What You Think Is What You Feel!

On Community Living - Living in Community Takes More Than Looking Out for Your Feelings...
Living in Christian community requires each person take intentional (deliberate) care for other people. Serving each other 'works' in putting things right in so many people's life, for love is serving.
However, service when it becomes the end, it has become a monstrous Master, catapulting people to heights of arrogance from which they may never recover due to the blindness of pride.
How susceptible we are to being sucked down into the undertow when someone talks of his/her 'my feelings!'
How is it then that it can be possible to live in community, having 'respect' for your feelings? We need to have a standard to measure “respect for feelings.” What is the answer? And more than that, what motivates me to have respect for your feelings, or you for mine?
There are those people who dare to insist that you need to respect my feelings because: ' I believe [i.e. feel], I did this for glory of God...'
The reality is that if you really wish to do something for the glory of God, your feelings will matter less and Christ's "feelings" will matter more.
So what is the answer to this condundrum? There is no earthly help--we really do need to turn to the truth of the scriptures for our standard-and let them search our heart:
"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus..."
(Philippians 2-1-5 English Standard V)
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"If with the tongues of men and of angels I speak, and have not love, I have become brass sounding, or a cymbal tinkling;
and if I have prophecy, and know all the secrets, and all the knowledge, and if I have all the faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing;
and if I give away to feed others all my goods, and if I give up my body that I may be burned in sacrificial giving, and have not love, I am profited nothing.
Love is long-suffering, it is kind, the love doth not envy, the love doth not vaunt itself, is not puffed up, doth not act unseemly, doth not seek its own things, is not provoked, doth not impute evil,
Rejoiceth not over the unrighteousness, and rejoiceth with the truth-it all things beareth, it believeth all, it hopeth all, it endureth all.
Love will never cease; and whether [there be] prophecies, they shall become useless; whether tongues, they shall cease; whether knowledge, it shall become useless; for in part we know, and in part we prophecy; and when that which is perfect may come, then that which [is] in part shall become useless.
When I was a babe, as a babe I was speaking, as a babe I was thinking, as a babe I was reasoning, and when I have become a man, I have made useless the things of the babe;
for we see now through a mirror obscurely, and then face to face; now I know in part, and then I shall fully know, as also I was known; [See 1 John 3 below] and now there doth remain faith, hope, agape -- these three; and the greatest of these [is] agape."
(1 Corinthians 13 - Young's Literal Translation)
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"Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!
Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be
but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. "
(I John 3:1-3)

Feelings, ooooo, feelings....and Christ the Lord

And now as a Christian I tend to (like many of my Christian friends) create an unreal dichotomy in my mind between "me" and "Christian me." That is, I either assume too much of my feelings (making too of them) or push them aside as worthless (making too little of them). They are either inherently unnecessary to human life or else they are everything-the sum total of my presence before God. Yet neither of these is true. It is certainly an unbalanced viewpoint. Yet I think there are plenty of Christians who think this way. We continually misunderstand the proper place of feelings. Christ, we know had feelings-he had strong feelings:
“While he lived on earth, anticipating death, Jesus cried out in pain and wept in sorrow as he offered up priestly prayers to God.” [Hebrews 5:7-10 The Message ]
Christians – and knowledgeable nonChristians tend to restrict Jesus' feelings to religious contexts. The preceding verse his feelings are exhibited while in prayer – which puts us in mind of His prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane.
However there is no indication that Jesus Christ's feelings were restricted to prayer alone (prayer and feelings is an interesting topic in itself). In fact, it is quite the opposite. From the gospels we know Jesus exhibited anger, pity and sorrow. All these have legitimacy as good religious feelings, as long as anger can be labeled as “righteous” anger.
Let’s not forget Jesus did have a friend he felt (feelings) especially close to: the disciple "Jesus loved" (left unidentified but mostly thought of as John). And, then there is Lazarus, who though not an apostle, was deeply loved by Jesus.
Evidently Jesus did have personal preferences: we find he felt connected with some people more deeply than others and this connection doesn’t seem to be a one-to-one relationship with their stature as spiritual giants. It had more to do with a personality preference, and another feeling called friendship.
Let's also remember that in addition to the "religious feelings" listed (righteous anger, pity, sorrow) and friendship, that Jesus felt weak and wobbly-which is my 21st century term for the biblical word "tempted." Of course, we are tempted every day, usually many times a day, if not all day by many things. We are tempted to conceit, fear, anxiety, despair, discouragement, helplessness and hopelessness, mostly unbelief. We are also driven to participate in "sins of the flesh" (those normally associated as bad: greed, lust, power, etc.).
"...we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." [Hebrews 4:14-16 New King James Version]
Scripture declares Jesus was God come in the form of flesh-a man...and our feelings is one of the many good reasons He had to come as a man.
Were Christ untempted, then He would be unfeeling as a human. Praying to a god who was unfeeling as a human, would be like asking an unseeing god to restore your vision. You see, he wouldn't understand the quality of your lack of vision, and therefore its need. Nor would such a god make you feel at all encouraged that he could understand your desire to have vision restored.
Now, on the other hand, had Christ been tempted and sinned, He could not be a savior, nor could he qualify as a High Priest to make intercession to the Father on our behalf. 
Lewis said:
"God could, had He pleased, have been made incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of...sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood at Gethsemane. [If this had not been the case]...we [might] have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance.
...knowing that He has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. If He had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that would have been for many of us almost the same as His not being incarnate at all."

