11. Do people who are serious about this religion generally feel that they are put into an actual relationship with the divine?
Of all the questions I have been asking, this is by far the most difficult to write about in an objective style. By its nature, it is far more subjective and anecdotal than most of my criteria, yet leaving it out would be even more misleading. It would be lopsided to only think about the "objective" criteria. Even if the more "subjective" side of religion is something which each person must discover for themselves, one cannot leave it out of the accounts. We can at least ask people what they have experienced, and then look into our own hearts as well.
One person can have a mystical perception of God, while another person thinks he sees subtle traces of his presence in subtle ways in Nature and other people, while a third person claims never to have had any special religious experiences at all. As far as one can tell from external observation, any or all of these three people may be telling the truth about themselves! One person saying "I have experienced God!" in no way contradicts another person saying "I have not!".
Yet, just because the criterion is subjective does not mean we should wallow in a religious relativism where "anything goes". If the Monotheistic tradition that goes back to St. Abraham is correct, then there is only one God who created everything, then we have no right to idolatrously remake God in our own image. He is the Reality, our job is to conform ourselves to that reality. This contrasts with the imaginative riot of Polytheism, Pantheism, or New Age spirituality, which is pleasing at the level of the imagination because it allows each person to make up their own conception of divinity to suit their own fancy. Yet if you choose to serve gods of your own making, this threatens to be a roundabout way of worshipping yourself, a subtle snare that prevents one from humbly acknowledging flaws and the need for spiritual growth.
If the God of Monotheism exists, then this is an transcendent, metaphysical reality, which does not depend in any way on our own opinions. Similarly, if he has intervened miraculously in history, this is an objective fact which can be investigated using historical tools. On the other hand, if God has relationships with individual human beings, then he might relate to each of billions of different people in a billion slightly different ways. Yet if there is only one God, then it is the same God for all of them.
Now in Christianity, we believe that God is love in his essential being. Since love is a relationship between persons, even God, even though he is one being, has in himself something analogous to a loving communion of persons, whom we call the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Although the Son and Holy Spirit exist with the Father eternally, he has also sent them into the world in order to reveal himself tangibly and empirically to human beings. It is because of this revelation that we know that God is love.
The Son is revealed historically, as the person of Jesus Christ, who could be touched and seen, who suffered on the cross and rose from the dead. The Spirit testifies to the work of the Son, in part by doing the miracles, but also by working inside people's hearts to show them the true meaning of Christ's sacrifice. Hence, any Christian apologetic that ignores the subjective side of things is fundmantally lopsided, since it neglects the work of the Third Person of the Trinity, who is just as much divine as the Father and the Son.
Now Christianity says that the Holy Spirit dwells, not just in prophets or clergy, but in every single believer. Accordingly, each of us is put into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. (This is particularly emphasized by Evangelical Protestants like myself, but it is not absent from other Christian traditions.)
The Bible indicates that this was God's plan from the beginning, although at first the people of Israel were not ready for it. When Moses was asked by Joshua to stop two elders who were prophesying in his camp, he rebuked him, saying “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” (Num. 11:29).
Hundreds of years later, the prophet Jeremiah described the New Covenant which would come through the Messiah:
“But this is the New Covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the Lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
Making some allowances for Eastern hyperbole, this is a good description of the way in which the Christian religion differs from the Jewish one that preceeds it: (1) It will involve the Spirit guiding people's hearts (rather than being an external code of laws for a nation), and (2) the forgiveness of sins will play a central role in the New Covenant. As St. John writes:
I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing [i.e. the Holy Spirit] you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him. (1 John 2:26-27)
Now, I suppose there must be some people in all theistic religions who claim that their religion has put them directly in touch with God (or one of the gods). At the very least, the founder of the religion usually claims to be some kind of prophet. So I'm not going to make the strong claim that nobody ever feels like they have a personal relationship with God in a non-Christian religion. But I am going to claim that it's much rarer for the rank-and-file members of other religions to feel that way.
Nor am I going to make the strong claim that all Christians have exactly the same kind or degree of experience of God, that they all "hear God speaking to them" in the exact same ways. I am trying to speak in generalities here. Of course, there are a large number of nominal believers who are Christian only in a cultural sense, and aren't really seeking God with their whole heart. But even among serious believers, there is no promise in the New Testament that everyone gets the exact same thing (regarding such spiritual experiences).
