Truth's truths

I've been thinking lately: How do we know if something pertaining to God is true?

When I was a kid, I was taught that experience is not valid. I was taught that we read the Bible, take it very literally, and don't look for experiences with God.

But then, aren't all the Bible stories accounts of people's experiences with God? If you don't have experience, what do you have?

Experience it is!
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So then I think about the idea of basing truth off of experience. That can be done. As mentioned, that's precisely how the Bible works.

Like in the "Love" post, I experienced God's interactive love for me, I therefore can't question that it's real. Or that He's real for that matter.

But it's also true that a painful emotion can twist our ability to see reality.

A painful emotion could have made me rail against the totally true love I experienced last week. (Especially during the back-to-blah time following the experience.)

Too, emotion can convince us that God said something because we'd LOVE it if he would. Been there done that.

Even with these dangers, experience seems to be the method by which to arrive at truth, whether that experience is our own or someone else's.

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But you see, my head has been warped. I have over 2 decades of people telling me that truth MUST be verified in order to BE truth.

It must be written, in order that it's tangible. It must be analyzed and scrutinized in order to be sure it's solid. It must be able to be proved - for truth and fact are the same... usually...

Unless it's not possible to write/analyze/scrutinize/prove MY truth.

How reliable.

Maybe, truth doesn't need proven at all. Maybe truth is truth. Maybe truth is so confident in it's true-ness, that it doesn't need us to validate it.

And if that's *ahem* true, then we're back to being able to rely on experience.
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One thing I know:

God is the source of all truth. God has me. Therefore I am wrapped in truth. And Truth will help me to identify the details of Himself.

And how do I know this? Well, experience! Naturally!

And faith. Let's not forget faith. Faith matters.

(Sidenote: Is either faith or experience a sub-category of the other? ... Does it matter? ... Will I end up writing a blog post explaining why faith's more important than experience? ... Will you read it? ... Do I need a cookie? ... Yes I do.)