Mystic Experience and Conversion

35 thoughts
last posted April 6, 2014, 6:33 p.m.

10 earlier thoughts

0

On the charismatic side, there is the obvious difficulty of resolving A) the idea of a God who intensely desires a personal relationship with everyone, with B) the inconvenient rarity of supernatural experiences which would validate those relationships.

In my experience as an adolescent, this dissonance was resolved by lowering the bar of “supernatural experience” to a very reachable level. All claims of revelation were treated as valid without question.

While in Sunday school at a pretty early age (this was while we were still charismatics), after conscientiously volunteering to be saved I was brought into a separate room with a few other children to be prayed over. The intended effect was that we would begin speaking in tongues. The adults prayed over us in tongues, until we made some little noise either by accident or experiment, whereupon we were congratulated upon being saved and dismissed with smiles. These people were very kind and sincere, and I am not exaggerating their conduct (or us childrens’) at all.

24 later thoughts