St. Paul taught that each person in the Church has a different set of spiritual gifts, and that we need each other to be complete. Jesus said "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29). What matters is that God is working through you, inspiring you to love other people. As Jesus said, "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). If God is love, then you can tell that God is working in a person's life when they start being transformed into his likeness.
Now as far as I can tell, the percentage of Jews and Muslims who would claim to have this kind of intimate relationship with God is quite small. They don't usually claim that God has spoken to them personally, or that he dwells within their hearts, or anything along those lines. These religions don't really encourage that kind of attitude; it probably seems presumptuous to them. (My experience is somewhat limited by living in an English speaking country where Christianity is the most common religion, but I do not think this fully accounts for the differences.)
Yet, when I go to various churches, I regularly hear people talking about how God spoke to them, or led them to do various things. I myself have often felt like his Spirit was guiding me when I had to make some decision, or had some difficulty. (I have also had mystical experiences of a more dramatic kind, but let's leave that aside for now.) Maybe once every month or two (though sometimes at much longer intervals) and often at unexpected times, I feel like I'm being guided by a presence that I recognize. Sometimes one also gets what seems to be confirmation of the message, from the words of other Christians. (Once a woman told me they had received the exact same message that I had just shared with the church, and it wasn't anything obvious either.)
This does not mean there have not been many times when God seemed to be completely and frustratingly silent, or where I wasn't at all sure whether some thought was from God or just my own subconscious. I really don't want to present a false impression here. Two weeks after some really dramatic spiritual event, I'll be wondering just like the rest of you why God doesn't speak more clearly. So my faith is not all that strong. But an inability to remember and cling to the truth seems more like my own fault, than his. So yes, I do believe God talks to me, and to other Christians, from time to time, even if it is not as often as I personally might prefer.
Of course, the other side of prayer is us talking to God. For a great many pious Jews and Muslims, such "prayer" seems to mean reciting a prescribed set of words, in a specific language (which they may not even understand!) at certain times of day, according to a prescribed set of rules. Now there is nothing wrong with saying prayers that have been written by other people, if that is helpful to you. And there is no reason why somebody couldn't genuinely mean the exact same words each day either. So I'm not trying to speak against set prayers per se. But when prayer becomes a mere ritual obligation, it dies.
To me, prayer is the pouring our your deepest needs before your God and Savior. It is speaking your thoughts, as if to your closest friend; reverently yes, but also boldly, because you are trying to make an actual connection with the Power that made the stars! It is seeking his deepest will, knowing that you would not be seeking him, if he were not first seeking you. It is life and breath, not a mere recitation of words!
In my own American context, I've talked to several practicing Jews and Muslims about their religion, and while many of them were trying to obey the rules, none ever seemed to think about their religion in this passionate, heartfelt way. There may be exceptions, but I haven't met them. (Except for one Jewish friend, whom I myself encouraged to have a more personal relationship to God in prayer, but he later became a Christian as a result.)
An exception might be Sufism, a mystical school of Islam that seems to encourage a more inner relationship with God. I don't really know enough about this movement to comment very meaningfully, but any religious tradition capable of producing pop songs expressing love for God must be doing something right. Unfortunately it's hard to get into this material as an English speaker. For a Christian version, I would suggest the song "All the Way" by the band Delirious?:
Come close to me, too close for words
And still my beating heart
I find your thoughts without one glance
We're going all the wayWith you I'm washed as white as the snow
And all crimson stain becomes just a shadow
You know I would be blind without you
So light up my way to find my way home again
Today, today, today, we're going all the way
A skeptic might wonder whether this kind of intimate relationship with God is merely a form of self-deception, tricking oneself into believing things based on the expectation of the community around us. But if so, it should only appear in people who are properly brainwashed. I have a friend from St. John's College who at the time went by the name of Stella. She used to dabble in Wicca, but became a Christian during our sophomore year from reading the Gospel of John, and Augustine, and perhaps a little bit of my influence as well. "My sheep hear my voice," Jesus had said in a seminar reading, and it struck home to her. A few months later, she went down the aisle in a church and rededicated her life to Christ (she had been baptized as an infant in the Catholic church, but her mother had left it quite early in her life).
A while after her conversion, Stella came to me with a concern. Apparently, God was beginning to speak quietly to her in strange ways, giving her little bits of advice and so on. Not always with words, "body language" she called it. Evidently, she'd had no expectation whatsoever that this was going to happen. In fact she was concerned it meant she was going crazy or something! I explained to her that this was a perfectly normal occurance, not necessarily correlated with any other sort of insanity, just part of the package deal for Christians. I also explained that she shouldn't expect it to happen all the time; that there might be long periods of silence and that this didn't necesarily mean she'd done anything wrong.
