“After I had given a talk at the Church of Our Lady in Svendborg the other night, one of the priests, Gitte Meyer Jørgensen, pulled me aside and told me that many people have come to her after having had encounters with angels, seen a vision with Jesus, heard the voice of God, sensed a divine presence, felt surrounded by desire and much more.
Now she wanted to talk to me about what she should say to them?” This is how I begin my column in the Swedish newspaper Sändaren, which I write for every month.
You can read the column in Swedish here.
And I continue: “Since my first book, “I met Jesus”, was published in Denmark in 2015, in Norway the same year and in Sweden and other countries in the following years, I have given around 300 talks about my and others’ spiritual experiences. Every single time there has been a priest who has said what Gitte said, whether I have been in parish churches, free churches, libraries or whatever country I have visited.
My own shock at having unexpectedly had many religious experiences led to intensive international research, which I am now in my 17th year. One of the most astonishing things I’ve discovered is that, according to the British BBC and the American Pew Institute, 50-75 percent of us have had an experience we call spiritual or similar. People have always had religious experiences and they have always gone to priests with them. I did that myself. She advised me brilliantly, but since then I have experienced time and time again that many pastors do not feel equipped for that part of the task.
“It’s not something we talk to each other about either,” the experienced pastor in Svendborg confided in me.
It still amazes me, because the Bible is full of experiences. And it is full of guidance on how to counsel people to live with them and let them have the awesome transformative power they have. My short guide based on equal parts practice and Bible reading falls into seven steps:
- Recognize the experience, as Paul, among others, does. Neither priests nor others can judge what a person has experienced as reality.
- Speak with care and caution. Many people struggle to find the right words. It makes them embarrassed and often shy. Give them time and care. Listen to them.
- Respect how much of a difference even the smallest experiences can make in people’s lives. Feeling God’s presence can overturn your own worldview and create major conflicts in families.
- Say “bless you” over and over again. The priest did this to teach me that this is a gift I have been given, a blessing and not something I have earned. What a joy!
- Retell what Jesus does when he stands on the mountain and is enlightened by God and the disciples also suddenly see Moses and Elijah standing next to him. Peter wants to build huts so they can stay in the joyful experience up there on the top. Jesus answers him by going down the mountain and continuing his work of healing. In other words, don’t linger in the experience, but live on with the awareness that it can happen. Empower the wonder.
- Don’t empower yourself to decide how others should live with their experiences. I think it’s good for most people to live with them in a community where they are recognized, but not everyone.
- Don’t use experiences as an argument for joining your particular church. As far as I know, all religions have experiences at their core. Christianity does not have a patent on them. Personally, I wish Christian churches in the Nordics would make themselves more visible to those who have experiences, so that they can immediately feel welcome in a church from their culture.”
Joakim Skovgaard: Christ in the realm of the dead, 1891-94, can be seen at Statens Museum for Kunst
