Tag: emotions

Are We Really People of the Book?

Do we who are Protestants really go by the book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was explaining to someone recently that my spiritual walk as an evangelical is very different from most of my fellow evangelicals. I don’t believe in ideas of feeling led or a call to preach as being normative. I don’t deny that God can do what He wants, but I always have to ask, “What does Scripture say?”

I see my fellow Protestants going on and on about how the Bible is central to our faith and practice. I agree with that. What confuses me is when it comes to this idea of how we live our day-to-day lives, it seems that our experiences rank above what Scripture says. If you want to know how someone knows that being called is a Biblical concept or how to know if a feeling is from God, they will point to experiences.

Now someone can ask “Well what about someone like Saul on the road to Damascus.” Sorry, but I don’t think many pastors who are in the pulpit have an experience of walking down a road, being knocked down and blinded by a light, and having the voice of God speak audibly. If anything, it’s quite arrogant to compare our experiences to Paul’s.

What do we have instead in Scripture? Let’s look at a passage like 1 Timothy 3. If anyone desires to be an overseer, he desires a good thing. In this case, it is talking about deacons in the church. The desire isn’t enough. Paul lists out the requirements. If you don’t meet them, you don’t get to be a deacon. In Titus, the same applies to elders. Paul lists the requirements for an elder and what an elder must be able to do.

Nowhere does he ask “Is the person called?”

What about something like giving to others? I remember being in a church where the pastor would regularly tell us to give as you feel led. Really? Go look at 2 Cor. 8-9. That is the longest passage we have in the New Testament about giving. Nothing is said in there about a feeling of being led. The only such similarity is that it is said that God loves a cheerful giver. Give and give joyfully. How much do you give? You use wisdom to determine that.

One of the great dangers of the normal way is that we can have any number of situations affecting our feelings at any one time. It could be that you’re hungry or that you overate. It could be that you’re sleepy. It could be you’re worried about something or you have a stomach bug or some other illness. It could be you just had a bad argument with your spouse or just spent the last hour stuck in a traffic jam.

So that system that can fluctuate on anything is also where we want to say God is telling us what to do? What on Earth happened to Scripture which is NOT like that? Are we truly people of the book?

And if we go this way, we will pay less attention to Scripture anyway. Not only that, we will give divine authorities to our inner impulses. I remember reading somewhere recently about someone talking about a program they did to service their community. It sounded like it went quite well, but what got me nervous was when they were talking about how God gave them such and such an idea.

Isn’t it presumptuous to say that God is the source of your idea? He might be, but do you want to just give divine authority to something like that? That one isn’t a Protestant thing. I’ve seen Catholics and Orthodox do the same thing.

I also think about how people talk about doing work and saying “I led so and so many people to Jesus” and then stopping and saying, “Well, no. God did it actually.” It sounds humble, but really, it isn’t. Consider 1 Cor. 9. Paul says he becomes all things to all people so that by all means possible “I might save some.” No one thinks Paul is thinking he’s the savior of these people, well aside from ignorant Muslims and atheists who I have seen making that argument. We all know Paul is saying he is the instrument. Yes. God is at work whenever someone comes to Christ, but is it honoring to deny that God used you? Be humbled by it. Accept it and admit the reality that you are a good speaker to these people to lead them to Christ and be thankful. The false humility says that the person and their willingness ultimately doesn’t matter.

God can use you and He can use your preparation and training. If someone asks me a question today about Christianity, they might think the answer only takes a minute or two. It doesn’t. It took several years. Those are just years of having the experience of studying and knowing how to answer.

Also, another aspect of all of this is how we are in our walks with God should not be dependent on our feelings, which again fluctuate. You can be miserable and close with God and right with God. Job was. You can be happy and be far from God and not right with him. Do I need to point out how many people this can apply to today?

So what would be the standard I’d use? Beyond just asking if you hold to a biblical faith, which even the demons believe many of our core doctrines, I could add in something the demons definitely can’t do. Growing in walking like Christ and trusting in God every day. Is your day-to-day living better than it was in the past? Are you having more victory over sin? Are you loving your neighbor well?

If you base any relationship in your life on your emotions, it will be doomed to fail at some point. If you’re married, you should know this. If you’re a parent, you should definitely know this. (How many mothers wake up with joy at 3 A.M. when they have to get up the next day because their baby is crying and needs something and won’t go back to sleep until he gets it?) Emotions come and go. Enjoy and learn from them, but don’t take them as divine. They are not.

Go back to the book.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Thoughts and Feelings

Why do we confuse these two? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I remember I was in Bible College about two decades ago when I started noticing this trend. It was definitely going on before that. The first time it happened, I remember being in the student center and I don’t know if I was going to stay down there or just passing through and there was a sports talk program on and one commentator on a panel said to another, “How do you feel about that?” The other proceeded to talk about his opinions on the matter.

