Alister McGrath in his book The Mystery of the Cross says: "Experience cannot be allowed to have the final word--it must be judged and shown up as deceptive and misleading.  The theology of the Cross draws our attention to the sheer unreliability of experience as a guide to the presence and activity of God.  God is active and present in His world, quite independently of whether we experience Him as being so.  Experience declared that God was absent from Calvary, only to have its verdict humiliatingly overturned on the third day."