Does an 'encounter' with God cancel out good doctrine? (plus details about my new book)

“Christianity doesn’t need just some pontification about some belief, it needs a genuine encounter with God. People can argue doctrine, and I believe in having good doctrine, but they can argue that what this says and that says, but when you encounter God, there's no argument.”                                                                                                          Charismatic Pastor Russell Evans.

On the surface and at first glance, this actually sounds pretty good. Who doesn’t want to ‘encounter’ God? Who doesn’t want a faith that feels alive and real? The danger lurking beneath this statement, though, is how Evans defines the word ‘encounter.’ 

Evans contrasts an ‘encounter’ with doctrine, suggesting that doctrine is stuffy and, while important, secondary to a real ‘encounter’ which is powerful and undeniable. By “encounter,” he means a subjective experience, an emotional sense of God’s presence. The problem is that such experiences, while powerful, are unreliable. And when they are elevated above scripture, they become dangerous.

This is not a new temptation. Throughout history, many Christians have been tempted to gauge their closeness to God based on their feelings. If we feel God, he must be close, and if we don’t, he must be distant. The problem is that feelings come and go. 

The intense feeling of a high-energy, full music, worship service experience is often gone by Monday morning. If our faith rests on that emotion, then it will come and go along with our feelings. 

The even more troubling outworking of Evans’s ‘theology of encounter’ is that experience-driven Christianity undermines the sufficiency of scripture. 

The Bible tells us that God has spoken decisively in His Son (Hebrews 1:1–2). His Word is what brings faith (Romans 10:17), equips us for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16–17), and renews our minds (Romans 12:2). 

To claim that doctrine is important up until you have a subjective and experiential ‘encounter’ with God is to shift the very foundation of faith from God’s unchanging and infallible Word to our changing and unreliable emotions.

Biblical and real encounters with God have always been Word-centred, not emotion-driven. 

The Israelites trembled at Sinai not because of a “power encounter” or mystical feelings but because they heard God’s voice thunder from the mountain (Exodus 19:16). On the road to Emmaus, the disciples’ hearts “burned within them” not because of an ‘encounter’ but because Jesus opened the scriptures and taught them about himself from the Word of God (Luke 24:32). 

The Apostle Peter even after having one of the most amazing ‘encounters’ when he witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain, still points us back to scripture as our final authority and, “the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you would do well to pay attention as to a light shining in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:16) Peter is saying that it is God’s word, not experiences, that light our way in the darkness. If we follow our experience and our ‘encounters’, then we will be fumbling around in the dark, unable to find the truth of God. 

That is why the New Testament places such importance on good doctrine. Paul commanded Timothy to guard the teaching (1 Timothy 4:16). John warned believers to test the spirits (1 John 4:1). Jude urged Christians to contend for the faith once delivered (Jude 3). Far from being second place to ‘encounters’, sound doctrine is how we know God rightly and avoid deception and false teaching. 

Without good, solid doctrine and a proper understanding of God’s Word, we end up worshipping a god of our own invention and imagination.

And this is the danger. If we treat experiences as proof of God’s presence in our lives, then we risk being led astray by anything that moves our emotions. No matter how sincere someone may be, sincerity, not properly anchored in God’s unchanging Word, is likely to drift off into all sorts of error. Even deception can feel deeply spiritual. 

That is why Paul commended the Bereans in Acts 17:11, not because they had the most intense and exciting encounters, but because they “examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

I believe this issue of experience over doctrine and emotionalism at the expense of good biblical teaching is at the heart of the issue in the Charismatic Church today. “Doctrine and good teaching are fine until you’ve had an emotional and deep feeling encounter, then that overrides what the bible may say if it disagrees with your encounter.” This is very dangerous teaching. 

This is why I’ve written my upcoming book, A More Excellent Way: A Biblical Guide to 1 Corinthians 12–14: Spiritual Gifts, Tongues and Worship. These chapters are often used to defend the very experience-driven Christianity I’ve just described. But Paul’s real concern was not to encourage endless chasing after spiritual highs and mystical ‘encounters’, instead, it was to bring the church back to order and the right use of the gifts for edification of the whole church, not an individualistic, private encounter. 

In the book, I walk through these chapters carefully and show how grounding our faith in God’s Word offers a more excellent way than chasing ‘here one day and gone the next’ experiences. If you’ve ever wrestled with these questions, I believe this book will serve as a helpful guide as you search the scriptures for yourself. 

Here's a quote from my book,

“The Spirit works in peace, not in chaos. And love, not a big spiritual display, is the true sign of maturity. These three chapters [1 Corinthians 12-14] are not a license for charismatic excesses. They are a correction to a church that had let its focus drift from the giver of the gifts and his purpose in giving them, to the gifts themselves. Understanding Paul’s structure protects us from misreading the text. It reminds us that the issue isn’t whether gifts are real, but whether they are being used rightly, in submission to Scripture, and for the good of the whole body of Christ, the church.” 

Dear believer, don't go chasing after the next emotional and ecstatic experience to try to 'find' God. If you are regenerated, then you are a child of His, and He has lovingly and graciously given you everything you need for life and godliness right in front of you. 

His infallible, all-sufficient Word. That and only that is what we can rely on to navigate the rough waters of this life. If we drift off into seeking the next spiritual 'encounter', we will only end up shipwrecked on the rocks on the shore. 

Seek after him in his Word, and he will sustain and carry you through. 

Soli Deo Gloria 

My new book, A More Excellent Way: A Biblical Guide to 1 Corinthians 12–14: Spiritual Gifts, Tongues, and Worship, will be available on Amazon in both eBook and paperback formats before Christmas.