What has happened is we have taken the realm of feeling and made it be part of the realm of thinking. Nowadays, we often think that our feelings tell us something true about the world outside of us. This also affects how we do evangelism.

I used to have Jehovah’s Witnesses come to see me when my ex-wife and I lived in Knoxville together. The first few times, they would read a passage of Scripture and ask “How do you feel about that?” I would give some answer like “Happy.” Before too long, they came to realize they needed to ask me “What do you think about that?”

When I describe how I feel, I am talking about the emotional state I am in at the time. I can have thoughts about that emotional state, but the state itself is a feeling. When I am asked what I think, I am meant to give an idea. The idea could generate some feelings, but it is itself an idea. Confusing of these two leads to unclear language and consequences for how our society works today.

Consider evangelism. Often, we seem to rely on getting people to feel guilty about something. This is a Western approach that’s foreign to much of the world. Not only that, but many of us don’t feel guilty about things that are wrong and many of us do feel guilty about things that are not wrong.

The Bible does talk about guilt, but look at what it is really saying. It’s not describing an internal feeling. It’s describing an objective reality in that someone is guilty of wrongdoing or not. They could be fully guilty and have no “guilt” feeling whatsoever. How the person feels in this situation doesn’t matter.

Today, we are instructed to not do anything that will hurt someone’s feelings, which is an odd thing to do. How can I be responsible like that for someone’s emotions? We also have people who are convinced that they are of the opposite gender based on their feelings. If we live in a Christian culture where we point to feelings like guilt being “true” then we are put in a dangerous position when all of a sudden people have feelings that we know are not true, but on what grounds can we deny it? Feelings are true indicators of something when they point to what we want to be true?

Also, along these lines, no one can make you feel anything. You can’t make anyone feel anything. Asking how something makes you feel or telling someone they make you feel X or having them say it to you is nonsense. I can’t even make myself feel something all the time. How could I possibly do that to someone else? Now I can be a contributing factor, but no one is responsible for a feeling except the person who has that.

The first action here is find out if you agree with me on the opening point by just watching people in conversation. How many use think and feel like synonyms? Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Then to start being clear with your words and realizing thoughts aren’t feelings and vice-versa. This is not saying one is superior to the other. Both have their purpose, but they are different.

Our second action though will be that while we do agree that someone feels something, and that they feel it cannot be disputed, what we can disagree with is if their feelings correspond to reality. We can strongly feel something that is false. We can not at all feel something that is true.

Ultimately, it all comes back to reality. Reality doesn’t care about how we feel. It should be our goal to try to live as real as possible and not to resist reality.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

The Feeling Will Be Gone

Do those feelings last? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

She came into the seminary post office where I was working and was talking to me and a co-worker. They were talking about marriage and how she was still a newlywed. She said she still was in that honeymoon stage and that she hoped this feeling would last forever.

“It won’t,” I said.

Hey. I cut to the chase.

I then went on the explain that that’s a good thing. If that feeling lasted forever, you would never be able to function. Who could go through their lives with a lovesick attitude going on around them constantly? When you enter the stage of falling in love, you can’t think of most anything else and the person is the most perfect individual God ever made.

However, because those feelings fade, that allows you to move into a deeper stage. This is a stage that transcends your feelings. I told her that one day if you haven’t already, you will wake up and ask yourself, “Why did I ever marry this bozo?” When you wonder why you married someone, you have to remember that you did marry them and your responsibility to the covenant doesn’t depend on your feelings.

After all, anyone can do loving things when they feel like it. What accomplishment is that? It’s when you don’t feel like it that you are definitely acting out of true love. True love is not demonstrated in the feeling, but it is in the absence of the feeling.

Could this also indicate a danger in our situations today that we are often chasing after perpetuating a feeling, which never lasts forever, instead of building up the covenant the feeling is about? We also do the same with Christianity. How do we know what God is telling us supposedly? Look at your feelings. Do you feel led? Do you feel like you are being called? Then someone feels like God is angry with them or has rejected them and all of a sudden the feelings aren’t reliable. When the feelings are what we want, we trust them. When they’re not, they’re not reliable. Wonderful system.

This is not to be opposed to emotion either. It’s to say that it can’t be our diet. C.S. Lewis said that emotion can be the explosion that starts the engine, but it can’t run on that emotion. It needs to get locked into something steady and unchanging. Something firmer than that. It’s realizing you’re locked into something greater than yourself. You have a commitment to more than just your immediate happiness. You refuse to do what is wrong just because you want something for yourself.

Of course, in any marriage, it’s okay to have disagreements and even fights if you will. I get concerned when I hear of couples who aren’t having those. What will be remembered in the times when the relationship is the hardest is that you made a promise regardless of your feelings. The same applies to your Christian walk as well. Our feelings can be powerful motivators, but they are horrible guides.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Truth or Happiness

Do we want to live true lives or happy lives? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Recently, I wrote about reading James Rebel Jamias’s book, which I did enjoy, and one idea that stuck with me on there was something that I have recently concluded. Our culture consists of people who care about happiness more than they care about truth. Aristotle began his Metaphysics by saying all men by nature desire to know. Today, the modern equivalent would say that all men by nature desire to feel.

