Dear Conrad -- Is it possible for us, as sinful people, to rely on our own personal experiences in order to discover God's truth, God's ways, or God's will? If there is a gray area in the Bible, and Christians are kind of split on how they feel on a certain topic, is it ok to say "Well, I've experienced it this way, so I know that's the truth."? So, in other words, if Scripture is hard to interpret on a certain area, can we rely on what we see, hear, or experience, and determine that that is the truth, despite us being sinful? And if not, what can we "rely on"???
-broshetan

Dear Broshetan,

I’ll start off with this distinction - Scripture interprets experiences, but experiences do not interpret Scripture.

First we should NEVER interpret Scripture from personal experiences. Truth is based on what is real and not on what we believe or feel. The sun exists even if we don’t see it, or feel it. Scripture is based on God’s revelation to us. Not our revelation to him.

Many parts in the Bible are very hard to understand. But the way we understand it is a more in depth study on the Bible. We should not give up Algebra if we want to understand Calculus. If we want to understand the hard stuff in the Bible, we need to keep at our study. We cannot say, “This is too hard. I’m just going give up and interpret Scripture how I feel.” There are no gray areas of the Bible to God – only to us because we do not understand it fully yet.

If God was based on how we feel, then God would change for every individual’s beliefs about him. He wouldn’t be much of a God then.

But is it okay to have experiences and have Scripture interpret the experiences for us? Yes. Notice it’s the reverse. Scripture interprets experiences, not experiences interpreting Scripture.

When we go through a trial, we point to James 1:2-5 and have the Bible tell us why we went through it. If you disagree with your parents – we look to the Bible on how we should act and see our experience. If you are depressed – we look to the Bible to show us how we should view this experience.

Have Scripture interpret your experiences and not the other way around. Be dedicated to the study of Scripture and those areas that were once gray should start to become clearer. And at the same time you’ll be able to better interpret your experiences.