Love is personal. Part 2: Love is received from God and passed on; it is not generated by me

When we encounter God, it is not enough to say we encounter the value or principle of love. What we encounter is a person who is loving us. This is totally different to simply believing in love. That puts all the onus on me to make a commitment: that I am going to put love as the governing principle in my life; I am taking charge and being the active agent in doing loving things; that it is up to me to use my inspiration by the principle of love to do some loving.

Instead, what I experience is that I am the recipient of love and I respond to the love I have received. I don’t generate love within myself through the power of my commitment to my principles; I am empowered by and filled with the love of God that then overflows in love towards others. We are channels of God’s love – and that’s supremely more than we can manage by “trying hard” to love others.

We thought about religious experiences, of what is happening when we encounter God, and, in seeking a common denominator for the experience that I think all the major world religions would accept, the term, “encountering the transcendent” is a valuable one. God is “other” in that he is not at all like me or anything else in all creation. He is beyond everything else. Many things might express something of his nature and point us towards him, but nothing, no matter how beautiful or lovely in itself encompasses the fullness of who God is; they always point beyond to “something more” – and that is who God is – the something extra that is always beyond our grasp – though still filling us.

For our thinking now, I want to stress that, for me, and for Christians generally through the ages, the experience of the transcendent is a personal experience. We do not experience love; we experience someone loving us. Now, when we experience “being loved” – that is a passive verb – though it may well be an exhilarating experience, so it requires someone to be the active partner, doing the loving. So, my experience of God is not something I do. I am not the creator of this love. I am not the active person responsible for generating this love. Love is something I receive from someone who is loving me.

I said earlier that ultimately I do not know who or what God is, but whatever is the cause of my experience of God is the core of life and is ultimately precious. In the same way, I cannot point with certainty and say, “Look there is the person loving me”, but what I can say is that the experience of “being loved” is a personal experience of “someone” loving me. I came across a lovely way to describe an encounter with God: “I met with a mysterious stranger, I know no whom, but he loves me”. I think that that is my definition of God, and for shorthand I just use the word “God”.

Many atheists are such because they cannot bring themselves to believe in God because they cannot be certain that he exists in the way they can be certain that their mother or child or their best friend exists. Well, surely what all of us have learnt is that God is just not like that. I cannot be certain that God exists, or what he is like, because God is not a person like you or me. But what I have discovered is that whoever God ultimately is in his inmost being, that only he fully understands, my experience of God is of a person, a person who loves me.

For me this is very important. It is not enough for me to believe in wonderful values like love and justice. I believe in a person who is love and justice, and in relationship with him, I receive, reflect back into the world, and an empowered to be a person of love and justice.

Love is personal. Part 1: Love is more than a value; it’s a personal relationship

One objection an atheist might make to me is: “We can see that your faith in God gives you wonderful values. Because you believe in God, you believe in the supreme importance of love, compassion, forgiveness, gentleness, peace etc. Why don’t you just believe in these values? Forget this nonsense about God who is a person of love, and just believe in love?”

It sounds superficially plausible. A person of good character and strong principle could (and many do) build a profoundly good life through the quality of their principles and values. A person might think that they “see through” religion and argue that this is the whole point of religion – that belief in God is just a mechanism to get us humans to act in loving ways. However, there are problems with this avenue.

As I get older, I become more aware of what a fundamentally selfish person I am. I have been saved from the full consequences of this because of the great truth I have discovered, along with countless others: I love because he first loved me. Love is a principle and a value, but that does not do it full justice. Love is an action, and love is personal. I can imagine the wonderful principle of love sitting on a splendid pedestal, and all of us who want to live in love gazing at some symbol of love and being truly inspired by it. And out of that inspiration would come some acts of kindness. But I consider, for me at least, it would not be enough. It would not do justice to my experience of God. It would not express the true fullness of what love is. The “principle” of love would not have enough power to move me sufficiently to live my life better. When we say, “God is love” some people want to say, “Ah, what you mean is that “Love is God” – that is, “Love is your ultimate value”. Why don’t you just switch and say, “I believe in love”?” Because that is nowhere near saying the same thing as “God is love”.