• C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
  

The Irrepressible Effect of Being Alive to the Kingdom of God

Too often in my well-intentioned desire for Christian formation, I am simply seeking to find a balance between extremes: more like a “middle ground.” Unfortunately, "middle ground" is that imaginary place between “spiritual” and “carnal” living. And, as such, as a friend once said, “That middle ground is that place I wave to as I swing by on my way from one end of the pendulum to the opposite end.”
The truth is, Christian formation is Christ-formed-in-me, in the here and now. Most importantly, and most often and easily forgotten, it is God's desire to have me grow is greater and more urgent than my desire is.

Michael J. Wilkins talks about the extremes we often find ourselves in as we strive to have a “good” Christian life:
“For example:
- the contemplative who forgets the needs of the world
- the moralist who focuses on sin and neglects compassion
- the charismatic who seeks the gifts and neglects the Giver
- the social activist who forgets to listen to God
- the Bible-study enthusiast who feels no need for the Holy Spirit
- the ascetic who disallows the joy of life in Christ
- the community participant who loses his/her individual identity
- the Christian leader who forgets that she/he is still simply one of the flock…”

He adds: “ ‘Spirituality,’ then, is the overall goal of becoming like Jesus. ‘Spiritual formation’ points to the process of training, shaping, and being shaped in every area of our lives by the Spirit into the image of Christ.”
(Michael J. Wilkins, from: In His Image: Reflecting Christ in Everyday Life, NavPress, 1997.)

Dallas Willard clarifies,

“Spirituality in human beings is not an extra or ‘superior’ mode of existence. It’s not a hidden stream of separate reality, a separate life running parallel to our bodily existence. It does not consist of special ‘inward’ acts even though it has an inner aspect.

It is, rather, a relationship of our embodied selves to God that has the natural and irrepressible effect of making us alive to the Kingdom of God – here and now in the material world.”

(Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 31.)

How Do You Cope? (Counselors of Comedy)

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
(Shakespeare, from As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, beginning line 139)
….
Here I am veering a bit from my standard fare (theology/philosophy) to take up the topic of how people cope. If I were to create an icon representing the totality of our human existence, it likely would resemble the universal symbols for theatre in which the Greek theatre masks show a smiling/laughing face (representing Thalia, the god of comedy) and a sad face (representing Melpomene, the god of tragedy).


This dramatic analogy tells us that our existence, much like a drama, is laced with successes, failures, laughter, pain, tears, mystery and agony-now, add to the drama "real life" factors such as perseverance, boredom, monotony, repetitive annoyances. And the question, how do the “actors” in this temporal "drama" grapple with the frustrating thought that satisfactory “resolutions” may not come? Indeed, we find for some unexplained reason we are forced to live with unresolved conflict, great inequities, with constant pain, or deep heartache. The question we are left with (barring the superficial, temporary deadening effects of drugs and alcohol), how do people cope? I think we grapple with the continual grind and the sometimes near-crushing defeats through two primary means: counselors (whether therapeutic or spiritual, sometimes both) and with laughter.


For a variety of circumstantial reasons, I have never been to an official “counselor” or nor do I seek out comedians. However, I have had and still have my share of both counselors and comedians though I do not pay money to see either. Most of my counselors were relatives, extremely close friends of the family and spiritual advisers. I have met comedians everywhere, and have resident comedians in my very large extended family and in my smaller but close circle of friends.