We can all relate to this on some level. There have been times all of us have had something that we want to avoid being true because of the pain that we will feel, a state we call denial. My first major encounter with death was a sunday school teacher who I had a close relationship with. To this day, I can still remember being at the church for his funeral service and thinking, “This still has to be a joke. He’s going to jump up and tell everyone the truth soon. He has to.”

Sometimes, this can even be lethal. How many people have avoided going to a doctor because they think they might have a condition and they don’t want to hear that they have it? In reality, they do and it goes untreated and it becomes something untreatable and fatal when if it had been caught early, it could have been treated.

This also has severe moral consequences. With marriage, which I have been writing on, how many people are entering into marriage and doing so because the goal is that marriage is meant to make them happy? It is all about them. Now don’t get me wrong on something. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be happy and there is nothing wrong with wanting a good for yourself in marriage, but it’s not just about you.

Hence, too often when the feeling fades, which it will, we think the marriage has faded and it’s time to move on. It’s not about a greater commitment to something beyond ourselves. Instead, it’s about what is expedient for us at the moment. When divorce is too easy an option, it is the option that will most often be chosen.

In many of the daily lives of people today, it’s not often asked “What is the good thing to do here?” Instead, we are asking what will bring us the most happiness at the moment. When was the last time you heard someone talking seriously about virtue?

Is our Christian community any different in the West? Hardly. If anything, most of our emphasis seems to be on how we feel in our relationship to God. If we feel good, yay! Christianity is true and God is real and we want to worship and praise! If we don’t, then Christianity could be false and God might not exist, but if He does exist, He hates us, and why bother with worship and praise?

In reality, a Christian life is supposed to have all of these. You are not meant to be happy in all of your Christian walk. Jesus wasn’t and it’s the height of arrogance to think we should have something that Jesus never did. Jesus was sad sometimes. Jesus was also happy, but if we look at Isaiah 53, Jesus was a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering.

This is not to say bad feelings and emotions don’t matter. It’s not to say that for chronic problems you shouldn’t consider therapy and possibly in addition medication. With my divorce, I have both going on. Definitely if you are experiencing strong suicidal feelings, get help right away.

One great hope for our culture is when we all strive to be people of truth. In our religious debates, it’s easy to claim the other side is going with emotions. There are emotional benefits to each side. If you’re a Christian, you can claim you will get to live forever and that you will see loved ones and never die and spend eternity in a place of joy and happiness. I think even a lot of atheists would like for something like that to be true.

On the other hand, a Christian can say an atheist has reasons for them to not want God to be real. One big reason could be a life of sexual liberty in that you get to pursue sexual happiness and do what you want in that area. Another could be one doesn’t want to live under the authority of God. One could also not want to believe in something the rest of their social group will consider foolish. There are many more on both sides we can think of.

Also, in both groups, there are sadly people who don’t really care about truth and don’t want it. These are people who only read what agrees with them and base their arguments for their position on how they feel about something. The first question we should ask about Christianity is not if it makes us feel good or if we like it or if it’s beneficial to society. The first question we should ask is “Is it true?” If it is, then we should believe it even if all the other questions are answered no. If it isn’t true, then we shouldn’t believe it even if all the other questions are answered yes.

It is my hope that we can begin working more on a truth quest instead. Our emotional quests are more often centered on looking within and finding something for ourselves. When we look for truth, we are looking for something outside of ourselves and what we can submit to and ultimately, what we can live our lives based on.

It’s up to you which you choose.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

It’s Okay To Not Be Okay

Are emotions an emergency? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Let’s just say I had a rough weekend. I was working with my company to get my health insurance and when I told them I was going through a divorce and wanted to see a psychiatrist, they agreed to speed it up. I have an appointment today and should get something. I have been told by some that I could use something in this time to help regulate my emotions while actively doing therapy. Thankfully, most Christians no longer have a problem with this.

Anyway, they needed to see how the divorce process was and so I contacted my former mother-in-law who sent me a photo of the document showing that it was a done deal. It wasn’t new information, but it was still painful. It was a way of reality setting in. Yep. I am officially divorced.

Officially abandoned, betrayed, rejected, undesired by her, etc. So many negative statements receive verification at that point.

Add in that shortly after that, I see a Christian couple in my line with a son and they share a long kiss of love before they get to me. I know they’re Christian because they’re talking about the Bible and when I ask them when they get to me, they’re talking about how husbands and wives are to treat each other. Oh, we talk about that, but my mind is still thinking about the kiss. I miss it. I miss those kisses and where they could lead and everything.

