When you speak from personal experience you are on solid ground. When you speak on authority of divine guidance or even on scientific authority, you are more subject to challenge. Craig explains in the video.
This video has captions. To see them, click CC on the video screen.
Here’s what Craig says in the video:
Hi everybody! Hey it’s Craig Freshley here.
I’ve been thinking about speaking from authority. There are two or three different authorities that somebody can speak from when they’re trying to persuade others of a certain way; a certain belief.
One set of authority is scientific fact and when I speak from that place of authority, I might get in a debate about which scientific facts are more correct than others.
Another basis for authority is divine authority. I might say this is what God has told me to believe or this is what the Bible says and when I try to persuade somebody of something based on that platform of authority, I might find myself in a debate about whether my God knows better than your God.
But there’s a third basis for authority and that is personal experience. When I talk about what I have seen and what I have felt, I’m on solid ground. It’s very hard to argue with my personal experience and not only that, when I talk from a basis of personal experience, I am, when I’m at my best, I am allowing you to speak from the basis of your personal experiences and we don’t even have a debate.
My personal experience is true for me, your personal experience is true for you and it is speaking from a platform of personal experience; that’s what we do at a Make Shift Coffee House. We’re about to have a Make Shift Coffee House right now. It’s a place where we hear some music, we have some food.
Come on in, I’ll show you what’s going on here. We share our personal experiences and all we try to do is understand each other. People are going to be gathered here in a few minutes and we’re going to share some stories, we’re going to learn some things from each other, we’re going to ask people to sign up, and we’re going to sell stickers and we’re going to walk out of here each understanding more about where each other is coming from than when we walked in.
Thanks for listening everybody.