Scoff if you like about what we call people who hear voices in their heads, obviously it is just not true that all these ordinary Church-goers have schizophrenia. Indeed, the weird thing about hearing the voice of God, is that it doesn't feel like going crazy, it feels more like being in tune with someone who knows your deepest, most authentic self. It is stablizing, centering. It tells you to do things which seem hard at the time (like confessing sins) but which ultimately promote spiritual growth. And to me this voice speaks with the same voice as Christ in the Gospels. I've read and loved many fictional characters, but none of them have ever entered my brain and become a living fountain of new and profound advice.
For a sympathetic (but at times critical) anthropological analysis of God talking to Evangelical Christians, the book When God Talks Back by T.M. Luhrmann is pretty interesting.
It probably should be explictly said that this can sometimes go terribly wrong in certain churches when the expectation to have such experiences is too high (or when certain Christians start thinking the Devil—who is not known for being particularly stablizing and centering—is speaking to them).
If God isn't talking—other than through the Bible of course—but you have an emotional need that he speak to a situation, there can certainly be a temptation to manufacture experiences. And there are times when I've probably convinced myself that fragmentary thoughts or images popping into my mind were more meaningful than they actually were. Only now, in retrospect, do I realize the (nevertheless at the time obvious) emotional need that was in some cases (but not all) driving my attitudes.
And yet, revelation from God is an inextricable part of Christian experience. And (rarely, to some people) that revelation becomes more intense and harder to deny. So, as St. Paul said, "Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord." (2 Cor 12:1) Specifically, I will talk about more dramatic cases in which I am still quite sure that some communication occurred, where I would only doubt it if I were doubting that God communicates to anyone.
Some Personal Experiences
When I was 20 years old, in my senior year of college, I had a vision of God while I was in church on Sunday. Let's back up and put this in context. The previous day I had been hiking up Atalaya, a gorgeous mountain visible from St. John's College, with my friend Stella. We spoke about many things, among them a question about my best friend (the Jewish guy I alluded to above): I had been accepted to grad school at U Maryland, and because his parents lived in Arlington, he thought it would be a great idea to live in an apartment together somewhere in DC area. I wondered out loud whether this was a good idea because it seemed—and it's going to be pretty hard for me to justify this thought, because I now can't anymore see it as well-motivated—like it might be some sort of immature "failure to move on" from the college experience.
The next day, I was in Church. That semester, I was attending Holy Trinity, the Antiochian Orthodox Church that I mentioned in my post on Seeking Church Unity. Although as a Protestant I couldn't take communion there, during their Divine Liturgy on Sunday they distribute a different loaf called "peace bread" to visitors and other members of the congregation. As I ate the bread, I had an overwhelming sense of the love of God the Father, as obvious as anything one could imagine, and I started involuntarily but quietly laughing with joy.
(At the same time—but this played only a very minor role in the experience—I had a sort of strong visual imagination like an array of solid pillars and pools in between them; a little bit like the Wood Between the Worlds in the Narnia books; or like the adjacent jacuzzi tubs at my parents' timeshare on Kaua'i (but without the bigger pool, just the smaller ones.)
There were no words and no rebuke. Yet it was instantly obvious that the concerns I'd had the previous day about "moving on" were frivolous and absurd; inconsistent with the character of the divine love. It was as if that thought had been unable to withstand contact with the holy presence of God, and had been purged with fire.
The fact that I was tired from hiking and had eaten no breakfast might of course have had something to do with what happened. Another mystical experience, which I'd had the previous year, also came when eating after breaking a fast of many hours (this was after an urgent visit to the hospital with Stella, not a deliberate religious exercise).
In my mind, this bodily aspect is no reason to doubt the reality of these experiences. As a Christian I believe that the body and spirit are a sacramental unity, and that something having a biological cause does not in any way prevent in from being a vehicle for God's Spirit to communicate to us. This is one reason why the Eucharistic Body and Blood is the central element of Christian worship. In our human experience, love, sin, and salvation are all messy bodily realities, involving not just abstract spirituality, but also sticky bodily fluids. This is the domain in which we live as embodied animals, and this is the domain in which the Gospel says that Christ was Incarnate (that is, become flesh) to save us.