I come back from lunch and I’m depressed about it and one of my managers asks me what I’m down about and I talk about the divorce being final and wondering why I’m not more appealing. I mentioned all the things I don’t do which included porn to which she was absolutely stunned. When it came up with the other managers, they were stunned too. No condemnation of me, and all the people talking there were women, but for some reason, I felt like an outsider still. I found myself being tempted thinking about everything and that temptation seemed hard to resist, until sometime yesterday it just died and everything is back to normal.

Fortunately, I also had a good talk with my pastor about this and he is praying for me. Several friends are praying I will get a fulfillment of Proverbs 18:22. I long for that too.

Yet as I thought about the time, I also thought that we have a hard time with emotions in the church. I am reading books on Kindle on managing anxiety and depression. One of the statements I see is that these are not problems in themselves. Some anxiety can be good as it can alert us to danger. I think some anxiety is sinful, but I’m not convinced all of it is. As for depression, some of it can be sinful, but not all of it I think is. I think sometimes we should be depressed about some things.

One of my friends put it well. One different friend had said tomorrow will be better. A month from now will be better. A year from now will be better. I said I agreed, but today just sucked. The friend who put things well (And to be fair, my other one did too) said “What would suck is if it didn’t suck.”

True enough. I think it would be twisted if I threw a party celebrating that she is gone from my life. I happen to think if you promise love, you should do just that, even if the other person wants nothing to do with you. I still want the best for her and hope that nothing bad happens to her. This is not to say I am never experiencing anger towards her or wanting justice, but by and large, I realize the negativity does me no good.

Sometimes in the church, if someone is sad, we act like that has to be taken care of. As I think about it though, I don’t think Scripture tells us to cheer up those who are sad. It tells us instead to mourn with those who mourn. This is not to say to never provide cheer, but sometimes, just mourning is good enough.

Yes. I am sad. I am uncertain about the future. I sometimes wrestle with temptation. I sometimes get anxious about where I am going in my life. What if all of this is just part of the normal Christian life and I just accept that? Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that the temptation we face is common to man. I remember Father Barnabas at the Orthodox Church talking about being at retreats for teenagers and hearing young men say “Father. I’m struggling with lust.”

Join the club.

Last I checked, that’s nearly every man out there in existence who struggles with that. What? Do I think I am too good to be tempted to have my mind wander when I see a beautiful woman? If anything, there has to be some level of desire or else a relationship will never get off the ground. It’s normally said that looks aren’t everything, but they do tend to open the door.

Am I depressed? Yes. It could be worse if I wasn’t. Am I concerned about my future? Yes. Then let that push me to make it better. Am I not happy with my situation now? Sure. Then let me push to make it better.

Sadly, I do tend to dwell on the emotion and the strangest thing, that never seems to work. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you, but before I go to bed in the evening, I get out my Nintendo Switch and set a timer and play for ten minutes. For those ten minutes, I do tend to forget about the emotion and I do get to experience some joy. That’s one reason being at work can be hard for me. I have nothing to distract me sadly.

If I treat my emotions as an emergency however, I am only going to make them worse. If you water a plant, it will grow bigger. If I feed an emotion with panic, it will get worse. I’m trying to say now that I’m any number of things. Maybe I’m depressed. Maybe I’m anxious. Maybe I’m angry with God even. That’s okay. As long as I handle those things maturely and properly, that’s fine. As for anger with God, heck, it’s all in the Psalms. It’s not like I can fool Him anyway.

So for now, things aren’t okay. That’s okay. They will get better, but today, they’re allowed to be miserable. Only one thing is the end of the world and that’s the end of the world. For everything else, I have my God and I have my friends to support me.

Thank you, fellow travelers.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Ten Shekels and a Shirt

What do you go to God for? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I went to speak to a financial advisor yesterday who is also a Baptist minister. I assured him I would not hold that against him. Naturally, in the middle of talking about my finances a lot, we talked a lot also about theology. One recommendation he gave me was to listen to a sermon called Ten Shekels and a Shirt by Paris Reidhead given in the 1960’s that can be heard here.

I honestly don’t remember what led to this message being recommended, but I did listen to it. The reference comes from Judges 17. In it, a young Levite agrees to serve a family as a priest for ten shekels and a shirt a year and willingly sacrifices that when he gets a chance to be a priest for the tribe of Dan. This young man is an opportunist just going wherever he can get the biggest reward.

Reidhead’s point is that too many times we are doing the same thing. Are we just talking about the liberals who are all about the happiness of man? No. The conservatives do the same thing. A liberal Christianity is often about making you happy in this life. Too often though, a conservative focuses only on happiness in the next life. Both have the same focus, but just in different times.

I remember years ago attending a church and the pastor finished a sermon with a prayer like this. “Lord Jesus. I know I am a sinner, and without you, I cannot get to Heaven. So come in to my heart and be Lord of my life from this day forward. Thank you for my salvation. Amen.”

