EMOTION - EXPERIENCE
FEELINGS - SENSES
HOW DO THEY FIT IN TO OUR FAITH?
(Part 2)


Recently our church hosted one of the Covenant’s 24 hour prayer retreats. During one of the sessions, we looked at the St. Ignatius “Prayer of Examen,” an ancient reflective daily exercise to help followers of Jesus grow in their capacity to discern God’s will and enhance their understanding of God’s good creation. We were supposed to look over the various parts of the “General Examination of Conscience,” try it out, and see if it might become a helpful, meaningful practice in our daily devotional life.

However, I got stuck on the introductory lines of “The First Principle and Foundation” and never made it to the “Examen” at all! What I found in this brief writing of St. Ignatius was excellent wisdom that applies to the subjective, sense-oriented, experiential-driven culture that we live in. Here is what I read:

The goal of our life is to live with God forever. God who loves us, gave us life. Our own response of love allows God’s life to flow into us without limit.
All the things in this world are gifts of God, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.
As a result, we appreciate and use all of these gifts of God insofar as they help us develop as loving persons.
But if any of these gifts become the center of our lives, they displace God and so hinder our growth toward our goal.
In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all of these created gifts. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.
Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to the deepening of God’s life in me.

That one sentence captured my attention, because it describes what happens when we give ourselves over to the gifts of God themselves, which have been “presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.” The gifts--the blessings, the tantalizing tangible things of life--too often captivate and capture us completely, instead of being the means to what is ultimately real and important in life: an ever-deepening relationship with the Giver Of All Good Gifts.

We love the gifts more than the Giver.

Now, our emotions and experiences, our feelings and our senses are gifts of God! Wonderful, rich, life-enhancing blessings that contribute significantly to how we humans live in community with one another and in communion with God. Along with food, water, shelter, clothing, meaningful work, a safe environment, and other basic components of life, they are essential in helping us through life, and in helping us to “know God more easily.” Without our five senses, where would we be? Think of the challenges those in life face who are blind, hearing impaired, crippled or incapacitated, paralyzed--who must live without one or more of the five senses. How could we be engaged emotionally, give and receive love and friendship, and experience the beauty of creation in all its vastness and microscopic smallness without our senses?


So yes! Our senses, and the resulting emotions, feelings, and experiences that occur through our physical senses, are truly a blessing and gift from God. God made us to value and utilize them fully, in order to enhance our lives and to make life the beautiful, stimulating reality that it is. Indeed, “we (are meant to) appreciate and use all of these gifts of God (to) help us develop as loving persons.”

But all too quickly, in our humanness, it is easy for us to focus only on these tangible things from God, to become obsessed with them, to think this is all there really is in life, all we really need in life--and to neglect the One Who created them. Instead of worshiping God, we end up worshiping the gifts and the blessings (our feelings, emotions, and experiences received through the senses), making them the all-important reality of our lives--which is idolatry!

Anything that displaces God becomes an idol, and I think this is what has happened to us in our day regarding our own individual personal experiences, basing everything in our lives on how we feel. As if emotions and feelings and experiences are all there is, all that matter, all that we can trust, all that is real. St. Ignatius was very wise when he pointed out how these highly subjective, intense, feeling-based gifts actually “hinder our growth” toward God.

The answer to this dilemma is clear: balance is what must be achieved here. We must exercise our emotions, feelings, senses, and experiences AND our our minds, our knowledge, the rational aspects of ourselves, never forgetting that reality is far grander than what our emotions and experiences can contain. Many things exist apart from our direct experience of them.

In regard to God, this is precisely where faith comes in! “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) “We live by faith, not by sight.” (II Cor. 5:7). Today there are many who say that God does not exist because there is no tangible, materialistic, substantive evidence of God’s existence. But is reality only limited to the physical realm? To what can be objectively measured and quantified, like some experiment or evidence that can be manipulated and dissected in a laboratory? Does stating this as fact simply make it so, ipso facto? How does one measure love? Or joy? Or a host of other emotions? How does one quantify thought? Are the electrical impulses in the brain the actual, substantive thoughts themselves, or just the vehicle for making them conscious?

I’m betting that life/reality/truth are about much more than what we experience in this temporary, physical world alone. Therefore, I refuse to let my experiences, emotions, and feelings control my life. I’m trusting that there is more, and the reality of my faith is evidence enough to me that there is more to our existence than just physical reality. Our emotions and experiences, our feelings and our senses can certainly inform our faith/our relationship with God but they must always do so alongside realities like wisdom, insight, thought, faith, and the like.

What I have been trying to unpack here certainly goes back much further than our current generation--for Oswald Chambers himself addressed these same concerns 100 years ago! In fact, the November 13th entry of “My Utmost” was entitled: Faith And Experience! Here are a few of Oswald’s thoughts on this same topic:

•We have to battle through our moods into absolute devotion to the Lord Jesus...
•Get out of the hole-and-corner business of our experience into abandoned devotion to Jesus...
•Think who the New Testament says that Jesus Christ is, and then think of the despicable meanness of the miserable faith we have: ‘I haven’t had this and that experience!’
•We have to get out into faith in Jesus Christ continually; not a prayer meeting Jesus or a book Jesus, but the New Testament Jesus Who is God Incarnate.
•Our faith must be in the One from whom our experience springs.


