How do feelings fit into our faith? Some people base everything on their feelings and experiences. They decide what is true based on a "burning in the bosom" or their "sensing the Spirit." Others reject feelings entirely and act as if they have no place in our faith life at all. In some churches, even just an "Amen" or lifting of hands to God is frowned upon as a breach of propriety.
Scripture doesn't reject our feelings and experiences as invalid or inappropriate. God's Word is full of examples of intense emotions expressed to God. Crying and dancing, kissing the hem of Jesus' robe or washing his feet with tears are commended and rewarded, not rejected or condemned. It is natural and appropriate that God's infinite majesty and bottomless love should provoke powerful feelings and strong responses.
That said, feelings cannot serve as the foundation of our faith. Contrary to some postmodern thinking, truth isn't different for each person and does not depend on our feelings and experiences. Our feelings and experiences can serve as hints or pointers, but ultimately, for the word "truth" to have any meaning, it must be objective and not subjective.
The question then becomes, "What are the proper roles of feeling and experience in our faith life?" Dangers arise on either side should they become out-of-balance.
If we allow feelings to become the substance of faith, spiritually we're just chasing the next cool experience. Religion becomes a drug, and we spend our lives seeking the next and better high. When the good feelings elude us, we are left looking for our next emotional fix. If this is faith, it should not surprise us when people move on to sex, drugs (and rock 'n roll), or anything else that can push them to the next intense experience.
There are good reasons to value feelings but, out of balance, they can wreak havoc. First, consider some reasons to forego the hype in favor of substance, to allow facts to rule feelings.
1. Feelings are ephemeral.
How we feel changes with a multitude of factors, ranging from the sublime to the irrelevant. It's like the weather in Chicago: If you don't like it, wait five minutes.
Think back. How many times have you been moved by something priceless -- the love of God moves you to joy, a success encourages you, a sunset gives you a quiet smile -- and then it evaporates when someone cuts you off in traffic you can't afford something you need or want, or someone brings you low with a thoughtless comment.
On the flip side, how many times has sadness at a profound loss, guilt or shame upon hearing the law and recognizing your sin, or loneliness when you can't be with loved ones been abruptly lifted by a stroke of good luck, a compliment, a joke, or a song that brings something else to mind? The most profound of feelings can be changed by hunger, the weather, or an off-hand comment. Feelings are not stable enough to be relied on for truth.
2. Feelings are unanchored and subjective.
When feelings can change so quickly and for such trivial reasons, they are not anchored in truth. Feelings are absolutely dependent upon perspective and perception, not facts and evidence. Even worse, feelings vary by personality type, life circumstances, or worse yet, mental illness. Will taking prozac change the spiritual value of the preacher's sermon? On the contrary, it changes us, but it does not change the truth. If faith is based on anything less than objective facts and evidence, our God is our latest amusement, crush, or medication. Feelings are, at best, an elastic yardstick from which you can extract any measurement at will and not a valid way to measure truth.
3. Feelings are isolating.
The modern diseases of alienation and interpersonal disconnection are a direct result of reliance on feelings to evaluate reality. Feelings are almost certain to be out of step with someone near you, and frequently completely the opposite of all those around you. If it's Christmas and you're depressed when everyone around you is glassy-eyed at the candlelight, beautiful carols, and quaint story of no room at the inn, does that mean Jesus is therefore not God incarnate? If you don't feel the way they do, does that make the message untrue? And if what's true for you is what you think is true, then you are very much alone in it, because what's true for someone else is likely different. Feelings are not the Church's one foundation or the tie that binds, they are sinking sand and Elijah's lonely cave.
4. Feelings are impotent.
If you choose your faith based on the good feelings you experience, what happens when they change? You are left with empty hands and heart. If faith consists of what makes you feel spiritual, what happens when you feel tempted, discouraged, or angry?
A feeling-based faith has no power to support or change us in the emotional storms of life, when we desperately need someone to throw us a tangible, objective life ring. How many people, when offered comfort, have a hundred and one reasons why it doesn't help or won't work? Tossing a drowning swimmer or a falling climber a lifeline doesn't help if it's not anchored to anything. In times of struggle, feelings have nothing to offer us and no power to change us.
5. Feelings are contradictory.
"Mixed feelings" is a common term for a reason. Our feelings are mixed most of the time, not always half-and-half, but rarely pure. If feelings are the foundation of faith, is it only half-true? How can we have any assurance? If feelings are the basis on which we make decisions, when it really matters, how can we have any confidence in them? Is it any wonder they change so quickly when they were mixed to begin with? If it's all about how you feel, you may never fully escape the nagging doubts and second-guessing. If truth is based on feelings, there is no truth.
Now, all of this is NOT to say that feelings have no value. God created emotional creatures, and to divorce ourselves from emotions is to abandon that which makes us alive and human and to lose our weather vane, our traffic signal. We ignore feelings at our own peril!
1. Feelings are signals.
No, feelings don't determine right and wrong or good and evil, but they help us sense where or when to look deeper. Whether physical or emotional, pain's purpose is to let us know that something is amiss. Itches prompt us to scratch, and feelings should prompt us to ask hard questions. They prompt us to go to the doctor, where facts and evidence can be collected to arrive at a diagnosis. They are important symptoms, but they are not the disorder itself, and while treating the symptoms is not a cure, ignoring them isn't either.
