A Response to the Last Post

This is in response to the good comments made about the last post.

The brunt of what I am aiming is the sense that feeling is the rudder of many lives, that to some degree we often live according to how we are feeling: emotion sets the mood and the mood dictates the decision. This, I believe, runs counter to what the bible has to say; biblically, a Christian ought to be guided by truth, that is, the clear truths presented in the bible. Now every life circumstance is not in the bible so at this point we can be guided by GENERAL truths and are given the freedom to make our decisions in light of those general truths. I would have to say objectively and subjectively--in my own experiences--feelings counter to what I know to be absolutely true in many occurrences. So if I acted on the feeling in that moment I know it would be the wrong decision to make. Trepidation may have more to do with how we are wired--why are some instinctively afraid of snakes and others not?--or our wrestling with a situation and THESE feelings ought not to be deemed as God's guidance. Can God use feelings? God can use whatever he desires, but as a standard in the bible I do not see that feelings are how He directs people. But feelings formed within truths are often seen, the gleaming example being God. Love, as Paul speaks of, often COMPELS us to do things that we normally would not, and this is because it is out of love that we feel compelled to help someone as a Christian. Feelings, again, are wonderful gifts of God to be enjoyed as such and they often lace truth; this should not be negative. But when feelings are used to guide the decisions in our lives--great and small--we have cause for questioning and concern. So we should not seek to be void OF emotion, thinking this was of making decisions is best, rather we should make decisions emphatically, making them based on truths that we can entrust ourselves to knowing that we may never have happiness with clear depth on earth but we have a joy that is the base-drum going through our Christian life, something that is truth-oriented but also, to a degree, feeling. As one person said, 'Feelings are not god; God is god.'

So in the end feelings should not win in a debate over truth--this not to say that feelings are not sometimes true themselves, rather they are correct sometimes--they rightly correspond with truth. Admittedly this is a tough subject and is hard sometimes to pin down. I remember one friend saying, 'I can't change how I feel,' and I think to a large degree he is right, however because you feel something does not make that thing or decision right or true, though the feeling itself is genuinely there. Part of maturing as a person is growing the ability to decide, through clouds of emotion, what is best in any particular situation; it is important to be able to curb feelings at some pints, something which is very hard to do. For example, if a wife of 35 with 3 kids has her husband suddenly and unexpectedly die in a car accident, she should not be expected to make all the decisions about the viewing and funeral, much less what she is going to do with her 3 children, the house and cars. In this situation it is most likely best to get council from a trusted source to help make sane the otherwise chaotic world that she is in. Truth is the lake and feelings are the jet ski we sometimes get to use to get the fullest of the situation. I hope this brings some type of clarity.