True, the prayer says we are sinners and calls Jesus Lord, but what is the point in the prayer? Sadly, it’s about going to Heaven. I am honestly at the point where I wish Christians would stop talking about Heaven so much, at least the way that they do. I have even said we talk about the joys of Heaven and God is an afterthought. It’s like saying God’s purpose is to make us happy.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being happy and wanting to be happy. The question is what will make us happy. A Christian should happily serve Jesus because they do it all for the glory of God. In the end, if you do glory in God, you will wind up finding happiness. Too often though, we choose a path and think “This path will make me happy” but if we sacrifice holiness, it will only be a short-term happiness.

This can happen in any number of ways. A person can cheat at the job to get some extra money and it can even be for a good reason, but yet they have sacrificed their soul to some extent. A couple can decide they love each other so much that despite their not being married, why not just have sex anyway? A little here and a little there and it adds up. What are we willing to sell our souls for? Do we really think if we want happiness and we’re Christians that we’re going to find it going against the ways of God?

This becomes a way of using people, and we can often do this. If we are dating, we often want to date someone who makes us happy, and our spouse should want to make us happy and we should find happiness in them, but do we think “How can I make this person happy?” Much of our marriage culture is all about our happiness and that only leads to destruction. Gary Thomas has a book called Sacred Marriage where he asks “What if the purpose of marriage is not to make us happy, but to make us holy?”

Good question.

In reality, the Bible does tell us to seek happiness to some extent. When Jesus tells us to sacrifice and give, He also consistently points to some reason for it. He tells us about treasure in Heaven and that we will have the Kingdom. The Ten Commandments say to honor your father and mother so that it might go well for you and you will have a long life on the Earth. Romans 2 praises those who persist in doing good by seeking glory, honor, and immortality. Yes. We are to seek those things.

But why do we seek them?

If we all do it for ourselves, we are empty beings indeed. We do it also for the glory of God. If we come to God just because we want the goodies, you could say in some way we are raping God as it were. We are using Him for what we want and then dispensing with Him when life doesn’t go our way. There is nothing wrong with wanting forgiveness and salvation, but let’s try to remember we do this because we have dishonored a holy God and we don’t want to do that. Too much of our thinking today assumes God owes us something, which is also behind a lot of atheist argumentation with the idea of “How dare God judge person XYZ!”

To get back to what we do in conservative circles, we have made Christianity all about what happens when we die and we say hardly anything about what happens before that. We don’t talk about the kingship of Christ or the glory of God. All we do is pretty much give people “Get out of Hell free” cards. Is it any shock that if that’s all we’re doing there’s not much passion for evangelism? That’s also hardly a loving Father we present. “Come to God so He won’t send you to Hell.” I can’t imagine why it is atheists don’t just flock to that.

This is not to say we avoid teaching about Hell. We should. It is to say we need the positive too. Come to God because He is worth it. Come to God because He truly is goodness and love.

My biggest concern with Reidhead’s message is that yes, we can have a message that focuses too much on the happiness of man, but let’s not go so far as to say that doesn’t matter a bit. God cares about it for He did create Heaven to be a place of joy to remove everything sorrowful from us and He did send His Son to the cross. God cares about our happiness too, but He also knows the best way to bring it about. You will never find true and lasting happiness by going against Him. God’s rules for living are not to hinder our joy, but to enhance it.

It is a fine line. We do not exalt the glory of God by choosing to be miserable, but we also don’t go to God just because we want to be happy only and don’t care about Him. That is like a man doing good for his wife because he wants her to do something to make him happy and he doesn’t really care about her. The great joy is in knowing you did something loving and if you get a blessing from it, even better. If not, you still did what was right. You bettered your own soul.

Where is the balance then? I don’t claim to fully know at this point. Our lives are caught in a state that we don’t really know what is good for us and often run contrary to what we think is good for us. However, I am sure we can never find true happiness apart from God and we can’t find it in using God. One might start with coming to God for less than noble reasons at first, but when we start to grow in Christ, we should think more about His glory and honor and let that be motivation for serving.

At this point, I ask, what about you? What are your thoughts? Please leave a comment and let me know.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Why Can’t Protestants Be More Protestant?

Are we really people who take the Bible as our authority? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Many times as a devout Protestant, I hear my fellow Protestants speaking in ways that trouble me. We often talk so much about what the Bible says to us and how it is our final authority in faith and practice. By the way, let’s make that clear, the Bible is not our only authority, but it is the one such that if anything contradicts Scripture, it is false, and any good Orthodox and Catholic would say the same thing. None of us want to believe anything that contradicts Scripture. Whether anyone does is another debate.

Yet when I get together with my fellow Protestants, I wonder about this. Often times, I hear talk about doing what you feel like God is leading you to do. It’s as if God is sitting up in Heaven trying to get your attention by giving you feelings in your heart. Question. Where in Scripture do you see anything like this described? Where do we see anyone being told to follow their feelings? If anything, we know too often that listening to your heart leads to trouble. As Jeremiah tells us, it’s deceptive above all.

