Ask a pastor column

Q: What should Christians make of near-death experiences?

A:  The Bible lays out a careful balance between subjective experiences and the objective truths of God. Whether we’re talking about near-death experiences, visions or something else, we must make sure we have the right understanding of what happened. Passages such as II Corinthians 11:14-15, I John 4:1, and I Thessalonians 5:21 warn us to test our experiences for conformity to the truth. Now, I don’t want to minimize the value of spiritual experiences. They are an important part of the Christian life. Without experiencing the Truth and goodness of God, we would have no passion or drive in our faith. But if we blindly accept supposedly spiritual experience without checking them, we run the risk of letting falsehood slip into our thinking.

Objective truth is the other side of the coin when it comes to the Christian life. If I share with you a spiritual experience that I had, you only have my word and perspective on that encounter. You can’t go back and experience it yourself. You have to choose whether to believe me or not. On the other hand, if I tell you about something written in the Bible or other objective Christian Truths, then they are there for you to examine and experience too. Everyone can see them and they are much easier to judge for truth or falsehood than an experience.

Once again, I think it’s a matter of carefully balancing experiences with facts. If you’ve had an experience, then you know what happened to you. Checking that experience against Scripture can help you understand it more fully and its significance for your life. If you hear about someone else’s spiritual experience, that also needs to be checked against Scripture to see if it lines up with clear Christian teaching. If it does, great! But if it seems to lead us into other things or distract us from the clear teachings of Christ, then we should probably not give it too much weight or consideration. If we lean too far into subjective experiences, we end up with passion apart from Truth. But if we emphasize objective facts over experience, we get Truth without passion. The right balance of both ensures that we are motivated to move in our Christian lives and we are moving in the right direction!

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