Hi there Mare! Haven't crossed paths with you in quite some time...
You are very correct in your characterization of personal experience. Although it's not an altogether personal experience in the sense of being one of a kind. Just as in any group or organization, a personal experience or situation, when shared with others who have been there takes the whole thing to a group experience.
Grief is a great example, and let's use losing a child to a drunk driver. The shared experience of the loss leads to a shared sense of community, which leads to a shared objective and/or goal.
Hence, MADD comes into existence. It grows as like-minded people come into the group, their primary purpose to support their fellow members based on their shared experience. They grow in determination towards a secondary goal - to share their experiences with those who have not had the same experience, eliciting a support system of people who do not share the experience.
These supporters do not in any way claim to share the experience itself, but respect that these people have had this experience. The physical loss of a child is tangible to anyone involved, but it is an abstract situation for those did not experience it or know the family or the child at the time of the loss.
They see the legitimacy of the experience, it's resulting grief, and the end product of the "cause" of spreading the message. So they respectfully work alongside, or at least do not interfere, with the MADD group making their voice be heard, and effecting public perception and/or laws.
Christians share a life-changing experience, to one degree or another. Because of their personal conviction to the validity of the idea that they are sinners saved by grace, and carries no cost to those who choose to receive the same, they want to share it. They know their own joy, and want others to share that.
As a Christian, I cannot apply my experiences to your life, and most Christians I've ever known, from the most Fundamentalist to the most liberal would never wish to try to do so. In a sense, it is indeed a wholesale experience. It does indeed come from God, but it is also an experience he shares with any who wish it.
I'm not sure what you mean with "revelation as is claimed for the Bible is a contradiction in terms."
There are many religions that do feel their beliefs, or personal revelations as you put it, should be forced onto others. There have been periods throughout history where groups and causes haven risen up under the label of Christianity and done so as well. But that is totally contradictory to the tenets of Christian faith. To do so is heretical.
That does not mitigate the worthwhile desire to share the information about our "revelation", which we feel is from God, and that he desires to share with others. An old adage on this describes it as seeing someone who is going to step into traffic. Are you going to try to stop them? Yes. You are going to try to, at least. But if the person, in spite of what you have to say is determined to step out, that is ultimately their choice. That's not forcing your will on them, but on trying to dissuade them from their current path.