Clearly, it's not necessary to state the differences between counselors and comedians, I think though, the similarities are less obvious. Let's look at the outcome of visiting both a good counselor and a good comedian because it is identical. When you feel the "itch" returning, your mind turns to that person as the one who can "scratch" it satisfactorily.
So, what it is about a counselor that makes me wish to return? There are several things.


Obviously, she’s a person-and though this seems too trite to mention, the physical presence of another caring human brings something indefinable into the picture. Indefinable because there is something about the presence of a human that cannot be replicated in any other manner. Secondly, she is there for me. Her entire existence at that moment is for me-and none of it is for her. She also tries to put herself in my shoes to understand my world through my eyes. And, without judgment, she speaks both comforting and encouraging words. When we separate, we leave with a handshake or hug, or a check, and a promise to see each other again.


How is this similar to a comedian?


The comedian is physically there, and he is there for me. Only a failed comedian speaks on topics which interest himself alone. Good comedians know to make me laugh, he needs to see my situations through my eyes. So, he's forced to project himself, and he places himself in my world, imagining himself to be me. In this way, he is there for me. Yes, though he is gratified by a smile and a chuckle, much as the counselor is gratified by tears or a resolution, still, his emotions remain outside of my concern. In a way, he serves me, I do not serve him. The comedian speaks into my situation and draws a perspective that I had not seen before. In some way, like the counselor, without judgment, his words break that awful load of concern or tension. And the chuckle, guffaw, or laugh he eventually elicits helps me recall that the sun continually shines on the backside of the clouds. When we depart, I know we'll see each other again, for he needs to make me laugh as much as I need to laugh.


If you think of your life as making a trail in an enormous field of mature corn. You feel lost and helpless, all you can do is go forward. There are other people also making their way through this field, sometimes you run in to them. When you run in to a counselor, he will ask you which turns you took, you won't ask him. All types of hand-wringing about your wrong turns will pour out of your lips. A good counselor lets you talk, and when you're ready, comforts you, and perhaps, gives you some advice on the next few turns (which he has already taken). If he’s not taken those turns, he’ll at least help you think them through.


When you meet the comedian in the cornfield, he already has in mind those wrong turns you took, you do not need to open your mouth-he does it for you. So while he's voicing your internal frustrations, he's able to make light of the wrong turns: revealing to you, possibly the ludicrous decisions you made (or are about to make). As you are laughing, you realize you laugh out of surprise for the insights into your life-but mostly for the perspective he brings. Though he's not aloof, he's bringing fresh eyes and a new perspective on your turns. To say the obvious in a subtle way is somehow comforting: we're all lost in this cornfield, we're all making wrong turns-and no one gets out alive.


In a way, only God “hovers above” the cornfield and can see the entire layout, the entrances, exits and pitfalls. The counselor is there to provide comfort for the wrong turns you have taken, while the comedian provides relief, reassuring you that though this is your first time through the cornfield, everyone makes the mistakes of the same sort.


There is some sort of comfort in knowing that you are not the only person in the history of mankind who has walked through a fancy restaurant with toilet paper clinging to the bottom of his best shoes.


The question, then is not: is the counselor/mentor or the comedian necessary, but when are they needed? God has put people in our life who cause us pain and pleasure. But, He's also given us people who are gifted in providing us with soul care, a listening ear and a caring heart. Sometimes they come in the form of counselors, but sometimes they are comedians.

Men have been wise in different modes, but they have always laughed the same way. (Samuel Johnson)

• Charity Johnson

Daily "Stay-cations"

There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute;

for feeling, except in the infinite;

for the soul, except in the divine.

• Henri Frédéric Amiel, Journal

God is Not Reserved for the Poor

The Pulley

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
"Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can;
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span."

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure;
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

"For if I should," said he,
"Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

"Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast."

• George Herbert (1593-1633)

Lethal Anger and Its Offspring

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine -

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

• William Blake

Down? Depressed? Lonely? Unloved?

God does love you...you know.

"…“God is love” … an essential attribute of God.