Oswald was also rather perturbed at the preoccupation people of his day had with emotions, experience, and feelings. He too realized that the God Whom we worship cannot be contained by our individual personal experiences, based on our feelings and emotions. It’s about faith! NOT experience! Elsewhere, Oswald also writes:

•The destined end of man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness.
•Nowadays we have far too many affinities. We are dissipated with them. (Don’t you love those words: affinities! dissipated!)
•Every time you venture out in the life of faith, you will find something in your common sense circumstances that flatly contradicts your faith.
•Common sense is not faith and faith is not common sense.
•Can you trust Jesus Christ where your common sense cannot trust Him? Can you venture heroically on Jesus Christ’s statements when the facts of your common sense life shout: ‘It’s a lie?’

What about you? Where do you come down in all of this? In reflecting on your own life of faith, how much emphasis do you place on the subjective aspects like emotion, feelings, and experience and how much on the “facts” of faith (like the reality of God, the actuality of sin and evil, the incredibly irrational action of God’s incarnation in time and space in Jesus)--things we cannot “experience” but that impact both our beliefs and our actions. Can you step out in faith when everything in your circumstances screams out ‘it’s all a lie!?' I know people who have! Family and friends who have lost children in horrible circumstances, who have lost jobs and been unemployed for months, who have gone through major health crises, who have been battered by broken relationships, personal demons, and devastating events in their lives that occurred through no fault of their own. Is God true? Is God real? Is God a “fact?” Or is God’s reality based on our experiences and feelings about Him, so that our attitude or relationship with Him fluctuates and actualizes itself depending on our circumstances, our emotions on any given day, or on the indigestion we’re having from the steak dinner we ate last night?


I love Job! More than once, this book of the Bible has sustained me in periods of darkness, doubt, and deep personal pain. (Hmm..I’m actually in the middle of Job right now too, in my Bible read-through program...) You know the story. Job is faced with the most extreme set of circumstances anyone could ever face; experiences and emotions and feelings and overloaded senses that would send most of us over the edge and shut the door on God, and on our faith. But not Job. Listen to his words of truth, coming out of his immense torment:

•The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.
•Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?
•Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.
•I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

Job certainly had many experiences, but his faith and trust in God were WAY bigger than what his experiences indicated to him.

Finally, we have Jesus himself. He too was faced with many experiences, emotions, and feelings in his life on earth, yet he remained obedient to his Heavenly Father, aware that the “big picture” was WAY bigger than what he experienced, felt, and endured while he was on earth. Especially at the end of his life, when he was about to experience the most cruel death imaginable, and when he “felt” like God had abandoned him, he faith did not waiver. Remember these words of Jesus?

My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.
Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

May all of us have the courage, the strength, the wisdom, and the clarity to correctly handle the way our emotions and experiences, our feelings and our senses interplay with the foundation of lives: our faith in the One “Who loves us and gave Himself for us.” (Galatians 2:20b)

I’ll be back after our “Living Nativity” production. Till then, I’m swamped. (Come and see it on December 4th if you’re in the area...)

EMOTION - EXPERIENCE
FEELINGS - SENSES
HOW DO THEY FIT IN TO OUR FAITH?
(Part 1)


Recently in my “Magnificent Prayer” daily devotional, I came across this quote by Vance Havner:

“Remember that faith is not a strange sensation that comes over you in rare moments, a magic thrill from something in the minister’s voice, a mystic trance to be reached once in a while, then lost for weeks or years. Faith is a sturdy confidence that God will keep His promises, confidence enough to walk out on them and live there, although the world expects them to crack and crumble under you any day.”

The book’s author went on to comment about this:

“Refuse to allow your feelings to measure the effectiveness of your prayers (and I would add: the reality of your faith/your worship/ your relationship with God). Such dependencies are the enemy of faith. Satan is a master when it comes to orchestrating feelings in Christians. He loves it when we get those goosebump sensations because he knows that when they leave, we’ll assume we’re no longer connected to God.”

This got me thinking about a lot of aspects of my faith: prayer, worship, Bible study, conferences, the role and place of the arts (especially music--my ministry career!), captivating and charismatic speakers/leaders/pastors, working in Christian community (like Camp Squanto, sacred dance weeks at PSR, Bridges For Peace), and more. Just how important are my feelings--my experiences--when it comes to my relationship with God? What role do they play? Do I rely on them to authenticate my spirituality? Can we even grasp any reality--spiritual or otherwise--without some kind of experience of it? Should my faith be totally intellectual? Is it?