As it happened, my best friend and I did get an apartment together for my first year. And while in many ways that year was a difficult and lonely time for us, that was the year when he courageously told his parents that he was considering converting to Christianity. (He was very afraid that his father would disown him, as rabbinic law technically requires, but I'm glad to say that he didn't! Even though it was very difficult for their family for a while.)
And yes, I do know of situations where God told people to do things which only made sense in light of circumstances which they didn't already know. For example, St. Wesley Tink (the former pastor of the church I attended in Princeton), once woke up very early in the morning and felt like God was telling him to drive to his mother-in-law's house, several hours away. When he got there, she was in a diabetic coma. The doctors said she probably would have died if he hadn't stopped by. Go ahead; sit down and calculate the odds of him having that urge at the exact right time. I'll still be here when you get back.
Another time, when I was a postdoc in Santa Barbara, we were about to go to Europe when we learned that our professional cat-sitter had died! But one of my wife's friends offered, out of the blue, to look after our cat Lily. She knew we were going to Europe, but she had no idea what had happened, and we'd travelled many times before. When I asked her why, she hesitated a long time and then said that she felt God prompting her to make the call. (Evidently, despite what the Zoroastrians teach, God loves cats too!)
Another pastor I know, St. Dick Dickenson, once prayed over a man in the hospital whose appendix had burst. He said he heard himself praying out loud that the poisons would collect at the man's colon—wondering all the while why he was praying out loud the names of various organs, that he had only the sketchiest notion where they might be located—and the doctors opened the man up and, according to him, it was exactly so. If you knew this man, you would find it difficult to believe him to be insincere.
Or should I tell the story of a modern day Jonah, who was told by God to be a missionary to India? He didn't want to go, so he said no to God. Then he was diagnosed with a rare illness which made his body unable to control its own temperature. For medical reasons he was forced to move to a more tropical climate.... so he went to India after all. (When he returns to American churches to tell about his work caring for orphans, he has to wear many bulky layers of coats, but his joy and love is obvious.)
I could tell other stories as well, but let's stop here. Of course this sort of thing is "anecdotal" evidence. But despite the sneering of skeptics, I believe that such anecdotes can have significant evidental value if certain conditions are met. To me, a lot of their value is that they are drawn from the small sample of Christians I am acquainted with personally. It's easy to imagine that certain very rare coincidences might happen around the world, and then those stories might be passed around like gossip and even exaggerated. But then one would not expect to encounter so many incidents, in a small sample of acquaintences.
If you read in the newspaper that somebody caught a coelacanth while fishing (an order of fish previously believed to have gone extinct around the same time as the dinosaurs), that would be consistent with them being extremely rare events, or perhaps a hoax. But if several of your friends, living in different areas, each caught coelacanths, then you'd have to conclude they were actually pretty common. So it seems to me that such "anecdotes", assuming they are genuine and selected from a small enough sample of individuals, can in principle produce a quite significant Bayesian confirmation of the supernatural. Of course, the degree of confirmation may differ from person to person, depending on your circle of friends (and whether you attend a church where people feel comfortable talking about this sort of thing).
In any case, the purpose of these posts is to compare Christianity to other claims of supernatural revelation, not to the non-religion of Naturalistic Skepticism. If, for whatever scientific and historical reason you come to believe in a god who might reveal himself to people, and if you want to be a part of that, then of course it's important to check which modern-day religious communities actually make people feel like they've gotten in touch with the divine.
The next question is, are there any other religions besides Christianity which can make similar claims to be directly confirmed by religious experiences?
A Mormon Parallel?
The closest parallel case I know of is the LDS church, a.k.a. Mormonism.
In one sense this religion is fairly close to orthodox Christianity, in that Mormons acknowledge the Bible as Scripture even though they add additional writings by Joseph Smith. In another sense, they are a million miles away, since they are polytheists. (Not only are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit three separate beings, they believe that the "Heavenly Father" is merely an exalted human being, who started out like us, but worked his way up the cosmic pyramid scheme and became the god of our plaent, just as good Mormon patriarchs will eventually become gods of their own planets.) And "Jesus" is God's eldest son, not in the sense of being the eternal Word, but in the crassly literal sense of spirit-procreation with some sort of Heavenly Mother-figure (although unlike any other polytheists ever to have existed, they completely ignore her in their worship ceremonies, which makes no sense if she has an equal metaphysical status to the "Heavenly Father"). So although Mormons use the words "God" and "Jesus", they refer to a completely different kind of entity than what Christians mean by these terms. (But, of course, since they read the Bible, they also believe these beings did many of the same things that our God and Jesus did, so from a historical point of view there is still a lot of overlap.)
