Religious Experience

Recently I read an article by William Rowe, who I believe is from Australia and taught (and still does teach) at Purdue University, though he is an emeritus professor now. Rowe is a philosopher of religion, but a philosopher that we would call an atheologian, because he's an atheist and gives arguments to refute the Christian's arguments. Why is Rowe an atheist? Because, he wanted to believe, he wanted a religious experience, he prayed to God and begged and pleaded, and God never gave him an experience. So, Rowe came to the conclusion that God doesn't exist. Part of Rowe's reasoning involves the idea that if God exists, He will reveal Himself to us or manifest Himself to us. But is this true? Rowe also said that a famous Christian philosopher/theologian St. Anselm of Canterbury, never had a religious experience either.

[ok just remember, if you comment on my blog with questions, I'll answer them on my blog in the same comment thread that way it keeps things less confusing when we have a somewhat stimulating discussion]

Diana made a statement in her blog today, that Jesus is beautiful. This really made me think. If you ask me whether Jesus is beautiful, I would say yes, but why would I say yes? I'm really not sure, similar to Rowe and Anselm, I don't know if I've had a feeling of experiencing the beauty of Jesus. As I walked to class today, I thought about my religious experiences and except for feelings of condemnation before salvation, it's never been anything more than an assent to propositions for me. One time I went to a Buddhist temple and experienced a type of demonic presence. But I don't know what it's like or what it would be like to experience the beauty of Jesus. For myself, I really don't know what my religious experiences have amounted to. I think that most of my experiences have been of learning and teaching. So, I am confused about this. Is there something that I'm missing out on, or is God just allowing people to experience Him in different ways? I guess if I reflect upon this it may be the latter, though, I think that I would enjoy an emotional estatic religious experience that many Christians seem to have. I would love to go to a One Day event and get all hyped up - but what usually happens when I go to events like that is I get really bored, and analyze the lyrics of the worship songs to make sure that the songs I'm singing aren't heretical. In fact, many of the contemporary worship songs, I believe to be weak theologically, and many of the songs I don't sing, because it isn't an orthodox theology in the song. So this tends to ruin many contemporary worship experiences for me. Even when I go to Christian punk concerts I make sure that the lyrics are theologically correct before I sing them and even then while I am singing the lyrics I think about the significance of their meaning.

Well, before I get too cynical I should just sum up my main thought in this post. Similar to St. Anselm, I haven't really had any type of religious experiences. So if someone asks me if Jesus is beautiful I'll respond "yes" but I haven't felt or experienced Jesus' beauty, I just know that I'm forgiven due to Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, hence to me, Jesus is beautiful.