NOT AT ALL! As many of you can attest after seeing me at different services, concerts, conferences, retreats, etc. Sometimes my emotions have gotten the best of me in various settings, overwhelming my rationality in the intensity of the moment, and I have acted out according to these powerful, extreme, out-of-the-ordinary feelings (sometimes to my deteriment). Also, we know that our human relationships are always interwoven with emotions, feelings, and experiences we have with one another.


Relationships are never purely intellectual, rational, and objective. This would make them completely cold, formal, disconnected--and very unhealthy too! Think of the struggles and problems that children have when they come from homes with distant, absent fathers and emotionally dead mothers. Likewise, we need to feel--to experience--our relationship with the God of the universe, to have an emotional connection to our Lord Jesus, and to be open to the surprising movements of the Holy Spirit in our lives, which are never simply static, intellectual, rational promptings (check out Pentecost, for example...).

But I have seen too many instances where emotion in worship, in prayer, at special events, and so forth seems to be what it’s all about for people.


Worship is only “good” or “real” or “meaningful” if I get a tear in my eye, if I get chills, if I feel stirred emotionally. Otherwise, we say “It left me cold,” “I didn’t get fed,” or “It was boring.” The fact that God showed up, that He was present and ready to receive our full attention, our gratitude, our worship, the honor and glory due His Name--well, since we didn’t feel emotional or “moved” by what happened, we give the experience a thumbs down. Or the fact that there really was something rich and good in the worship, the Scripture passage, the song, from the speaker or the conference--nope! Because we weren’t aroused, excited, or stimulated by the presentation, we judge it a failure, or mediocre at best, regardless of the fact that all of this was supposedly for God.

It is easy to see what is really happening here: our experience is the most important reality! Our feelings are paramount. We are the center of everything that's going on. The focus is on ME! Not on God, or on the reason for being in attendance--no! It is about my feelings, my emotions, my familiarities, my preferences and particularities, my wants and desires, my tastes, my my my and I I I...

We humans really are emotional junkies these days.


Perhaps people have always had a tendency to get caught up in their senses and emotions, but it seems that in our day these are the all-important, driving centerpieces of our existence. How we “feel” dictates every aspect of our lives, including our spiritual lives. Comfort is #1--though entertainment/stimulation probably tie for #1! Related to these are factors of convenience, ease, enjoyment, pleasure, personal well-being, materialism, consumerism, safety and security, the hunt for “the next best thing,” the desire for “the latest and greatest” (which is connected to materialism)--all factors that touch our senses, our emotions, our feelings. Also, everything must be tailored to #1--which is ME. That’s what advertising is all about, and Christians are not above getting sucked into this incredibly huge vortex of the titilation of the senses. Sight, sound,, smell, taste, touch--we want ALL of our senses to be bombarded with stimulation and every appetite sated. We seek “virtual reality” through theaters, theme parks, THX Ltd., Wii, NIntendo, and Guitar Hero. We crave tasty treats to tantalize our taste buds and tummies, and substances to get us “up” and bring us “down.” We are sex-obsessed and porn-addicted. We avoid “stink” at all costs (deodorants, perfumes, colognes, air fresheners...). The list goes on and on, and we look to these things that stimulate our senses for satisfaction, security, and salvation--when Scripture clearly tells us time and again that whoever trusts in such things is doomed to disappointment, for the things of this world are but a moment--a breath--that will vanish like smoke. (See I John 2:15-17)

So, where’s the balance? What’s the proper mix of emotion and objective reality in our faith? Of feelings and knowledge? How do we weigh our experiences with what is true and real apart from them? How does each aspect inform the other? One is not better or more important than the other. God does come to us in and through our senses and experiences, not just through theology, knowledge, and rational thought. Engaging our senses, our emotions, our feelings, and our experiences in our relationship with God is even validated in Scripture: “Love the Lord your God with ALL your heart-soul-mind-strength.” (Mark 12:30) “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8) “Jesus spit on the ground, made some mud...and put it on the man’s eyes. ‘Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam.’” (John 9:6-7) “Look at my hands. Look at my feet. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost.” (Luke 24:39) “The Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all people, a banquet of aged wine--the best of meats and the finest of wines.” (Isaiah 25:6) “God sent the angel Gabriel to...Mary.” (Luke 1:26) Jesus himself was charged with gluttony and drunkenness (Matt. 11:19) and with socializing with some very unsavory characters, so he obviously utlized his senses and emotions, and was open to a variety of experiences in his life. We were created as unified, whole beings with many aspects, including our emotions, our intellect, our senses, our physical parts, our spiritual sensitivities, our mental capacities, and so forth. And again, as the Scripture instructs us in both the Old and New Testaments, we are to love the Lord our God with every single bit of our beings--heart, soul, mind, and strength.


The author of “Magnificent Prayer” also says that, even though Satan tries to use our feelings against us, “This doesn’t mean that we’re to leave our emotions outside the prayer room door.”

So I ask the question again: how do the more subjective aspects of ourselves--our emotions, feelings, senses, and experiences--fit in to our faith?

Next time I’ll share some fresh new insights I gleaned about all this at a recent prayer retreat...