In the “Refutation of Philosophy” Al-Ghazali an Islamic holy man argued in the Middle Ages that there was no substitute for the direct experience of God.  Philosophy, art, music, and literature were of no significance and that prayer, fasting, and reading the Koran were only permissible.  This philosophy stifled all attempts at modern progress.  In the “Refutation of the Refutation”, Averroes,  another later Islamic philosopher, tried to show that other ways of experiencing God were also valid.  Fundamentalism won the day and the struggle with tradition and modernity still exists today in the Muslim world.

            Evelyn Underhill a modern mystic makes a distinction between experiencing God through mediation, such as art and music and experiencing God without mediation, a direct experience of God.  The value of mediation, for Underhill, is that it can dispose you to the unmediated experience of God.  Much of modern Christianity fails to recognize the ultimate goal and settles for mediation such as music, art, literature, and religion.  Where Al-Ghazali failed to recognize the importance of growth in the spiritual journey and hindered the human attempt to capture the infinite, too many Christians fail to recognize the ultimate experience: God without mediation, the direct experience of God.

            Scripture, christian music, and religion are all ways of experiencing God through mediation.  Sometimes we need silence, sometimes stillness in order to empty (kenosis) in order to be filled.  Doing the prepartory work is good and important but at some point must give way to silence in order to be filled with God and experience Him and not something about him. 

            If you are a Christian who has spent a great deal of time in the Word, listening to music and hearing good sermons preached, maybe it is time to seek the giver and not the gifts.  Food for thought. 

Amen