What if I don’t experience the God I’m supposed to believe in? (Zack Eswine, Author, Speaker, Pastor Founder “Sage Christianity”)

There's so much to say about experience and so much to say about experiencing God and so much to say about why we don't experience God that we can't possibly speak to everything tonight.

But I do want to think about a particular question about love.

And I'd like to think about love in ways that are much more ordinary than we're accustomed to thinking.

And maybe there'll be some clues about experiencing God or what we might experience.

do or think or feel if we aren't experiencing the God we believe in.

I'd like to start with a quote from Alex O'Connor, whom you may have heard of.

He's a well-known influencer who has been a well-known atheist, who recently would say he's more agnostic and would say he wishes Christianity was true.

Though he can't believe it, he wished it were true.

And I find him to be a very thoughtful conversation partner, though I've never had a conversation with him.

As I listen to him talking with others, I find him a very thoughtful, engaging person.

And he was asked a question, what would it take to turn the dial? That's what it was.

What would it take for him to believe in God in general, Jesus in particular? And he said this, I often hear people describe that they just suddenly feel the presence of love, that they just suddenly somehow recognize that they're unconditionally loved.

I mean, obviously, you know, I spend time with friends and family, and I think, oh, that's really nice.

I feel like they love me.

But you hear this description, even just fleetingly, somebody feeling an unconditional love that's quite vague.

But, I mean, I'm not asking for too much, he says.

I'm not asking to spell it out in the sky or anything.

But something like that, I think, would be quite powerful, especially if it came at the end of a long reflection on the Gospels, or I've been having a religious debate, or we've had this conversation.

And if I left this room and suddenly I just felt almost like I was high for a minute, inexplicably, and it was distinctly this feeling of like I'm loved unconditionally by someone or something, that would be the kind of thing that I think would move the dial.

He says just a bit earlier than that, he says, I think it's to be expected that But that if I were to be convinced to start following any religion or a person like Jesus, it's probably going to be experiential.

I think that's no less true for me than anybody else.

That's remarkable for a person who regularly engages ideas intellectually to say that at the end of the day, what would help him or change him would be an experience of unconditional love with God.

And he's expressing what it's like not to experience a God he doesn't believe in.

But I think I have a real resonance with his talk.

And I think many people who do believe in Jesus or believe in God, many people might have the same feeling.