Not only that, we would also need a guide as to which feelings are from God and which are not. I remember hearing Derwin Gray talking about talking to a Mormon once who said he knew God was speaking to him when he got goose bumps. Gray said, “If that’s the case, then when I’m watching Rocky 3, the Holy Spirit must be all over me.” It’s humorous, but you get the point. I also realize that we are not Mormons, but we do know Mormons are a fine example of what happens when you listen to strong feelings.

By the way, none of this means that I am opposed to feelings. It means that I am saying feelings must be guided by Scripture and if Scripture doesn’t tell us to listen to our emotions and feelings as cues from God, then we should not do so. Many people look at guilt as such a judgment from God. Guilt can always be a good reason to self-examine, but we all know people who feel guilty for things when they have done no wrong, and we know people who have done wrong and feel no guilt. It’s not reliable.

You may feel like God doesn’t love you. That can tell you that there’s an emotional problem to work out for you, but that says nothing about God. God’s love for you is not dependent on your feelings. If you think it is, then your feelings are greater than God. I have said before if we could ever for the briefest moment of time grasp how much God truly loves us, we would never live our lives the same way. Maybe the reason we don’t have that made fully manifest here is because honestly, in our sinful natures, we cannot handle that.

What would happen if we all took the promises of Scripture more seriously? I realize that my Catholic and Orthodox friends add tradition to the list of something else infallible, but I know they would agree wholeheartedly with this. If we took Scripture more seriously, all of us, we would all be better off. That book contains some pretty incredible promises for all of us. We spend so much time looking at ourselves often that we overlook what Scripture says about the matter.

Let’s consider one example. I am a sensitive guy in many ways when it comes to the fear that I have committed some sin. Of course, we all do, but I know this is one area I am very neurotic in. Now there is no doubt we need to reflect on the gravity of sin, but it would be absolutely awful to see the gravity of sin and then also to miss the greatness of the grace and forgiveness given to each of us. That could actually be a sin in itself. It has a God who would rather judge us than to forgive and love us. (And even if He doesn’t forgive us, He still loves us.)

Maybe you’re like me and your past isn’t filled with heinous sins. Sometimes, we can hear testimonies of people who came from a sordid past and they sound so glorious in a way because they know what they are forgiven for very well. If you don’t have that, it’s hard to experience it the same way. It might seem easy for Paul to write about seeing as he was guilty of murdering Christians, or Peter since He denied the Lord three times, but what about someone like the disciple whom Jesus loved? Are there not plenty of people who are seen as righteous regularly in the Bible and yet celebrate their salvation and thus their forgiveness. We have a hymn in the church about grace that is greater than all our sin. Why do we often act like sin is greater than grace?

After all, any one sin can separate you from God forever. God does not have to forgive you. He doesn’t even have to provide a way of forgiveness. He could have let us all just go to Hell and He would have been justified in doing so. He owed us nothing. That He gave us even an offer is a sign of His grace. If anything, it should tell us God is more serious about our need for forgiveness than we are.

Consider then if you’re a Christian whatever you have done, you have been spared of that. Regardless of if you hold to some form of eternal conscious torment or to annihilationism, you have been spared. Even if you hold to Universalism, you can say that God did not have to do that. We are the ones who have done wrong against God and rejected Him and spat in His face and yet He offers us forgiveness and even still wants to be with us despite the wrongs that we have done against Him, and keep in mind we are to show that love to others as well.

It is something I need to think about as well. I think for instance if an employer wants to do a background check on me, go ahead. They won’t find anything. That’s true. Before the law, I’m a quite clean individual. God help me though if I had to give an answer to Him for any background check. Every careless word and deed and even intention of my heart examined? Instead, forgiveness is given for all of that.

That’s a promise we all have.

Protestants. Our feelings will often lead us astray. We don’t have any guarantee that God is speaking through feelings, dreams, circumstances, etc., but we do know He has spoken in Jesus and in Scripture. Let’s always treat those as our final authorities. There’s a lot of awesome truths in there that we still need to think about.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Autism Awareness: Emotions

How do we handle emotions? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It’s really difficult on the spectrum to make sense of emotions. When I am debating with an atheist who tells me I am a Christian for emotional reasons, I know not to take them seriously. If anything, when I get really emotional, that is when I am most often wrestling with emotional doubt.

Emotions are difficult for someone like me to understand. I wonder what I am supposed to feel in such and such a circumstance. I have heard also that if there is any emotion that a man can really understand and most often experiences, it’s anger. I do not consider myself an outsider on this.

I think it’s also common for men on the spectrum. In the movie Adam, when the main character, an aspie, finds out that he has been tricked by the girl he is dating, he explodes in a barrage of anger and hostility. I have been told that as a small child, if my Mom moved one of my matchbox cars during the night, I would be angry until things were put back.

