experience?
I'm not a raving fundamentalist by any means, but why doesn't the United Methodist Church like to talk about sin anymore?
The reason I pose this question: we're talking about Jerena Lee, the first licensed female preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (though she was never ordained). She was a woman who had very intense spiritual encounters with God with a deep sense of conviction about her sin. Where has this energy gone? Why are we always so quick to smooth over "sin"?
Additionally - why are we always so quick to take people's experiences at face value? One's experience of different things certainly shapes the individual's reality, but at the same time, experiences are so difficult to authenticate or legitimize. The one thing that I value in Jarena Lee's writings about her encounters with God and her call to preach is the outside confirmation of that inward experience. Meaning -- the fruits of that experience are there. I see so many people who call themselves Christian but have no fruits...
Experience is one of the corners of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, held up with Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. I think oftentimes, we miss the point of experience: it's not just one's life experience or experience of the world around them, but primarily about their experience of God and the risen Christ. This is what that part of the the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is all about.
Meh. I'm bored in precept, if you can't tell.
The reason I pose this question: we're talking about Jerena Lee, the first licensed female preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (though she was never ordained). She was a woman who had very intense spiritual encounters with God with a deep sense of conviction about her sin. Where has this energy gone? Why are we always so quick to smooth over "sin"?
Additionally - why are we always so quick to take people's experiences at face value? One's experience of different things certainly shapes the individual's reality, but at the same time, experiences are so difficult to authenticate or legitimize. The one thing that I value in Jarena Lee's writings about her encounters with God and her call to preach is the outside confirmation of that inward experience. Meaning -- the fruits of that experience are there. I see so many people who call themselves Christian but have no fruits...
Experience is one of the corners of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, held up with Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. I think oftentimes, we miss the point of experience: it's not just one's life experience or experience of the world around them, but primarily about their experience of God and the risen Christ. This is what that part of the the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is all about.
Meh. I'm bored in precept, if you can't tell.