2. Feelings can motivate.
We can be chasing feelings we desire, such as safety, affection, pleasure, satiation, or belonging. We could also be avoiding unpleasant feelings like shame, guilt, pain, loneliness, or fear. In either case, feelings push us to things we might not do otherwise. They can ignite us or hold us back. Often they submit to the will, but not always. Feelings may not tell us what to do, but desire or discomfort can make us need to do something.
3. Feelings are an appropriate human response.
God intended us to feel, created us to feel, and calls us to feel. Joy and grief, resolve and compassion, affection and anger are all things God asks of us in different circumstances. Jesus, the perfect demonstration of God's will, felt loyalty and angry refusal. Jesus was moved with compassion in the face of suffering people and resolute in the face of temptation. Jesus felt affection for little children, his mother, and the disciple whom he loved. Jesus wept. Perfect, sinless Jesus sweat blood and cried out in agony. Feelings are part of God's intention for us.
4. Feelings facilitate communication.
Mad, sad, and glad are part of our fundamental human vocabulary. We may speak languages incomprehensible to one another, but still read fear, fury, joy, sadness, pride, and pain in faces without a single word. Texts are one thing, but a phone call where you can hear a person's voice is another, and a face-to-face meeting where we can observe body language is yet another level of communication. Words can mean different things, often distinguishable only by inflection or body language. They form an instinctive, non-verbal, universal human language.
5. Feelings enrich our lives.
Our ability to feel makes the difference between dull numbness and life lived in vivid color. Those who have ever had their emotions numbed by medication, shock, or grief have described themselves using phrases such as "half alive," "half awake," "walking around like a zombie," "not really there," etc. When a portion of our body is numbed, we say it is "deadened" because it feels less than fully alive. Just as God created humans to feel, when we don't feel we are less than fully alive.
There is also an intimate connection between the arts and human emotions. Much in the fine arts is, at its root, expressive, and the art that we admire most is that which touches us most deeply. Master musicians are not computers, but living, soulful, passionate people who pour themselves into their performance. An educated and thoughtful ear can readily hear the difference between a master musician and the quantized, auto-tuned, or entirely computer-generated. It's just not the same. This is true of all of life: A life devoid of feelings is a life half lived.
In the long run, can emotionless faith be any faith at all? Only the hardest of hearts remains unmoved when shown the incredible things God has done for us. If they don't move us to feel, have they moved us at all? Faith without feeling is barren, dry, and cold -- Is it any wonder that churches without feeling are empty too?
God made us human, feelings and all, and God doesn't make mistakes. He gave them to us for a purpose, so should we not bring those feelings to the Lord along with the rest of us? However, as with any good gift, things go south pretty quickly when we misuse them. Keeping each in their proper roles is how we walk between the dual perils of robotic faith and roller-coaster feelings. It's a balancing act.
1. Feelings are not truth but can point us to the truth.
Things are not right merely because they feel right. They are objectively true or they are mere placebos. That is why we examine, discuss, and express feelings, but we turn to God's word for truth.
2. Feelings are a response to God's word but do not interpret or judge it.
Just because you'd rather have warm fuzzies than fire and brimstone doesn't mean that God just hugged it out with Sodom and Gomorrah. Just because a murderer feels the world is better off without her victim or a molester believes he is loving the child he violates doesn't make their feelings truth or their behavior acceptable. And just because you've convinced yourself that you weren't born to be heterosexual or society accepts any consensual sex doesn't mean God won't judge homosexual sex or fornication as sin. God will be worshiped and obeyed on his terms, not yours.
3. Feelings are a tool in relationships but not the basis of them.
Marriages built on feelings often fall apart because feelings are ephemeral. That so many people today equate love with romance or infatuation instead of commitment is one factor feeding the rising divorce rate, increasing numbers of children born to single moms, and a great deal of pain. Romantic love is pleasant, even enchanting, but real love is a far more serious -- even deadly serious -- proposition. Most Christians can recite John 3:16, but have we really listened to it? God gave his Son! When Paul says husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, that's deadly serious, and just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us while we were yet sinners, husbands' commitment doesn't end when she's grouchy or not as pretty as she used to be. Habakkuk and Good Friday put that in sharp focus.
4. Feelings are natural and appropriate but are to be controlled.
Yes, Jesus wept over Lazarus. He also wept and sweat blood in Gethsemane. Abraham certainly loved Isaac, but when God told Abraham to make him a burnt offering, he obeyed. Scripture didn't say, "Be angry, but do not sin unless you're furious!" Feelings aren't bad, but often we need to act in spite of them. As many combat veterans will tell you, courage isn't lack of fear, it's being afraid and still doing what needs to be done. Uncontrolled emotions translate into violence, impulsiveness, short-sighted choices, and failure. Following feelings without reason or restraint eventually leaves us inconstant and empty.
5. Feelings can be enjoyed but not relied on.
As Martin Marty wrote about, summertime faith is nice, but sometimes winter catches us, cold and bleak, when rainbows and sunshine are nowhere to be found. The things we can rely on -- God and his objectively true word -- are constant and unchangeable. If we are only faithful because it feels good and right, what happens when life just hurts? What happens when we live with pain or a disability, when someone we love deeply dies, when we fail miserably, or when our heart is broken? All we have been promised is that we are not alone in our trials, and that in the end God will wipe all those tears away.
Keeping things in balance is a challenge, and sometimes, even though we're pulled to one side or the other, the right thing to do is to stay on the fence. It is not a comfortable position to sit on the pointy end of the fence, but it is often the correct one and the wisest one.
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