I suspect this might be because we on the spectrum tend to live in a world of order. We want things to be as close to orderly as possible and fit into their place. When something goes against that, we have a hard time processing it. This is one reason small talk irritates me so much. When you call and engage in small talk, that means that time we could be spending on dealing with what we are meant to dealt with is wasted going through this routine behavior.

Consider this especially with when I have to call a place of business for technical service and have to hear the script that they read. I’m sitting there telling them I know all of this already and could quote it to me. Can we please just move on and deal with the problem?

Sometimes however, we can be very unemotional. This is especially important in a religious context. If you are trying to get someone on the spectrum to the point of feeling in religious discussion, then you could be wasting your time.

This is also why I struggle when I hear people telling me when I am struggling with something to do what you feel like God is leading you to do or what God is telling you. First off, I don’t see that kind of language in Scripture. Second, how can anyone tell what feelings come from God and what feelings don’t?

I have seen this go on at many churches. I have heard Protestant Churches talk about what God has done in their fundraising drives and I have seen an Orthodox Church do the same. I always wonder “How do you know God is behind this?” Suppose the fundraising drive didn’t work out well. Would that mean God was against you? I don’t think this is really a denominational thing. I think it’s more of an American thing.

When I am talking with someone about something, it’s really hard to see something from their perspective. I can know someone is in a lot of pain, and yet feeling it is extremely difficult for me. If you come to me for a counseling situation and expect me to resonate with your feelings, you’ll likely be disappointed. I will stick to talking about the problem at hand and what to do about it.

I even remember in the past a friend told me that they thought the world of me, but if they had a problem, Allie was better at helping them with it because of her better listening skills. I wouldn’t dispute that. I don’t claim to be a therapist. It doesn’t mean I can’t do it, but it does mean that I will not be what you expect.

Now you might be specifically wondering about love. Is an Aspie capable of love? I think unless something comes up, I will tackle that tomorrow.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Does God Have Emotions?

What does it mean when we hear about emotions of God in the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Recently, my Princess wrote a blog post about a book she’s reading. She said in it that it’s my view that God doesn’t have emotions, which is true. I realize that for a lot of people, this view is something new to them. It just seems pretty obvious. We hear in the Bible several times about the anger of God and the love of God and such. Am I saying that God doesn’t love us if I say this? I figured I’d write something to let everyone know what my view is. This is not meant to be an attack on my own wife. I disagree with her view, but it doesn’t change my great love for her and I want it to be that if she needs to, she can always point to something I have written on the topic.

She is indeed correct that it is my view that Jesus did have emotions, but that is because Jesus is human. God in His essence is not human. While it is true we are in His image, I take that to mean that we are the ones who are meant to represent Him on this Earth since He’s not physically present. To be in His image does not mean that if we have something, God has it.

So then the question now comes up to if I deny that God loves us. Absolutely not. God loves us with a perfect love. The problem is we take love to be an emotion. It is not. Love is an attitude and an action. We can act loving and have an attitude of love even if our feelings are telling us otherwise. A lot of mothers might not feel very loving when their infant cries at 3 in the morning and they have a busy day ahead of them, but that mother will get up and do the right thing if she loves her child.

We could go so far as to say one of the signs of true love is when you act wrongly even if the opposite feelings are there at the time. I have had some say that if you do not feel it when you act loving, then you are being disingenuous. I disagree entirely. It is always easy to act a certain way if you feel it. It is much more virtuous to act contrary to wrong feelings.

Part of the notion of emotions is that they are built on just that, motion. They are subject to change. We know from Scripture that God doesn’t change. He is entirely the same. I would also say that if we have a God who changes, then we have a problem.

Do we want to serve a God that we can emotionally blackmail? Do we want one that will do things for us because it will leave Him feeling good? (Note that this puts God on the timeline with us. God is then undergoing change from being sad to being happy to being angry, etc.) It also seems like a pretty weak God if God can be in the joy of the blessed Trinity Himself and yet somehow, that sin that I do is enough to leave Him brokenhearted. Do I have more power over God than God does?

What about eternity? Is God really going to be eternally angry because of sinners? Don’t think that if you take the position of annihilationism where God destroys the wicked in Hell that you’ve avoided this. God will still have eternal memory of these sins. He can’t block them out. He can’t not know them. That’s part of being omniscient.

You cannot change God one bit by any of your actions. You could lead the most holy life of all and it would not change God one iota. You could lead the most wicked life of all and it would not change God one iota.

That is very good news.

Why is that? Because it means nothing can change God’s true love for you which is not rooted in feelings, but is rooted in the fact that His very nature is love and that nature is unchanging. He cannot not love you. Don’t dare think that my view of God means that God does not have a great love for us. Absolutely not! Passages like 1 John 3:1 are certainly true that God wants to lavish His love on us.

God loves all that is good and we are good because we are in His image. It is our behavior that is not loved. No. God does not love all the things that we do. He sure loves us. You cannot change Him. You cannot blackmail Him. You cannot pull His heartstrings. He will do the right thing by you regardless.

