Pastor's Letter or Enduring Scripture

John Pavlovitz, in an excellent though mostly unrelated post, referred to the writings of Paul as pastoral letters. I am, in general, not a fan of Paul. I think he tends to say things that are overzealous and mean sprited. However, in the context of pastoral letters, his writings take on a whole different meaning. They are written not as permanent instructions, but to fix problems and raise faith in the present time and place. He is at times a great & poetic writer & his writing is worth keeping & studying for the beauty and history. But it is not and was never meant as instructions for how to live our faith outside of that time and those congregations.

On Having Faith and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (Part 1)

I have labelled this as Part 1 not because I am planning a series at the moment, but because this is a rabbit hole that shouldn't be left alone.

A Google search for Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Religion makes it clear that people with TLE have weird or exceptional religious experiences more often than people who don't. Much more often. (Go do the research yourself and come back if you need details.) In many cases, their inner experience and what outside observers see (or video shows) that there is a completely rational and neither religious or magical explanation for what happened and/or that they were having a seizure at the time of the experience.

I have had a few experiences that converted me from Agnostic to seeker/believer. They weren't of the level of Saul on the road to Damascus, but little things like having a wave of peace and safety come over me in a touchy situation where calm was hard to come by but much needed. As someone with TLE, all of those moments are suspect. Yet they inform my beliefs and how I react, share and exemplify them. On a macro level, those experiences have nothing to do with my faith - I became a Christian through reading and studying and finding something worthy of following. I would also say true, but again, my moments and leaps of religious faith are suspect. I am a better human for following Jesus, though I would be a better human if I followed Jesus more closely. But the triggers for the reading and studying that led to my conversion (and the triggers that kept me reading and studying) are most likely brain misfires, hallucinations even, that I took as religious experiences in an attempt to make sense of what was going through my brain.
It would be easy to say "But God gave you those experiences and ..." However, even if MY faith experiences that were actually TLE had beneficial or benign outcomes (reading and studying to find something that makes me a better person), there are plenty of examples of non-benign outcomes from TLE induced faith experiences. All those hateful and divisive things Paul said? Very likely TLE. (I could give more examples, but that would require work.)