Mysticism (from the Greek word mustikos, meaning “secret”) is perhaps the best label for a worldview that affirms the existence of God but rejects the idea that God has communicated with humans primarily through an open and public revelation, such as divinely inspired scriptures (as the Bible and the Qur’an claim to be). According to this view, God always speaks to people privately and individually. Strictly speaking, only I can really know what God says to me and only you can really know what God says to you. Moreover, what God says to you may well be very different from what God says to me.
Some who hold this view may accept that God speaks through ancient scriptures, such as the Bible, but they usually want to insist that the highest and most important knowledge of God comes through a direct personal experience of him. They may also want to say that God speaks through these scriptures in different ways to different people; with the same text, God can communicate one thing to Jack and quite another thing to Jill. What this means in practice is that while the actual words of the scriptures may be available to all, what God chooses to communicate through those words is always private and individual.
This worldview is appealing to some because it implies that God gives each of us direct, individual attention, rather like a personal physician or therapist. And there’s certainly no shortage of people who claim to have received direct, private revelations from God!
Nevertheless, we have to consider how likely it is that God communicates only, or even primarily, in this fashion. If God wished to address human beings as a group, as an entire race, wouldn’t an open and public revelation be much more fitting and practical? (By way of comparison, think of the public addresses given to an entire nation by the leader of that nation.) If all of us have the same basic needs and face the same basic challenges in life, surely it would make the most sense for God to speak to us about those matters publicly and collectively.
A more serious problem with Mysticism is that it offers no way, in principle, for us to judge between conflicting claims about what God expects of us or requires of us. If Jack says God told him one thing while Jill says God told her the very opposite, how can we determine which (if either) of them is right? Surely we need some public and objective way of confirming what God has actually communicated to us.
Suppose, for example, I claim that God spoke to me directly and told me that I should take your new sports car for a spin and then sacrifice your pet hamster as a burnt offering. How can you prove otherwise? It won’t do to complain that God didn’t tell you those things! If God only speaks to people privately and individually, you have no basis for contesting what I claim about God’s will. It will always be my word against yours.
Here’s the upshot. If God’s most important communications with humans aren’t a matter of public record—if God hasn’t spoken in a way that, in principle, anyone can access, understand, and confirm—then there’s really no way for anyone to verify or judge between conflicting claims about what God has actually said.
Imagine what it would be like to live in a country where the founding constitution and laws of the nation have never been publicly communicated and recorded. How well would that work? Practical anarchy would be the result.
In the same way, Mysticism seems to lead inevitably to religious anarchy—and perhaps moral anarchy, as well. Is that the sort of situation that God wants us to be in?
(from James Anderson's "What is Your Worldview?")