We do not know, and we may never know, what love is, but we can know how it manifests itself…[For example,] we see it showing itself as good will. Love wills the good of all and never wills arm or evil to any. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.”
Fear is the painful emotion that arises at the thought that we may be harmed or made to suffer....The world is full of enemies and as long as we are subject to the possibility of harm from these enemies, fear is inevitable. The effort to conquer fear without removing the causes altogether futile. As long as we look for hope in the law of averages, as long as we must trust for survival to our ability to outthink or outmaneuver the enemy, we have every good reason to be afraid. And fear has torment. …to know that love is of God and to enter into the secret place leaning on [Him]-this and only this can cast our fear. God is love and God is sovereign. His love disposes Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His sovereignty enables Him to secure it…
Love is also an emotional identification. It considers nothing its own but gives all freely to the object of its affection…It is a strange and beautiful eccentricity of the free God that He has allowed His heart to be emotionally identified with men. Self-sufficient as He is, He wants our love and will not be satisfied until He gets it. Free as He is, He has let His heart be bound to forever.
..The Lord takes particular pleasure in His [people]. .. Earth is the place where the pleasures of love are mixed with pain, for sin is here, and hate and ill will. In such a world as ours love must sometimes suffer… [Yet] the causes of sorrow will finally be abolished...and the new race will enjoy forever a world of selfless, perfect love.

It is the nature of love that it cannot lie quiescent. It is active, creative and benign. …So it must be where love is, it must ever give to its own, whatever the cost.
The love of God is one of the great realities of the universe, a pillar upon which the hope of the world rests. But it is a personal, intimate thing, too. God does not love populations, He loves people. He loves not masses, but men and women. He loves us all with a mighty love that has no beginning and can have no end.

In Christian experience there is a highly satisfying love content that distinguishes it from all other religions and elevates it to heights far beyond even the purest and noblest philosophy. This love God is [not even]…a thing; it is God Himself…

…Christian joy is the heart’s harmonious response to the Lord’s song of love.”

• A. W. Tozer – The Knowledge of the Holy

A Place to Settle Down, Part 1 of 2

A PLACE TO SETTLE DOWN, Part 1

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all…Again, you have stood before some landscape which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw – but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realize that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of—something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the worship or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantilising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

(Continued in part 2)

• C. S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain (excerpted from the chapter: “Heaven”)

A Place to Settle Down - Part 2

A PLACE TO SETTLE DOWN, Part 2

This signature on each soul may be a product of heredity and environment, but that only means that (they) are among the instruments whereby God creates a soul. I am considering not how, but why, He makes each soul unique. If He had not use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, by you—you, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. ….God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

• C. S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain (excerpted from the chapter: “Heaven”)

Technological Skill = Null

Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction,

but, knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

• Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) from The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996.

Status Update: Still Miserable

...imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others... those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope.
[This] is an image of the condition of man.


...here [on earth] is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite...that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.

• Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) from The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996.

The Best Rest

The Temper

How should I praise thee, Lord! how should my rhymes
Gladly engrave thy love in steel,
If what my soul doth feel sometimes,
My soul might ever feel!
Although there were some fortie heav’ns, or more,
Sometimes I peer above them all;
Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
Sometimes to hell I fall.
O rack me not to such a vast extent;
Those distances belong to thee:
The world’s too little for thy tent,
A grave too big for me.
Wilt thou meet arms with man, that thou dost stretch
A crumb of dust from heav’n to hell?
Will great God measure with a wretch?
Shall he thy stature spell?
O let me, when thy roof my soul hath hid,
O let me roost and nestle there:
Then of a sinner thou art rid,
And I of hope and fear.
Yet take thy way; for sure thy way is best:
Stretch or contract me, thy poor debtor:
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the music better.
Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there:
Thy power and love, my love and trust
Make one place ev’ry where.

• George Herbert (1593–1632)

Willingly Captive - "Batter My Heart..."

Sonnet

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly 'I love you,’ and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

• John Donne (1573–1631)

Christ: True North

Approaches

When thou turn’st away from ill,
Christ is this side of thy hill.

When thou turnest toward good,
Christ is walking in thy wood.

When thy heart says, ‘Father, pardon!’
Then the Lord is in thy garden.

When stern Duty wakes to watch,
Then His hand is on the latch.

But when Hope thy song doth rouse,
Then the Lord is in the house.

When to love is all thy wit,
Christ doth at thy table sit.

When God’s will is thy heart’s pole,
Then is Christ thy very soul.

• George Mac Donald (1824–1905)

The Paradox of Imprisonment

"If There had Anywhere"

If there had anywhere appeared in space
Another place of refuge, where to flee,
Our hearts had taken refuge in that place,
And not with Thee.

For we against creation’s bars had beat,
Like prisoned eagles, through great worlds had sought
Though but a foot of ground to plant our feet,
Where Thou wert not.

And only when we found in earth and air,
In heaven or hell, that such might nowhere be—
That we could not flee from Thee anywhere,
We fled to Thee.

• Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin (1807–1886)