I assume it is quite possible that at times, a Mormon in prayer may be in touch with the true God. After all, that's the one God that actually exists. But obviously an orthodox Christian cannot endorse any supposed revelations which seem to support Mormon doctrines that conflict with biblical truth.
Now on any objective historical analysis, the Book of Mormon is going to lose. It was written by an confirmed charlatan, it reads like bible "fan fiction", and its description of American Israelite tribes is totally inconsistent with the archaeological record. Similarly, from an ethical perspective, the history of the LDS church leaves a lot to be desired. For this reason Mormon missionaries rely on a subjective approach, based almost entirely around feelings. Mormons believe that whoever reads the Book of Mormon and sincrely prays to find out if it is true, will receive a "burning in the bosom" confirming the message subjectively:
Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things. (Moroni 10:4-5)
Not very surprisingly (especially if there some psychological pressure being applied by friends, prospective spouses, or missionaries), a certain fraction of the people who try this test will report getting a confirmatory feeling. This can then be interpreted as divine approval to believe something that could never commend itself by an objective analysis.
Mormons are also encouraged to listen to personal revelations from God after their conversion. While anyone can receive revelation, it is generally dispensed in a heirarchical fashion, with fathers receiving guidance for their families and submitting to the revelations of their bishops, apostles, and president. If this revelation directly contradicts what came before—as when the Mormons reversed themselves on polygamy, and whether black people have the "mark of Cain" and therefore cannot be members in good standing—well there is a Mormon saying that "the living prophets always take precedence" over dead prophets, so don't worry about it!
The moral here is not to try to rely purely on subjective factors, especially ones produced by people and organizations which are very good at emotional manipulation (and I think there is no doubt that Joseph Smith falls into that category). Also, I cannot help but record my own personal impression—with apologies to any Mormon who happens to be reading this—which is that even though most Mormons seem like very nice people, there is an odor of fakeness about it; as if they are plastic people, who have to always put on the right appearence in order to be accepted. I have had the privilege to know a few holy people, and that is not what authentic spirituality looks like.
A blogger named Tracing Woodgrains recently gave a painfully honest account of leaving Mormonism after trying very hard to confirm it with spiritual experiences. What struck me most about this account was the huge amount of intense pressure placed on him (and by implication every other person his age) to spiritually perform in a certain way. While my experience may not be fully typical, even very devout evangelical congregations (still more, Catholic or mainline ones) tend to be much more laid back about this stuff. This is only one person's experience but it seems to indicate that the browbeating culture of Joseph Smith continues to this day.
Doubtless there are other, more othodox Christian groups, which have similar pressures to conform to certain religious experiences—for example in certain kinds of Pentecostal churches, where "speaking in tongues" is regarded as a necessary sign of baptism with the Holy Spirit—and I don't approve of such pressure in that context either. Spiritual domineering can occur in any religion. But I don't think this kind of thing can explain all the examples I personally know of where people think that God is talking to them, where this sort of domineering was absent.
Amida Buddha?
A second case study is "Pure Land" Buddhism, which worships the Amitabha Buddha. Now from an outsider's perspective, the first thing to know about Amida was that (unlike Guatama Buddha) there's no reason for a non-Buddhist to think he ever existed historically! Instead, there are texts written hundreds of years after Guatama (the earliest evidence of Amida devotion dates to the 2nd century AD), in which Guatama is represented as claiming that (somewhere a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) Amida existed. He was, they say, a monk who swore a solemn vow that—after becomeing an enlightened Buddha—he would use his enlightened powers to create a "Pure Land" in which it is actually easy to become enlightened.
Any time a religion seems too difficult, inevitably there are going to be wishful people who try to find "shortcuts" in order to make it easier. (Similarly, if a religion seems too easy, some censorious people are always going to try to add more rules, in order to make it more difficult!) Remember all of those lay Buddhists who weren't willing to renounce their family and livelihood in order to become enlightened? Well, simply by devoting yourself to Amida Buddha by (in one version) praying to him at least 10 times, or (in another version) reciting the following Sanskrit mantra:
- namo amitābhāya tathāgatāya tadyathā
amṛtabhave amṛtasaṃbhave
amṛtavikrānte amṛtavikrāntagāmini
gagana kīrtīchare svāhā
you can guarantee that you will be reborn in your next life into the "Pure Land", where everything is great and being a Buddhist is easy. (There are various alternative paradises in Buddhist cosmologies, which you might get to by being virtuous in this life, but unlike the Pure Land those one's mostly aren't really all that great, because too much pleasure is actually a big distraction from becoming enlightened.)
