That All Language Fails With Respect To God

God is distinct by virtue of being indistinct.

- Meister Eckhart

Today the so-called personal experience of God constitutes the mystical experience with God. This is perhaps clearly the most prevalent heresy in the modern church. Namely, that people validate their perceived faith in and through their experiences. But while we need to be clear that experience is important, it is not definitive, either of ourselves or of God. And it certainly is not validating of anything whatsoever. Up until the reformations this form of religious narcissism would have been absolutely unthinkable and untenable. Instead, historical Christianity finds in this understanding of mystical experience to be anathema and instead locates mysticism in the ordinary, in the everyday, in the mundane. It is precisely this sense-oriented lens of individualistic God-experience that perverts.

Engaging in any discipline that is orientated toward a spiritual end is done so by its practitioner precisely as a reaching out into a void. That void is an unknown and an unknowable. If you already know the outcome then what need is there for the discipline? You have already determined the essence of the great mystery of God, the world, and yourself. This is ridiculous. It places yourself as God.

Instead, rudimentary discipline of any sort means some form of isolation...some sort of solitude...of setting your preconceptions aside and of opening yourself to both what is unknown (and unknowable) as well as what others know. This is not a selfish withdrawal, but is necessarily a self-emptying that has found the various common social comforts and notions to be insufficient in the face of actual daily reality. And it recognizes the produced stupor of life (including that produced by most religious devotion) when accepting the unexamined, slavish dependency on the thoughts and therefore simple approval of others.

To evade this awakening once discovered is to place oneself in great risk and anguish. You will never find peace either with yourself or with God by trying to silence this imperative.