OUR SUBTLE IDOLS:
FEELINGS
by A. Gene Veal

Feelings rule our society’s values.  Over the years many times I have been accused of being insensitive as a counselor.  When they see I am not very much influenced by how they feel, clients will sometimes feel offended.  They often preface their conclusions by the expression “I feel” this or that is true. 

Have you noticed how often reporters will ask victims, “How did you feel?”  Psychologist will repeatedly ask their clients, “How did that make you feel?”  After all, psychology is all about “feelings”.

Some people express absolute confidence in their opinion with the words, “I feel very strongly about this or that.”  This elevation of the feelings of one's heart is well beyond self-confidence -- it is self-deification.  When the foundation of your opinion is your feelings, you have no security in your position and your position will probably change as your feelings change.  You are “like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.”

One of the first things you learn from Scripture is that the eyes and heart are usually terrible guides to the good and the holy. "Do not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after" (Numbers 15:39); "The heart is deceitful above all things" (Jeremiah 17:9).  “There is a way which seemeth (feels) right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12 & 16:25)  When Israel had no accountability it is said of them: “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)

That Jesus sympathizes with us in our greatest challenge to overcome the natural tendency to live by feelings instead of faith and dependence on Him is expressed in Hebrews chapter four.  It tells us “We do not have a High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning.” He knows our flesh is prone to act and react from our feelings.  For that reason, “Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace (the throne of God's unmerited favor to us sinners), that we may receive mercy [for our failures] and find grace to help in good time for every need [appropriate help and well-timed help, coming just when we need it].” (Hebrews 4:15-16 Amplified Bible)

In the Garden of Gethsemane, His dealing with His disciples when they were totally exhausted from stress and grief shows us that He did not cater to their feelings.  “And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?  Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  Jesus reprimanded them for giving into their feelings.  He warned them there would be consequences for not “suffering” in the flesh through dedication to watch and pray.  “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” It happened again and he rebuked them again. In response, “They did not know what to say to him.”  I think they did not know the concept of suffering as being acceptable in serving God.  (See our articles on SUFFERING.)

Our society lives entirely by what is seen and thus what is felt. Supporters of same-sex marriage feel for the loving gay couple, but feel nothing for the children who will be adversely affected by the change from God’s order for marriage. And since they venerate their feelings, the Scriptural roles of male-female love, marriage and family is of no significance to them. Their feelings rule their decisions.

Animal rights supporters' feelings are deeply stirred when they see the animals experimented on, but no feelings exist for the millions of people they do not see who will suffer and die if we stop such experiments.  Likewise, supporters of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are so moved by the plight of slaughtered chickens that the organization has a campaign titled "Holocaust on your plate," which equates our slaughtering of chickens with the Nazi slaughtering of Jews.

Dennis Prager says, “For 25 years I have been asking high school seniors across America if they would save their dog or a stranger first if both were drowning. The majority has nearly always voted against the person. Why? Because, they say with no self-doubt, they love their dog, not the stranger. An entire generation has been raised with no reference to any moral code above their heart's feelings. They do not know, and would not care if they did know, that the Bible teaches that human beings, not animals, are created in God's image.”

So, too, those who cannot call abortion immoral are moved by what they feel for the forlorn woman who wants an abortion. Since they cannot see the human fetus as a baby they feel nothing for it. That is why abortion rights groups are so opposed to showing photos of fetuses that have been aborted -- such pictures might move the eye and the feelings of viewers to judge the morality of abortion differently and perhaps see the fetus as a human baby.

It is therefore significant that hundreds of millions of people find no problem in acknowledging that how they feel is the source of determining their values. Their feelings know better than God’s Word or even the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of history.

In your Christian walk, there will be many times that you are not going to “feel” the truth.  You are going to have to live not by feelings, but by faith.  Knowing God’s Word, you will declare that even though you do not “feel” His presence, you know by faith in His promise that “He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

Chambers says, “There are certain things we must not pray about - moods, for instance. Moods never go by praying, moods go by kicking. A mood nearly always has its seat in the physical condition, not in the moral. It is a continual effort not to listen to the moods which arise from a physical condition, never submit to them for a second. We have to take ourselves by the scruff of the neck and shake ourselves, and we will find that we can do what we said we could not. The curse with most of us is that we won't. The Christian life is one of incarnate spiritual pluck.”

There were times in David’s experiences that his feelings would get the best of him and he would talk to himself: He would talk to his feelings.  “My soul (feeling) finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him.  He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken. -- Find rest, O my soul (feelings), in God alone; my hope comes from Him.  He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will not be shaken.  My salvation and my honor depend on God; He is my mighty rock, my refuge (not my feelings).”