The Pure Land is full of jewelled gardens and bodhisattvas; there is no pain or suffering, and people can live for as long as they want, with the promise that they are assured of eventually becoming enlightened themselves, without retrogressing. Although some of the promises are a little creepy to Westerners, like everyone having an exactly identical appearence (to prevent envy, I suppose) and the promise that women will be able to renounce their gender (because it's easier to be enlightened if you're a man).
I've heard that in Japan, the Pure Land monks would go around trying to get anyone they met on the road to read the scroll with the prayer to Amida. If anyone was willing to recite the syllables (knowledge of Sanskrit not necessary), then the monks would rejoice in their salvation, and move on to the next person. Believe in Amida Buddha: your sins will be forgiven and you will go to Heaven when you die! Many Pure Land Buddhists have a strong emotional attachment to Amida Buddha, and speak of his presence in their lives in terms somewhat reminiscent of Jesus. It's like a parody of Evangelical Christianity!
But the differences with Christianity are also important, and should not be forgotten. One crucial difference, is that life in the Pure Land is technically still shit, just like every other plane of existence. The one good thing about it is that it's supposed to make it easier to find the Exit. They may play up the earthly paradise parts to get worldly-minded converts, but the goal is still to extinguish your own identity.
Another important difference, which I can hardly emphasize enough, is that there's no objective historical evidence that Amida existed!
Most ordinary people know they need a Savior. It is perhaps not too suprising, that in cultures where Jesus was unknown, people come up with imaginary religious Saviors in order to meet their (quite real) spiritual need. Yet Jesus is the actual, historical Son of God that meets that need; as St. Peter said: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Not because there is anything magical about the name JE-ZUS considered as a mantra, as a pair of syllables, but because the name stands for the historical reality of God's salvation dwelling among us. (Which is good, because the English version of Jesus' name isn't very close to the original pronunciation.) In the Christian worldview, salvation is a matter of objective spiritual facts, not subjective warm fuzzy feelings.
Nevertheless, even if the worshippers of Amida have the wrong answer to the question, Christians should note that they are still asking the right question. I believe that all those who are earnestly looking for a righteous Savior will—in this life or the next—find the true Savior that brings abundant life (not destruction of individuality) and learn to taste his goodness.
In the meantime, Amida Buddhism is a potent warning to Evangelical Christianity about the dangers of shallowness. We must take care lest the "altar call" and "sinners prayer" become mere magical talismans, a superstitious ritual (much like reciting a Sanskrit mantra) for making sure you go to the right place after you die. But I am convinced that if you really let Jesus (the living being, described in the Gospels) take control of your heart, he will change you in a way that goes beyond the placebo effect. I've seen it change other people, and I've seen the effects on myself.
More Buddhist Experiences
That said, Amidism is a degenerate form of Buddhism. What about a more authentic version? I promised earlier to consider the claim that Buddhism can be supported by means of religious experiences obtained through meditation, particularly Vipassana (insight meditation) in which one contemplates one's own experience very carefully to try to discern its three attributes of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), anatta (non-self), and anicca (impermanence).
Early Buddhist texts describe a series of increasingly sophisticated alternative states of consiousness to be attained in sequence. Eventually, one arrives at "infinite space", then "infinite consciousness", then "infinite nothingness", and then the classical-logic defying description "neither perception nor non-perception". None of these count as Enlightenment yet. They are just steps on the road to Nirvana, the complete release from all attachments (which is believed to prevent any further rebirths into the world).
(Other mystical meditation schools, such as those found in certain sects of Hinduism, may describe paths containing different numbers of steps, and different final goals. It is unclear to what extent the final results of practicing in different traditions lead to similar outcomes, but in the remarks that follow I will mostly focus on Buddhism since I've studied it more closely.)
Some empirically minded people may find the idea attractive that in principle you could check the existence of these mental states yourself without needing to put faith or trust in any kind of supernatural beings. Of course, these descriptions are obscure enough that you would probably still need a human teacher or guide, to make sure you're really experiencing the same thing that previous generations of meditators have experienced.