He also loves you too much to leave you as you are and this is where we hit further difficulties. We think love often means sentiment. It doesn’t. Sometimes, love is tough. This is the hard part of love. Picture your loved one who is an alcoholic crying out for a drink. It will often pull at your emotional heartstrings, but the loving thing to do is to NOT give him a drink.

God’s love is a love that wants to shape us into being who He made us to be. We are too often resistant to the ways of the Potter and we, in turn, call His love into question. If love is rooted in Him though, then it will not change. This also tells us that our love is not based on what we do. We do not earn love. Love is given freely.

This has ramifications for how we live as well. I say this as a man married for what will be six and a half years tomorrow. I am also thinking of a friend who was married just last month. We are both learning still what it means and how much marriage has to change our sinful attitudes. It is tempting to go and do what you want every time and focus on your wants and desires when really, you have to learn to focus on that of your spouse. How will your desires be met? Well if your spouse has the same focus, they will be.

There will be plenty of times in marriage where you do not feel love for your spouse or could even feel angry. What do you do? You love anyway. You do the right thing. Doing the right thing does not depend on your feelings. It will not be a good defense before the throne of God to say “I knew the right thing to do, but I just didn’t feel like it.”

God does not feel love towards me, and that is a good thing, because His love is deeper than a feeling and rooted in that which is unchanging. I cannot change God in that way, which means everything He does for me is genuine. I certainly do have emotions here and I am to get them to be tempered so that they fit the situations of my life properly.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Feeling And Thinking

Has our society said two things are identical that are not? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Yesterday, a long discussion took place on my Facebook page when I said that a person should act loving towards their spouse even if they don’t feel love. The discussion centered around if love was a feeling or not. I contend that it is not. It may result in feelings that we call the feeling of love, but it itself is not a feeling. It is an action and it is a commitment.

I think there’s a great problem in our society today that we have equated feeling with thinking. You’ll watch a program on the news with some commentators and you’ll hear about the latest political event and the host will ask a guest “How do you feel about that?” That could be one thing. That could matter at one point. What matters most is what a person thinks. In fact, if you do counseling, you realize this is a tremendously important distinction. It’s alright to ask how someone feels when something is said, but then you have to ask what the truth really is.

This isn’t to knock feelings entirely. Feelings are very helpful. They alert us to certain realities and can help train our thinking. A feeling of fear can help us think carefully in a dangerous situation. Unfortunately, fallen that we are, it can also take over for us. A feeling of love can motivate a man to love his wife, but a feeling of lust can motivate a man to rape a woman.

Our culture has become one where the feelings are central. We’ve heard the saying “If it feels right, do it.” Just yesterday I blogged about Michael Shermer at a debate and how he said that if we want to see if an action is right or wrong, we ask how it feels to the recipient. Now of course, that is important information, but that doesn’t settle the case.

If it did, then it’s wrong for a girl to ever say no to a guy for a date because, hey, that doesn’t feel good. I could say as a non-profit that it doesn’t feel good to not get donations, therefore anyone who refuses to donate to Deeper Waters is in the wrong, but that would be a terrible argument. A man could say it doesn’t feel good to be laid off from his job, therefore laying someone off is never justified. Of course, there could be cases where it is unjustified, but you don’t know by looking at the feeling.

One of the big problems with feelings is that they come and go. You don’t have a feeling that lasts forever. Even the really really good feelings fade after awhile. People with addictions know this. You meet your addiction and you get your positive feeling and it’s really good, but then you go right back to it eventually. Often times, it takes more and more to satisfy that urge. An alcoholic needs to drink more. Someone with food addictions needs to eat more. Someone with a porn problem needs more and more variety and deeper and deeper fulfillments.

Sometimes, this can be used for good. A couple can have really euphoric feelings over their sexual relationship in marriage, and that drives them to want more of each other. (By the way ladies, most men will not have a law of diminishing returns here either. We instead appreciate you even more.) I find that in my Christian walk, I need even more and more deeper truths about Christianity and that drives me to learn and study more and more. What we have to ask with each desire is “Am I desiring a thing that is really good?” and then “Am I desiring it in the right way?” and finally “Am I desiring it in the right proportion?”

If your thinking is based on your feelings, then you will live in a responsive mode all the time and not a proactive mode. You will also live a very me-centered lifestyle. Everything is about you and what you feel. Again, this isn’t to say that sometimes what a person feels isn’t important, but it isn’t everything. We always say it’s wrong to hurt someone’s feelings. I’d say it’s wrong to do it needlessly. In fact, sometimes hurting someone’s feelings can be the loving thing to do if you have to tell them a hard truth.

We live in a society now that feels more than it thinks. Hopefully we can get a turn around. We can get to a society I hope that will seek once again the good, the true, and the beautiful, and not be caught up with itself.

In Christ,
Nick Peters