Finding Where Experience and Reason Responsibly Intersect

So I came across this video on today on CNN.com and I was inspired by the presenter in the video who is covering a topic that takes on something that I have been thinking about lately. It wasn’t that long ago that I had a Sunday morning where I could check-out a worship service at a different church. I ended up at a United Methodist Church (I know, you’re shocked). When I got to the church I took a bulletin and grabbed a spot on a pew. I looked at the bulletin and noticed the sermon title had to do with the power of prayer. The time for the sermon came and preacher’s thesis for the day was to prove to us that praying for healing miracles works. There was little scripture exegesis before he dove right into a string of anecdotes about how he had personally, or with a group, healed a person’s physical ailments. Finally at the end of the sermon he brought a mentally handicapped young man and his mother up front and had the young man share about his painful battle with many psychological issues he had dealt with and how no treatment had ever worked. He talked about how others, including his family and spiritual leaders told him he wasn’t getting better because he wasn’t praying or reading the Bible enough. Finally, though, he prayed hard enough and he felt better. Moral of the sermon? If you are ill and you are not being healed then you probably are not praying hard enough. I wonder how many folks in the room left that day thinking “Huh, what do those doctors know about taking care of people’s illnesses, I just need to pray harder!” Sure, there are some very rare instances when things like cancer seem to miraculously disappear. And sometimes that correlates with a person who prayed really hard and/or had a large group of persons praying for them. But what about the other overwhelming majority of the time when people pray desperately for healing and it never comes? There are a number of responses that attempt to address this theologically but are the use of anecdotes and personal stories like the ones above irresponsible? Where do we draw the line between reason and experience when preaching and teaching about our faith ?

We are absolutely shaped by the personal experiences we have and they are very important and meaningful to us. I know people who won’t fly on airplanes because they experienced some terrifying turbulence once and refuse to ever fly again despite the fact they continue to drive their cars and have an exponentially higher chance of getting hurt or dying driving than they do flying. I can understand and be sympathetic to that argument and if it were me, all the scientific studies in the world about plane safety probably couldn’t get me back on an airplane. I get worried, though, when we let the experience of one or two persons set policy when there is clear evidence that doing so will be harmful to the majority of others. So do we draw the line when one or a few experiences make the rules even when those rules are harmful and have a negative impact on the larger community?

I believe that we can use anecdotes and personal experience to inspire and encourage, but not to manipulate others into believing we are right, despite evidence to the contrary. Ultimately, I believe we can have a strong personal faith that is rooted in personal experience that can still respect and responsibly interact with modern reason.