Or perhaps, we could hook a monk up to a MRI machine and note which areas of the brain are active when they meditate. This could scientifically confirm, if not the phenomenological content of the state, at least that they are objectively in a different brain-state than non-meditators, showing that they are not simply self-deluded. (A Google Scholar search for the conjunction of "meditation" & "neuroscience" provides over a thousand results, so it appears this is a somewhat hot topic!)
So if all this were done, would this show that e.g. Buddhism is "true"? Well, not exactly. The thing is, even without doing these experiments, I already believe that meditators are able, with practice, to attain specific alternative psychological states. (Just as I already believe that taking drugs can produce specific alternative states of consciousness.) The question is not whether these states exist, but whether they have the metaphysical significance that Buddhists attribute to them.
To test this, we could try to compare the teachings of Buddhism to the current scientific theories about the brain, and if as some say they match (for example, by deflating certain notions of the "self") then perhaps one could say that these teachings of Buddhism had scientific support.
However, from the perspective of logical consistency, there are a few things which no "experience" could possibly imply, because they would contradict the a priori preconditions for having experiences in the first place. For example, no experience could imply Eliminativism (the belief that consciousness does not really exist), because experiences are conscious by definition. (I am not aware of any Eastern religion that clearly teaches Eliminativism, but this example will help to illuminate the following points.)
Nor could any experience logically imply that dualistic logic is unreliable, because that would be a self-undermining and contradictory claim. You cannot even say, "Dualism is false, Non-Dualism is true" without introducing distinctions and divisions between different ideas and concepts, affirming some and denying others. (Note that some Buddhist teachers explicitly deny that Non-Dualism is an authentic part of Buddha's teaching, while other Buddhist schools, like the majority of Hindus, accept it.)
Similarly, I also do not think any experience can really imply the complete non-existence of the self. It might show me that my experiences have different properties than what I might naively think (e.g. that I perceive various objects in my visual field in rapid succession rather than simultanously), or that certain aspects of my "self" are socially constructed and that I can let go of them without suffering harm, or that the self changes in certain ways, or that it has parts that do not always cohere into a perfect unity. But if I simply define myself as "whatever it is that is having `this' experience", then I do not see how any possible experience could refute this claim. (It may be that what is really being taught is a pragmatic attitude of not valuing the self, even as defined in this minimal way, but that would have more to do with ethics than metaphysics.) Even monks who claim to have achieved Enlightenment, still talk about it as something that happened to them, and they can distinguish it from the claim that somebody else was Enlightened.
(And while I do not believe that Christianity requires belief in an immaterial and immortal soul, I don't see how the nonexistence of such a soul could be directly established by introspection either, since its existence need not itself be a direct object of experience.)
For the same reasons, Neuroscience cannot really imply Eliminativism or No-Self, because scientific theories are justified by their ability to explain our observations, and observation is just another word for collections of experiences. So anything which is logically implied by all experiences, must be taken for granted whenever we do good Science. In this sense, Science actually implies that certain strict forms of Physicalism are necessarily false, to they extent that they claim that the Laws of Physics suffice to explain phenomenological experience. If some neuroscientists ascribe to such beliefs, this probably has more to do with their materialist philosophical presuppositions, than with anything really shown by brain research.
And of course, to the extent that we take the scientific method seriously as a guide to the nature of the world, Non-Dualism (in the sense of the rejection of all real distinctions between entities) must obviously be rejected from the get-go. So a lot of these claims that Buddhism fits hand-in-glove with Neuroscience, seem to me to rest on philosophically dubious assumptions.
All of this only refutes certain types of Eastern thought. It does not imply that no logically consistent form of Buddhism can be expressed. Since Christianity includes mind-boggling paradoxes like the Trinity and the Incarnation that we believe on the basis of divine revelation, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't make similar allowances for some of the seeming logical contradictions in other religions (like Non-Dualism or No-Self), which might only be attempts to express the inexpressible, things that can only be known by having the relevant experiences oneself.
Thus, speaking as a Christian, my real objection to Buddhism mostly lies elsewhere. It is that attaining these Buddhist experiences are not of primary religious significance to me (just as, I suppose, theistic experiences have no ultimate religious significance for the dedicated Buddhist whose only goal is eliminating suffering). To me, the goal of religion is union with the wondrous God who created me and everything else. Any insights into my own insubstantial and transitory nature would just show, by contrast, the importance of leaning on the changeless and eternal Creator, who cares for us as a Father cares for his children.
