In much of the church today there is a misguided emphasis on our experience of God. If we are serious about God, our experience with God will in fact overtake us; but if we are serious first of all about an experience of God, that is qualitatively no different from a seriousness about our experience of anything. “God” becomes no more than the intrapsychic event of our experience, and the reality of the personal encounter escapes us.

—Victor A. Shepherd, The Committed Self: An Introduction to Existentialism for Christians (Toronto, ON: BPS Books, 2015), 220.