Religious experiences are real and certain, even if God isn’t. Part 4: Judging from our end of the relationship with God restores the concept of knowledge because we do know what we are experiencing inside ourselves

My hope is that for both believers and atheists they will be able to abandon the idea that the element of doubt means they are not allowed to live a life of faith, or that it undermines and spoils their life of faith.

However, in practice, however God actually is in his inmost, truest self – and only he knows that – from my end of the relationship, I experience God in exactly the same ways as you would expect if it could be shown that the traditional God of Christianity had been scientifically proven.

Given this, I feel happy and content to pursue my life of faith, because that way of life is supremely satisfying. Note: I am not sticking my head in the sand; I am not relying on blind faith, or an obstinate denial of the facts of objective reality. I am taking on board everything that modern knowledge can give us about the material universe, but also everything that we can learn about the inner life and capabilities of human beings. My faith does not require me to believe “6 impossible things before breakfast”; it does not require me to deny the manifest evidence of what happens in the world or in my own life. It simply requires me to acknowledge how faith enriches my life beyond measure, and, taking onboard all the truth about existence that I can muster, allows me to make the reasonable judgement that there are sufficient grounds to justify my life of faith.

Religious experiences are real and certain, even if God isn’t. Part 3: We accept that we’ve lost our former foundation stone but also accept that we have sufficient grounds to justify our leap up to reach God

See how we have by-passed the moment of conflict, doubt and possible rejection of faith – by both believers and atheists. Before, because there was no proof that God existed or that he was the cause of my religious experiences there was an impulse to abandon faith or never take it up and be an atheist. Now, our focus on the value of our religious experiences as supremely precious, enables us to make the personal judgement and faith commitment: whoever, wherever they come, whatever is their cause, I take them to my heart as the bedrock of my life.

Very importantly – and surely this is a “big clue” as to the reality of God -is that the content of our religious experiences is exactly what traditional believers say God is like. When I was a boy I was told that this peculiar invisible person exists who is overwhelming love. Then when I “met God” by having my first religious experience, it was an experience of overwhelming love. I put 2 and 2 together and concluded that what I had been told as a boy was right after all.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, but increasingly important for me: it makes no difference in practice whether God is real or just something I believe in, as, in practice, the effect is the same.

Now I must be careful. I’m not saying that it’s OK to believe there are fairies at the bottom of the garden if that gave people pleasure – even though there are no fairies. Our belief in God is not like that. The experience of transcendent love, joy and peace, which we are capable of receiving and which countless people through the ages have attributed to God, is an undoubted reality.

Provided I feel within myself that there is a reasonable probability that this experience of the transcendent comes from God – and I regard that as entirely reasonable – then I am fine

In effect, I have redefined God, so that when I say the word “God” I mean: “the experience of transcendent love, joy and peace that comes to me in personal terms from a person who is the mysterious stranger, I know not whom, but he loves me”. I know that God understood as that is definitely real. I am happy in my own faith, to believe that this mysterious stranger is the traditional God of Christianity. It’s just that I have to be agnostic about the existence of God understood in that traditional way, but I can be certain that God as the mysterious giver of transcendent love exists – because I receive those gifts of transcendent love.

Religious experiences are real and certain, even if God isn’t. Part 2: We do know what is happening inside us

So, let’s stick with what we do know. The religious experience definitely exists. Whether God is the cause of the experience is not certain – and never can be. Perhaps before your doubts you felt it was certain, but actually, philosophically, you were wrong: you did not know religious experiences were from God, you only believed it.

But we do know the experience is real and that it is wonderful. So, let’s stick with the experience.

