What Comes First? Truth or Experience

Most of us have heard the old tough to figure out question, what came first the chicken or the egg? How can you have a chicken without an egg but how can you have the egg without the chicken? Most would say the egg, but I would like to think that the chicken came first as a creation of God, so there you go problem solved.

I was recently asked a question that felt at first like the chicken question that seemed easy at first but then I realized how complex it really was. "Does truth define my experiences in life or do my experiences define truth?" If we were taking a quiz I think most of us would say as Christians would say that truth defines my experience but if we were honest how many of us are actually experiencing that?

What do we do when our truth does not line up with experience? Or vice versa, what do we do when our current reality or experience, is not lining up to what we know to be true about God and who he is? What do we do when something difficult or happens in our life and we are left to pick up the pieces? Or when God seems silent? Or when we do not see what we expect to see? What comes first the experience or the truth? 

I know most Christians know God's truth but in the gap of not seeing their experience line up with that truth they give up on that truth. Or by living by just experience alone, we get off from what God's truth is and therefore have come up with our own "truth" of the world which is not of God. 

Consider the disciples on the day Jesus was taken as a prisoner. The truth they believed was that he was the messiah, their savior to rescue them from the rule of the Romans. On that night he did not fight back, he gave in, and was arrested. All of a sudden their truth was shattered because their experience told them it was no longer true. 

He was still the messiah and was their savior and after three days he rose from the dead to align the truth of who he was with the experience they then had of seeing him alive. 

We should lead with understanding God's truth but sometimes we must have faith that when our experience does not line up with the truth right away that God is still at work. In this tension, God calls us to a deeper trust and faith in Him. It calls us to believe him and him alone and remind ourselves that his ways are higher than mine and he is good and in control.

Truth and our experience go hand in hand. One without the other does not allow us to see the greatness of who God is. But in our waiting on him in our experience or waiting on his truth in our experience, let us keep faith and hope in him. That is why Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4;18"so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus and yes that means sometimes our experience is yet to line up with the truth. But we do not put our hope in what we see but rather what is unseen just like on that fateful day of the cross. While the disciples had their eyes focused on the cross God had his focus on the resurrection. 

So what comes first, Jesus, and allowing him to reveal his truth by his word and confirm it in his timing in our experience by the holy spirit. Keep your trust in him.