How Do You Feel?

How do you feel?

Not a question to be answered with ‘great,’ or ‘good,’ or with an ‘I feel a bit under the weather.’ No, in what way, through what filter, in what frame-work do you interpret what you feel?

This may seem an odd question, but have you ever felt a certain way that, looking back on the situation, was not the ‘proper’ feeling? You have heard that someone at work was bad mouthing you and suddenly you recall all the dumb and stupid and mean things they have done and you build an army of anger exploding unknowingly on the accused; then, with emotions ablaze, you interrogate them only to realize they had in fact not said wrong and untruthful things towards you? Oops. Wrong feeling.

How about when you have met someone, gone on some dates, and have completely fallen in love with them but then you accidentally find out that you and four other individuals are ‘the only one’ in this lover’s life? Yikes.

Living by feelings, letting feelings control the direction of your life, is that a positive thing? How can it be bad? Feelings are feelings, they obviously come for some good reason; right? Or is it the feelings are simply feelings? So again, how do you feel? What is a Christian supposed to do with feelings?

A heresy in the Christian world typically occurs when an individual or group of people take one verse—or a part of a verse—or small portion of the bible and isolate it completely from the rest of the bible and then teach to everyone. Obviously, for someone who claims to follow the God of the Christian bible, heresy is generally not a good pool to jump into. On a less severe--but not lesser in danger--scale is misinterpretation. (Misinterpretation is heresy without telling all yours friends, it is what you practice but maybe not preach) Good intentioned people misinterpret what the bible says for many reasons, however the overwhelmingly reason—again this is for good intentioned people—is a lack of wisdom which knows to look at the entire bible and see how a specific verse fits into it.

‘Enough class room time, where are we going?’ Philippians 4.7 (This is in the New Testament portion of the bible) It reads, ‘And the peace of God, which surpasses al understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ This is taken, then, by many Christians to mean that after you have prayed about the situation you are in, if you have some mystical peace about you that indicates a divine green-light to move forward with whatever it is.

Taking the rest of the bible into account this, unfortunately, is not the way a Christian should feel, or react with feelings. Serial killers, racists, rapists, thieves, cheaters, liars not everyone who does these things is hindered by how he feels, in many cases it brings a pleasure to the person when they are committing their evil. Using the same peace = it-is-okay formula here is absurd. But why can we forego logic when it comes to my decision? Truthfully we cannot.

‘I use to wear a bracelet asking what Jesus would do, so what would he do? Thankfully, in this situation, we know what Jesus did because he was at a cross-road. We find Jesus agonizing in prayer in the middle of the night. Why is he troubled? He knows that he is about to be betrayed by his friends, that he is going to be beaten and made fun of, and that he is going to be unjustly murdered; more than that he knows that he will have to be without his father’s joyful presence for the first time in literally forever. The bible tells us that Jesus was sweating blood—something that happens with intense emotional stress—as he was praying, he even asked his father that if there was any other way to save people could he do that instead. The answer was no and regardless of the suffering, the pain, the knowledge of the forthcoming soul-shredding, Jesus went obediently with the plan. There was, as Hebrews tells us, future joy, meaning Jesus could see through the tunnel of disaster and see the wonderful outcome, but he was not feeling like getting murdered. Thankfully he went through it all so that for those who follow him do not have to—as far as the judgment of the father being unleashed and the sins paid for. Any argument to say that Jesus had some mystical peace is an argument from silence.

There are other, more trivial and entertaining things to think of such as what if you ate some bad food a few hours before and felt bad while trying to make a big decision, should you go with it? However, that is just for play.

People with ‘peace’ have made terrible decision, and people with no peace have made good decisions. Can you really gauge whether ‘God was honored’ by your decision because you feel a certain way after it? Too often we want signs that what we are doing is best because the bible is not always clear on everything we do, but there in lies the good part of being a Christian and making tough decisions: God is gracious towards us and will work everything for our good in a way that makes Him look wonderfully loving and kind and patient. A Christian understands that though he should look at a situation with wisdom, he is free to fail and he can look back on the bad decision and council others later in life. The book of Romans, in the 8^th chapter states that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus; this means that a Christian is going to sin but there is always forgiveness for him if he but run to Jesus with his sins.

So how should we make decisions—big and small? With care and sincerity. The bible is what God has given us to use as a guide for our lives and decision-making. It does not give detail as to what shirt to wear, but we know we should dress in modesty and have some naked person on it; it does not tell us how to cook dinner, but it tells us that we should not love food more than God and that we should provide it for those who do not have any; it does not tell us who to marry, but it does tell us to marry someone who is on the same life and spiritual track and someone of the opposite gender.

Feelings are a gift from God; feelings can be very good. Feelings are not God and feelings do not guide our life, in fact, the peace Paul talks about in Philippians is used to guard us, for in our moments of weakness and failure instead of doubting whether we really follow Jesus and wallowing in our bad decisions feeling sorry for ourselves and dying with remorse, we can look to Jesus who went against his feelings and did not fail.