It is a self-authenticating experience as we know we feel what we feel. Now, I don’t go along with the modern trend that, “If I feel something is true then it’s true because that’s what I perceive”. The mistake there is to claim that what I feel inside my own heart and mind proves that things are true “out there” in the external world. However, I am keeping agnostic about claiming I can prove it’s true that God exists; that is something I hold by faith, not certain knowledge – but I do know deep down at the core of my being that my experience of what I believe to be the presence of God fills me with inexpressible peace, joy and love. And our encounters with God are enough to justify our judgement that there probably is a God; I’ll find out one day; till then I value my faith in God above all other things.

Objective factual statements about the world are agreed by everyone – though, of course, often people may lie and refuse to accept the truth, for their own selfish reasons. Faith judgements and personal values are not objective facts; they are personal value judgements. So, when we commit ourselves to a life of faith we are making our own personal value judgement: I put God first. Ultimately, this is where our experiences of God have led us: I choose to live by the love that I have encountered in God. There is no doubt that an experience of transcendent love exists, of being one with the infinite and eternal, of being filled with inexpressible joy and peace, of finding the ultimate in life such that you feel, “If I died now, I could die happy because I have touched the height and depth of what life has to offer”. These, and much more, are what our experiences of meeting with God bring us, and they are definitely real and true feelings; they are supremely precious, and – as we live by faith not sight – they are enough to persuade us to continue with our journey with God.

Religious experiences are real and certain, even if God isn’t. Part 1: The evidence is clear, but we still have a choice to make

Religious experiences are the heart of my faith. I regard myself as very blessed that I have them pretty often.

In Religious Studies philosophy of religion A level terms, the basic argument is this:-

People have religious experiences because God exists and has just given them the experience. The alternative explanation is that, though the experience exists, its cause is something other than God – usually a psychological explanation.

So, as a young person I had lots of lovely religious experiences; I had been told that these could happen and when they did, it would be because God was calling out to me. So, when that did start to happen it was “proof” that God is real and is calling to me. Then you meet the explanation that perhaps your experiences have a purely psychological explanation – nothing to do with God. This could provoke a crisis, and you either give up faith, or master the challenge by making a judgement that the idea that God is responsible for the religious experience is the better explanation. This is a faith judgement; there is no certainty either way; you either choose for or against continuing in faith. This is why, ultimately, I think of faith as a way of life. I regard faith more as a verb than a noun. I don’t deny that faith is a noun too, but I think what trips up both believers and atheists is the view that faith is a thing – let’s use the image of faith as a bar of gold. Atheists say, “Well, I’ve never discovered that bar of gold” But I don’t think faith is like that – not for us believers either. My faith is not like the certainty of holding up a bar of gold I found hidden in a field; my faith is a choice to live in a certain way. It’s a decision to believe in and trust in God. Now believing and trusting are verbs, not nouns. I live by faith because I have chosen to do this even though I have no certain knowledge that it is the right thing to do. If I ever felt that, though there was a possibility that God exists, but really it’s very implausible, then I think I would feel duty bound by my respect for the truth to give up faith, but I don’t need to do that because of my certainty over the reality of my faith experiences.

God is unknowable, but we can experience him. Part 2: Why worry that we cannot grasp God, just delight in meeting him

Now we need to face up to a big problem – for both believers and atheists. We both tend to start at the cause of the argument, not the fulfilment. Many believers feel, “I love God, and I love everything about being a religious person, but I am so beset by doubts. If only I KNEW that God was real, then I could rejoice in all the good things that my faith brings me, but my doubts nag away at me and all the joys of my faith come crumbling down around me”. Atheists often feel (either regretfully or triumphantly), “You’re not going to catch me signing up to any of this faith nonsense until you can prove to me that God is real”.

This proof is the one thing that we are never going to have. Asking for proof is to treat God as though he is some sort of new species found in the Amazon – some people claim to have found it, but others are sceptical and say, “Unless I see this creature for myself, I will not believe”. But God just is not like that. The one thing we know is that God is unknowable – we said that on a point of principle earlier. This is God we are talking about, and surely all our experience as religious people has taught us that God is very mysterious and very wonderful.

