This post may give you a headache.  It may cause you distress.  But think through this with me and read the entire post before you throw something against the way or call me a liberal.

In the past two months, I noted that both our reality and our theology are constructed by our experiences. I have also noted that we are primarily emotional people, not rational people. I want to expand on that thought and talk about experiential theology.

As I said in a previous post,

The way our mind receives input from an external context has been redefined in recent years. Prior to the last decade, it was thought that emotions came after the processing of conscious thought.(1) However, research now demonstrates that information obtained from the senses travels in a parallel mode. Sensory information travels first to the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala, before a second signal is sent to the neocortex, which handles the cognitive processing functions. What this second route indicates “is the likelihood that much of cognition…is merely rationalization to make unconscious emotional response acceptable to the conscious mind.” (2)

Here is the basics of what has been found. When we get sensory input, it travels two paths. The first goes through the emotional center of the brain, the amygdala, then to the neocortex, which is the reasoning part of the brain. The second pathway goes straight to the neocortex, but arrives here AFTER the emotional part of the brain has processed the input. The conclusions from this are that our reasoning through the first pathway is emotionally driven. The second pathway, then already influenced by the emotional, seeks to rationalize our thoughts or actions based on the emotional processing in the amygdala. This is the natural course of action.

Our emotions blend together a multitude of experiences. In doing so, we naturally have an experientially constructed theology. We understand life, and part of that understanding is our theology, in light of our experiences. Therefore, we have to conclude that objective theology, and an objective view of scripture is not possible this side of heaven; we develop our theology, generally through our experiences.

We see this expressed in various ways, primarily through experiences of oppression. Liberation theology finds an expression in African-American preaching. There is a great identification with the slavery of Israel within the African-American Christian community. Take a moment and read Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and you will see the connection. The speech’s verbal imagery is vividly dramatic. Taken to the extreme, you find it expressed in the thoughts of the now (in)famous Jeremiah Wright.

It also finds expression through feminist theology. Again, experiences of oppression give rise for liberation. Other occurrences are found in homosexual-based theology . Taken to extremes, these can be radicalized such that an angry expression of theology erupts and those structures that appear to demonstrate those oppressive tactics are attacked.

But it also finds itself in personal expressions of theological development. The deviations from historical theology could be the result of life experiences that, though hidden, are painful and still lodged in our emotional memory. Therefore the experience still constrains and motivates us, but we do not understand why. This causes us to react instead of respond. Our experiences inform us and our emotions drive us, and we rationalize what we read or study through the feelings and experiences those readings and studies evoke. Our experiences and emotions become filters through which our theology is passed and then constructed. Therefore, a painful childhood memory, though cognitively forgotten but still held in our emotional memory system, can be a part of the development of our theological structures.

Thus, the importance of historical theology. Historical theology gives us centuries of theological formulation. While specifics may vary slightly, the general ideas give us a guide to orthodoxy, particularly Patristic Theology, because they are writing with the experience of being in and around the apostles. It is this historical, biblical theology to which we must be tethered.

But it also raises the importance of emotionally healthy people. Unless we decide to explore and dig up the experiences of our past, we will never know the impact these have on our theological construction. The underlying issues in most people, and thus in most churches are emotional, not cognitive.

One of the things I have done over the past 3 years is spend time with a pastoral counselor/coach. He is a former pastor of 23 years who has his PhD in Clinical Psychology. It first started as a means to make sure I was not letting the ministry get a grip on me and break me. But I started realizing that I had various issues in my life I had not been able to tackle through any of the standard patterns (spiritual disciplines, accountability groups, etc). What I discovered through my time with him is that I am being impacted by issues resulting from difficult childhood experiences.Those experiences made me angry, caused me to lash out, and go through a variety of emotional up and downs. And it impacted how I viewed and interpreted scripture. I focused on passages that were prophetic in nature (think judgmental) and focused on the Lordship of Jesus. Since working through those experiences and emotions over the past 18 months, I now see how I de-personfied God, how I missed God as Father, as well as other views of theology and biblical understanding. Now I see things through a different filter and it changes my understanding of scripture and theology. In fact, it has helped me see myself as God created me.

I recommend to everyone the need to spend time exploring your past to see how the experiences of your past impact your view of yourself, others, and scripture. You never know how your experiences impact your theological expression.

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(1) Ann Marie Barry, Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 17.

(2) Ibid, 19.

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