Thanks, Al. It actually makes quite a bit of sense to me. I wasn’t always Lutheran. Though I was baptized and confirmed in a Lutheran church that was part of the newly formed ELCA, they didn’t do a good job of really discipling my parents, so my folks in turn weren’t able to really impart and model faith to me. The church felt really ineffectual and dead spiritually. I left me open to experimenting with other things like new age philosophy and pop-occultism that was popular at the time. I think I was searching for a sense of power I knew must exist but was lacking in the church. It also may be why I was drawn to the performing arts.
It wasn’t until college that God began to reveal himself to me, sending people at various times and inexplicable ways to do so. Through friends in the drama department I wound up in the charismatic Pentecostal church where I heard the gospel powerfully proclaimed, witnessed people really loving each other and wanting to know Jesus. And “got saved” as they say. Complete with what they term the “baptism of the Spirit” and all.
Experience is a powerful thing. The problem with experience I find is that it is so ephemeral and potentially misleading. I had many friends who were “word seekers”, people who followed so-called prophets and apostles who gave personal “words of wisdom” for life-guidance. Much of it generically harmless, but some quite dangerous. Experience was elevated above the Word of God rather than being subject to it.
Took me many years, but beginning to question my experience led me to the LCMS where I’ve been for two decades. Lutherans believe in the Spirit and don’t prohibit that God can speak however and wherever He sovereignly pleases. But we say that He works through Means, the primary one being the Word of God to which everything else must be conformed. That’s why this discussion we’re having on proper hermeneutics and interpretation is so critical to us.
The idea of a Failure to Rise is interesting. But as I think of it, I personally find “rising” impossible. The evidence of a Fall universal in that I see it in myself and ubiquitously in others, regardless of whether Adam was an archetype, a special creation, whatever. Original sin lives in me. Try as I might I can’t rise because of the impossible gap that I need Jesus to fill for me.
Many blessings to you friend!