From "Experience Is A Lie"]

When I was a teenager, the idea of “experience” was aggressively pushed onto me. The only way I could grow up and enjoy life, I was taught, was to get a lot of experience. It would make me a mature, responsible adult. I went on to rack up a lifetimes’ worth of experience all around the world, and now that I look back at it all, I see that it was a waste.

In 2007, I backpacked for six months through South America.[…]Where is that experience now? How does it help me today outside of the specific task of taking a road trip?

If I were to write a memoir of my life, the most prominent lessons would be knowing how not to live, what not to do. I was floatsam on the river of Western culture and yet gained nothing.[…]
When those who control the culture tell you to gain experience, what they’re really telling you is to gain experience with sin. They certainly don’t mean experience with prayer, going to Church, and understanding the Bible. Instead, they want you to exercise your sin muscles and develop addictions to money, lust, and achieving a level of status among other worldly people[…].
I see experience as a shovel. Every time you embrace the world for a new experience, you dig out a chunk of earth from where you stand. The hole around you gets deeper. There is no pause between your experiences, or else you’d wonder why you are becoming surrounded by dirt[…]
If while in the pit, you see experience for the lie that it is, and beg God for help, He will lower down a ladder. You start the climb, nervous that the ladder will fail you. You step over the first rungs (prayer) and gain confidence that it will hold.