If the experience of the divine presence can be as underwhelming in charismatic circles as it has been in sacramental Christianity, it is at least as equally elusive in what we may unhappily call "mystical" Christianity where a "personal relationship" with Christ is the emphasis.
Hard and fast borderlines between these forms do not exist universally, of course, and some mixture of these may be observed, depending on peculiar historical developments dominant in the experience of the individual congregation, especially since the 1970's when a great deal of interpenetration of ideas has occurred. For those sitting in the place of the unlearned, the sacramental churches may be represented as the far right of the spectrum, its mystical side is on the left but perhaps more to the center with the tongue talkers way out in left field. These last speak of being filled with the Holy Spirit in something called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and so emphasize a direct and personal experience with the Godhead, and of a dramatic sort. Those to the center often claim to have a profound experience of conversion, but without the dramatic signs. Altar calls, emotional personal testimonies, and public dunkings are more their style. The most bizarre of the pentecostal types include those, I kid you not, who now even claim that God has actually restored missing teeth, in gold no less, and will do the same for you. Snake handling is oh so yesterday, while there is no question of the blind seeing and the deaf hearing. Hope springs eternal for the one who so believes: "the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father" (John 14:12).
The stodgy right wingers of the sacramental ilk or their rationalist brothers will sometimes glory in the fact of having no religious experience at all, and feel no regret about it either, which is why the authority and inspiration of Scripture is so important to them, for without that there would be nothing else. Among Lutherans of this type the old theological insight, simul justus et peccator, sums up human experience in Christ in formal, legal terms from God's perspective. The best analogy is the courtroom where the verdict of the jury and the sentence of the judge do not transform the essence of the person on trial. The person who goes free and the one who goes to jail differ in no wise from one another, except that the one knows this while the other does not. Technically freed from the consequences of sin, until the flesh is transformed in the resurrection the former is stuck with its baneful influences as much as is the latter. So he makes the best of it until then. It's schizophrenia only in the formal sense. Justification is forensic, but its temporal application requires other work outs first. Any kind of Christianity other than that, they will tell you, is madness in fact. That way lies manic depression at worst, fanaticism at best. No good can come of it. Mother Teresa, for all we know, now that her true feelings have seen the light of day, went to her grave in anguish over the absence of the divine presence in her experience. In public, she kept up appearances, as they say.
Mystical Christianity is all about human transformation, and it is no coincidence that its contemporary forms are heavily influenced by concerns, conceptions and terminology derived from the so-called science of psychology more than they are from the historic Christian faith. Ours is, after all, an age of enormous narcissism, a(n inevitable?) by-product of the success of the West. It is primarily a phenomenon of the twentieth century which has co-opted the first, and it comes as quite a surprise to its simpler devotees to learn that their hero, Saul of Tarsus, was an unwilling convert to Christianity who did not wring his hands in anguish over his sins when he "accepted" Christ on the road to Damascus. The Emperor Constantine was not brought to Christ in a fit of existential anguish about his failed life, substance abuse, and hurt feelings in his family but by a vision of the cross on the battlefield of war, if the sources are to be believed.
The stories of our converts are sniveling by comparison, and effeminate. We are constantly regaled with stories of slavery to drugs, alcohol, political power, sex and tobacco, none of which they were capable of overcoming without the help of Christ. When this was still a sane society, people told you to stop doing bad things because they thought God had so equipped human beings to stand on their own two feet. Not any more. The citizens of this country give the impression that they couldn't stop drinking for twenty-four hours let alone declare their independence from inside the confines of a paper bag, quite apart from the King of England.
It is not fair to single out the Christians for their bad behavior as if the same in non-believers is not also bad. It's just that their pretensions to transformation simply do not stand the tests of investigation. When no one else is awake early on Sunday mornings, they are out there on the highways in their freshly washed cars, as many of them speeding to church as the general population to work on a Monday morning. A Christian couldn't possibly pad a bill, especially if he's also your relative. We can't really treat you like one for whom Christ died unless you join our church. In fact, we don't really want to know you unless you do.
From where I sit, Christian or not, whether it's got tits or testicles, it's going to cause you trouble.
