Of What Use is the Bible--and Theology?

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes about a man who once told him, "I've no use for all that stuff.  I know there's a God.  I've felt Him; out alone in the desert at night:  a tremendous mystery.  And that's why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him.  To anyone who's met the real thing, they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!"

Lewis agreed with the man on one point:  to those who have experienced God, all the formulas seem much less real than the experience.  He compared the experience of God to someone walking along the edge of the ocean, as opposed to looking at a map of the ocean.  On the other hand, said Lewis, the map is based not just on one man's experience of the ocean, but on the experience of hundreds and hundreds of people who have sailed the ocean.  While yours is a single glimpse -- and much more real to you---, the map fits all of those other experiences (and yours) together into an overall picture.  Lewis says that as long as we are content with walks along the beach, our own experience is far more fun than looking at a map.  But if you want to get to America from England, no one would start out with just his own experience.

Theology and the Bible are based on the experiences of generations of people who have had experiences just like yours---they really were in touch with God, just as you were in the desert.  He points out that just as we will not get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea, neither will we be very safe if we go to sea without a map.

Now, Lewis' explanation helps tremendously to explain my own experience of God.  Before the moment of my experience with the Holy Spirit, I was very content to quietly walk along the shore, experiencing moments of great mystery and Presence, whenever I could find them.  With the coming of the Holy Spirit, I became greatly thirsty to read the Bible, to discover how the experience of all those other generations matched up to my own---and I was so excited to find that their story was also my story!

Something in me resonated strongly to what I was reading there.  For the first time in my life, I indeed felt as if I were sailing across the ocean to a new shore, instead of just walking along the old and familiar one---but I had a map that was based on the experience of generations of men and women before me!  Since then, I have found hundreds of stories outside of the Bible also--of men and women who have truly experienced God and who have told their stories about Him.  And all of those stories excite me even today, for it is the same God that I myself have come to know and love!  My own experience has exploded and been multiplied and been even more greatly understood by all of their experience!  What joy!

God does not leave us alone on the shore of our own experience, but joins us with all of His friends in time and eternity.