Even if your feelings are “positive” feelings, your feelings are NOT your guide.  Spurgeon said, “If you make a righteousness out of your feelings, you are just as much out of the true way as if you made a righteousness out of your works. Whether it be work or feeling, anything which is relied upon as a claim for grace is an antichrist.”

Somehow many Christians think that it is God’s will that we should be free of trouble and free of suffering.  That is a lie.  (See our articles: Dealing with Trouble in Life)  Certainly most of the help we are wanting from our local drug store involves pain relief.  We are not created with a desire to suffer, but suffering is a part of Father’s plan for our life.  If Father were so interested in feelings, how could you explain the book of Job or the life of Joseph?  Why would Jesus be called “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”?  We know from the Gethsemane experience that Jesus did not want to suffer the agony of separation from His Father (an agony we cannot even imagine); however, suffering was unavoidable for Jesus.  We, His servants, are not above our Master.

“Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin (If you walk in the Spirit your flesh will suffer: Galatians 5:17); That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.  For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries (living according to our feelings): wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot (according to feelings), speaking evil of you.” 

Showing God is not concerned about our feelings, Chambers says, “He does not say - Do you want to go through this bereavement; this upset? He allows these things for His own purpose. The things we are going through are either making us sweeter, better, nobler men and women; or they are making us more captious and fault-finding, more insistent upon our own way. The things that happen either make us fiends, or they make us saints; it depends entirely upon the relationship we are in to God.”

Paul tells us that we are children of God, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ “if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” He tells us: “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh (feelings); but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”  Paul tells Timothy: “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.”

When the Scriptures tell us of someone demonstrating their sincere expression of devotion to God, many times there is a reference to wearing sackcloth.  Why sackcloth?  It was extremely uncomfortable to the skin.  Also, Jesus did not say, “If you fast” do it this way.  He said, “When you fast.”  Why fast?  It would certainly not be to motivate God.  God cannot be motivated.

The purpose of sackcloth or fasting is to line us up with God, not line up God with us.  It is a setting of the mind away from the feelings of the flesh.  Paul said, “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.”  He recognized that God was causing suffering “in the flesh” for a spiritual alignment.  Paul even limited himself in areas of pleasure for the purpose of spiritual focus.  “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”  He would do anything that “as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.”  Because he was so set in his mind, his feelings were ambivalent as to which way Christ might be magnified.

When it comes to how we feel, there are times when the most sincere Christian will find himself with nothing but wrong feelings, doubting feelings, and totally disturbing feelings.  Our feelings lie to us.  We will have to recognize that those feelings do not necessarily reflect the truth.  Sometimes we will be left with no feelings that confirm God’s Word, but we will nonetheless have to declare God’s Word is true no matter how we feel at the time. 

There are seasons when a believer will be left with naked faith, a faith void of feeling, when there is no “shining splendor in his heart.”  “Who is among you who reverently fears the Lord, who obeys the voice of His Servant, yet who walks in darkness and deep trouble and has no shining splendor in his heart (loss of feelings)?  Let him rely on, trust in, and be confident in the name of the Lord (Who He has declared Himself to be), and let him lean upon and be supported by his God (not on his feelings).  And what are we prone to do in the flesh?  We are prone to turn to our feelings and “Behold, all you enemies of your own selves, who attempt to kindle your own fires (feelings) and work out your own plans, who surround and gird yourselves with momentary sparks, darts, and firebrands (feelings) that you set aflame! —You walk by the light of your self-made fire and of the sparks that you have kindled for yourself (your feelings), if you will!  But this shall you have from My hand: you shall lie down in grief and in torment.” (Isaiah 50:10-11 Amplified Bible)

As Christians, we are not to be “conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”  The first sin was brought about by this very mistake. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”  The New Testament say, “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”  You must “SET your mind on things above.”  Those are things above feelings or the flesh.

Your feelings change.  God’s Word stays the same.  Psychology is always changing.  The Scriptures have stood through the ages.  God’s promises are true.  He is immutable.  The words of Jesus should be the “rock” on which you build your life.  “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house (causing bad feelings); and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”

We must set our minds or our feelings will take us into sin.  “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”  “For they that are after the flesh (feelings) do mind the things of the flesh (feelings); but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.  For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

So your heart is not your guide.  Your heart will deceive you with lying feelings. The Scriptures show us what will control our feelings:  “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts.”  “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.  And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” 

When feelings would ordinarily devastate us, the peace of God garrisons our feelings to the point that it will be quite unexplainable to those who observe your calm confidence in Father’s love and provision, even in the midst of suffering.

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”

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