Christians and Meditation Practices
While there may be spiritual benefits from meditation, this Christian perspective downgrades them to the level of technique. Vipassana (insight meditation), Samantha (concentration meditation), and whatever other meditation techniques there may be, are useful to the extent (and only to the extent) that they increase our love for God and for our fellow human beings.
From my own theological perspective, it seems to me that the goals of Metta (loving-kindness mediation) are relatively congruent with Christianity, while those of Patikulamanasikara (disgustingness meditation) seem much more dissonant with the Christian understanding of the value of the body. But as they say, the proof is in the pudding. If anybody feels that they have become a wiser or kinder person as a result of meditation, I have no reason to gainsay them (especially if it is visible in their treatment of others).
But since these Eastern meditation techniques were developed in a non-Christian religious worldview; certain aspects of them may be either inconsistent with faith in Christ, or else inappropriate for achieving Christian goals. And those who attempt meditation practices like Vipassana (which is, in some sense, trying to break the brain's normal way of processing experiences), should be careful because, like doing drugs, in some cases it can cause unpleasant long-term mental changes, like maybe a low-grade depression or feelings of depersonalization. (Note: I have strong doubts whether Ingram, the author reviewed in the last link, is really explaining the authentic teachings of the Buddha, but my purpose here is simply to warn people about the possible side-effects of intense meditation.)
Thus, although elements of Eastern practices may be helpful to some, I would only feel comfortable recommending their study under the guidance of a Christian spiritual director. (Unless it is taught purely as an exercise regime, this includes Yoga, whose religious presuppositions are very different from those of Christianity.) Such a spiritual director would have to be familiar with the techniques in question, wise enough to see their limitations, and zealous enough to shun any hint of idolatry, possession by spirits, religious relativism, or anything else disloyal to the God of Israel—who is rightly jealous for our spirits, since we were made to find our joy in him alone. (This is a tricky task for which few people would be qualified, and a much safer approach is to entirely avoid such syncretistic combinations.)
It seems to me, therefore, that Christians ought to avoid being "unequally yoked with unbelievers" (2 Cor. 6:14) in this respect; and if they wish to meditate, I would recommend the use of a Christian meditation discipline (e.g. the Lectio Divina). While the Bible has much more to say about the spiritual practice of prayer, it does speak about meditation in a few places. In context, this seems to involve deeply pondering the words of God and his righteous acts, rather than a quest for exotic psychological states.
And this is why I am not going to respond to Eastern mysticism by advocating here for some sort of Western mystical tradition focused on Christ, even though such traditions exist and have been pioneered by famous saints. Why not? Because I believe that mystical experiences, while potentially valuable, are not the primary method by which God reveals himself to ordinary human beings. The Kingdom of God is far more frequently revealed in the mundane world of conscience, historical records, and human relationships.
Concluding Thoughts
And there is an important difference that Theism makes. If God is personal and reveals himself at times and places of his own choosing, then no spiritual practice—ascetic meditation, "listening" during prayer, fasting, doing drugs, whatever it is—can force God to reveal himself in new ways, beyond what he has already given us in the Bible and in our past experiences. There is no need for us to somehow ascend to heaven to find God, when God has already come down to us in Christ.
Yes, we need to be "open" to God's voice if he speaks, but it seems presumptuous to try to force his hand and manufacture experiences of our own devising. Instead, we need to wait patiently for God, to humbly see what he is going to do with our lives at a time of his own choosing.
If a particular person genuinely needs to have special information not contained in the Bible (e.g. if God wants to call a specific modern person to be a pastor), God is certainly allowed to do that. But if Christianity is true, the main points of divine revelation have already been revealed to the prophets and apostles. The continual presence of the Spirit shouldn't be thought of as a continual revelation of new doctrines for our own emotional comfort, but rather as a Light that makes it possible for us to live what has been revealed.
And that is why I am not trying to replicate the conditions in which I have had mystical experiences in the past, nor am I signing up for Christian movements that promise that if only I follow a certain special method, I will have an extra-special relationship with the divine. I already have that, and when I read about such methods, it seems to me that my Lord says to me, "What is it to you how I show myself to others? You must follow me in the way of Not-Seeing".
One day, faith will become sight and Jesus will make his glory obvious to everyone. Until then, my duties are work, prayer, and rejoicing.
