, 6 minor, six five core progression like this. No, this is not just a formula. This is a real encounter with a spiritual being that's invisible that we can't see. And yet we're all talking to, we're all listening, and we want to see people

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  Broken of sin and repenting and crying and worship and hands raised. So anyway, I don't know.

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  Yeah, I think there could be a helpful balance for someone listening that if your natural tendency is to disregard or discredit of, go into a conversation like that more with an open mind of like, okay, let's tell this to me. Explain this to me. I want to hear, I want to understand. And then if your tendency is to believe everything is a spiritual experience of I saw this number, I saw this billboard, and that of going in with a little more objection to that, not so, yeah, caution is a better word for it toward that. And again, there's a balance with that of not just disregarding everything or accepting everything, but go in with the what is the purpose of this? How does this 0.1 towards God? Is this verifiable in any way? Because I do agree with you that in the Christian circles, you mostly have two camps of disregard every spiritual experience, or I'm going to look into every single spiritual experiences real and true outside of that of salvation. And

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  Usually the truth is somewhere in the middle.

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  Somewhere in the middle. Yeah.

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  Usually with this kind of thing.

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  That's

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  Good.

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  Anything else?

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  Any last words? Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors. Remember that you can submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills or by asking them online through our website at www.westhillstl.org, and join us next week where we address the question, if God is all knowing, why did he get so angry at Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham had to talk him off the ledge to save those in the city that were righteous?

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  And did he change his mind? Some translations say, God repented of the disaster that he was going to do when Abraham, and then he ultimately couldn't find five righteous or 10 righteous and did it anyway. But yeah, does God change his mind?

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  Yeah. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week.