Instead, let’s focus on the experience, rather than the cause of the experience. For there is an unacknowledged assumption going on for both believers and atheists, that if the cause of the religious experience is not provably God, then it’s a worthless experience. But the experience of God’s presence – whatever it is that causes it – is supremely precious. All the world’s great religions testify to the existence of an experience of transcendent love. Though the cause of the experience is debatable, there is no doubt that the experience exists, and it’s wonderful.

So, doubts about God’s existence as the cause of our religious experiences shouldn’t derail our faith, as the experience of believing in God is supremely precious.

God is unknowable, but we can experience him. Part 1: We cannot measure God to assess him.

It’s a bedrock of faith in God, from the very beginning, that God as he truly, fully actually is, is unknowable. Our ability to express in words the full wonder of who God is, is inadequate. Even more fundamentally, our ability to take in his full wonder is inadequate. However, that does not mean that we are bereft in our understanding of God. To hold a little bit of the infinite God in our hearts is the same as holding all of him. And we do know something about God, even if we do not know him completely.

Here’s what I hope will be a helpful image:

Let’s think of the human soul as having the capacity of one pint. Imagine, not a physical container inside us, but a spiritual one, and in most people it holds about “one pint of spiritual “stuff””. So, when we are uplifted – say in prayer or worship – we might register one quarter of a pint and feel encouraged and strengthened and forgiven. Other spiritual experiences might fill us half full or three-quarters full.

Now imagine that God gives us 2 pints of spiritual uplift. We can only hold 1 pint; that’s all we can measure; we do not know what it’s like to hold 2 pints of spiritual stuff. And, of course, God is infinite, so we are utterly incapable of understanding God, or knowing him in the fullness of who he is. But! But! As people whose soul has the capacity of one pint, we DO experience that we are full and overflowing. We cannot measure 2 pints, but we can experience we are full and overflowing. If you think of this image of pouring 2 pints into a 1 pint pot, it fits the image pretty well of a stream of living water welling up and overflowing.

So, why worry that we cannot contain God within our hearts in such a way that we could measure and know him fully. By definition, we are never going to be able to do that with God. But let us pay attention to the experience of God’s presence, and we CAN know so much about God as we discern what it is that he is filling us with. If God fills us with joy and peace and strength and hope, then what we know about God is that he is the sort of person who gives us joy and peace and strength and hope. In fact, our experience of God is all that we are capable of knowing. The “Ding an sich” as Kant said, in German – “the thing in itself”, is beyond our ability to know, and Kant is never wrong.

Introduction. Part 2: A few “framework” issues

Many atheists have abandoned, or never begun, a life of faith because of the obvious weaknesses in our position, such as proof that God acts in the world to make things better, and scepticism that life after death is possible. They assume that people who haven’t given up faith must therefore be stupid, blind, or so sucked into the religious system that they can’t think for themselves to escape. But the picture of God that atheists have rejected is one that many believers have rejected too. We can often say, “I don’t believe in that God either – it’s far too simplistic and ignores vitally important facts”. However, we believers continue to believe often because we have developed an extraordinarily profound and sophisticated understanding of who God is and what he does.

Note: I do NOT reject the traditional or evangelical view of God as invalid; it is an entirely legitimate faith. In many ways, left to my own devices, it is my preferred way to understand God. And after many personal struggles, I feel that I could happily continue to the end of my life believing in this sort of God.

The difficulty for me is that there are many people in Britain today (I suspect a large majority and growing) who do not, and cannot, accept my traditional picture of God. I do not want to simply carry on happily in my faith if I am not going to be able to share that faith with others because they have comprehensively rejected the entire system of thought in which my faith is held.

I’m afraid, as usual, I will be talking about myself a lot. Partly this is just a character weakness on my part, but it is also, I think, unavoidable on this occasion. I will be talking a lot about religious experiences and the spiritual life, and, really, I don’t know very much at all about anyone’s religious experiences except my own. So, I am simply hoping that my experience is pretty normal, and you will be able to relate to many of the things I’m saying. If you sit there thinking, “This isn’t how I see things at all” then please discount what I’m saying as largely irrelevant to you, and just hone in on anything that is.