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Christianity was supposed to be about becoming like Jesus. | |
We went in the wrong direction. |
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A Place for Passion
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| In the original Star
Trek TV show the characters of Spock and McCoy represented two
approaches to life, that of logic and emotion. Decades later a line
from a movie captured this dichotomy, “Passion is the enemy of
precision”.Most people go through life with little consideration as to
how these two phenomena can influence their lives. For example, a
Christian can make declarations of how great God is because of various
incidents in his life. However, rather than a humble and grateful
heart, one may actually be feeding a feeling of self-righteousness that
would never have been intentionally selected. Pleasurable sensations
can be deceptive. Rather than choosing between logic and emotion, it might be better to see logic as the first element in a sequence with emotions following like a “cart” after the horse. When emotions are put first and allowed to run wild, one can find all sorts of difficult and even painful consequences. When decisions and actions are predicated on emotions, they generally serve short sighted self-interests such as what feels good. While most are able to avoid the drug and alcohol choices, Feeing good decisions can extend far past the physical. Consider the emotional investment one makes in a favorite sports team. This can cause one to make ill-advised sports bets as well as to not accurately assess the team performance. Similarly one’s religious, political, and even entertainment preferences can be filtered through the lens of what makes one feel good. For the Christian this can be a natural but dangerous reflex. When deciding if what one hears is true or not one may base their conclusion on how it makes them feel If one has configured himself (used logic) to take pleasure in truth, feelings can be useful. However, unmanaged feelings can be deceptive such as being vulnerable to flattery. Feelings can allow us to enjoy life as well as work as a sort of “smoke” alarm to warn us of something that is wrong. Reflexively being hurt triggers a desire to give hurt back. This crude defensive reflex can be a survival mechanism. Being able to have logic rule over emotions can allow one to use the signaling aspect of emotions to trigger a logic response to select the best response (which is not always a counter attack). One response might be inquiry to determine actual intent. As a Christian matures and becomes less invested in self, the magnitude of an emotional response to hurt also becomes less. A child might not have a greater joy than a piece of candy. His father might not have a greater joy than seeing his child have joy. His grandparent might not have a greater joy than seeing his son take pleasure in his own son. This is a picture of how one can change in their emotional responses. Paul contrasts those who respond to truth with those who take pleasure in unrighteousness (2Thess 2:12). From this it might be concluded that adjusting ones emotional response to take greater pleasure in truth is advantageous. Perhaps the first step in placing passions in their proper perspective is to see them as brief reactions to that which is good and true as well as an alarm when something needs attention. Secondly, one should intentionally interrupt the reflex to use emotions to determine truth and instead apply logical assessment. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. - 3 John 1:4 |
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Information about Christianity and the Christian life. |
Pictures and views of our farm | Some of our animals | See some of the old-fashioned crafts we are trying to relearn | ||