Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshipped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. Feelings are important in many areas but completely unreliable in matters of faith.”
– Eugene Peterson
I found the quote above in my Facebook feed.
Quick disclaimer: I acknowledge this quote must have a larger context. However, somebody looked at these three sentences and thought they could stand independently. They considered them strong enough to live apart from the sentences and paragraphs in which the author wrapped them.
I also suspect the larger context of this quote orbits around the notion of worship.
Beware Your Feelings
Alone, the statement from Peterson voices a bias against feelings in relationship to faith. Christians must not trust feelings. Christians must not rely on them when it comes to their faith.
This quote bothers me because I’ve seen this sentiment elsewhere, in Cru’s The Four Spiritual Laws. It is a Bible tract that promotes a gospel message that we must accept primarily on reason.
- God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
- Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life.
- Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him, you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.
- We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.
After sharing these four spiritual laws, the tract introduces a page with the bold letters “Do Not Depend on Feelings.” From there, it reads: The promise of God’s Word, the Bible – not our feelings – is our authority. The Christian lives by faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God Himself and His Word. This train diagram illustrates the relationship among fact (God and His Word), faith (our trust in God and His Word), and feeling (the result of our faith and obedience). (Read John 14.21.)
The train will run with or without the caboose. However, it would be useless to attempt to pull the train by the caboose. In the same way, as Christians we do not depend on feelings or emotions, but we place our faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God and the promises of His Word.”1
I suspect this tract’s page regarding feelings (and Peterson’s quote) is reactionary to a cultural sensuality that encourages people to be governed by their emotions. “If it feels good, just do it.”
In a postmodern culture, one can make a similar argument regarding facts. Truths are considered self-determined. Today, western culture allows for an extreme self-identification, “I think I am [fill in the blank]; therefore I am [fill in the blank]” (e.g., I think I am oppressed; therefore I am oppressed.). This is not a feeling; it is an identity statement, a personal “truth,” which drives an individual’s perception, meaning, values, and morals. In a postmodern culture, trusting “fact” or “truth” could be considered just as flawed as “feeling.”
Regardless, distinctions exist between fact and feeling or reason and emotion. This is true. However, this modus operandi promotes faith as a purely cognitive function—the imagery reduces faith to something we must continually defend and clarify. Such a reductionism prioritizes the importance that the gospel is true. Moreover, it distinguishes feelings as untrustworthy, expendable, and unnecessary.
Ultimately, the quote above and the Bible tract share an underlying assumption: reason always trumps emotion.
Challenging the Rational Mind’s Bias Towards Feelings
According to Hipp, this preference towards the rational grew from the invention of the printing press (the first assembly line). Its introduction restructured our imagination and beliefs into efficient, linear arrangements. As it pushed forward, this rearrangement of thinking also compressed the gospel into a familiar, linear formula.
Confess Your Sins + Believe in Jesus = Go to Heaven.
“This [thinking] led to a belief that the gospel could be established and received only through reason and fact.”
Hipp concludes with a warning to his readers that “our emotions are powerful governors of behavior and are not easily dismissed or denied… The heart does not take kindly to being ignored or restrained.”2
The Beauty and Mystery of the Gospel
The gospel is true, but overemphasizing the truth and ignoring feelings comes at a cost; it sterilizes the gospel of its beauty and mystery.
Have you ever stopped and thought of the gospel as beautiful and mysterious?
In my experience, the beauty and mystery of the gospel requires looking at the entire Biblical story. The tract above only focuses on two parts of the story: man’s sinfulness (THE FALL) and God’s provision (REDEMPTION).
- THE FALL (man is sinful and separated from God)
- REDEMPTION (Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man)
THE FALL and REDEMPTION have been a familiar priority in evangelical endeavors. They are absolutely critical; however, they are also the byproduct of the compressed, linear gospel mentioned above (and found in the Four Spiritual Laws).
Jesus’ primary purpose was the salvation of people. However, a gospel focused only on THE FALL and REDEMPTION is an incomplete gospel – neglecting the story of CREATION in Genesis and the message of RESTORATION in Revelation. These essential bookends share why and how God redeems and will restore all things (e.g., The gospel message also tells how God, through Jesus, redeems all things — relationships, work, art, leisure, health, academics, etc.).
- CREATION – tells how the world ought to be
- FALL – describes how the world really is
- REDEMPTION – explains how the world can be (Jesus saves sinners and inaugurates his kingdom.)
- RESTORATION – shares what the world will be like someday (Jesus and his bride consummate their marriage.)
It’s a beautiful four-part gospel that reflects the whole story of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Telling such a story devoid of feeling is disrespectful.
“But perhaps the most damaging effect of suppressing the heart is that it deadens desire. That deep longing for life, love, and God fades. Instead, we come to expect less from life. We acquire the bland taste of a domesticated god who resides somewhere in our head. But our head is not home for the divine. The head helps us understand the divine from a safe distance. This is a powerful and valuable enterprise to be sure, but there is a difference between knowing about God and knowing God.”
– Shane Hipps (Flickering Pixels)
It’s Dishonest
In addition, the deemphasis on feelings is dishonest. The songs sung inside and outside the church resonate with emotion. Most churches endeavor to create an emotional experience on Sunday. This work typically infiltrates every aspect of their church service, minus the sermon. The church intuitively knows we can’t relegate feelings to “the caboose.” Moreover, it is odd to downplay feelings when emotions of hope and grief often highlight repentance and a contrite heart. For example, feelings may surface from the awareness of God’s grace and not just as a “result of our faith and obedience.”
It is Cognitively Impossible
Truth is essential, but it can’t be at the expense of feelings. It’s not possible to divorce the two. Both are essential, though feelings may be more so than we realize. Mike Metzger, in his essay “Feelin’ It,” illustrates just how dependent we are on our feelings and how it is impossible to be cognitively aware of all the information bombarding us every second.
Conclusion
A better image than the train is therefore needed. Something that doesn’t promote fact at the expense of feeling. I don’t have a better image yet (maybe somebody will find it in the stained glass windows of an old cathedral); however, I may have found a better metaphor. In The New Copernicans, Seel questions those of us with a faith overly concerned with the gospel being true by asking, “What if a relationship with Jesus is more like falling in love than answering the questions on a philosophy or history exam?”