mauls@warwick.ac.uk (The Chief Slime Monster) (12/11/89)
A friend of mine said recently, "You can't base your faith on feelings.".
This was related to a discussion on what might be described as "spiritual
emotional feelings".
The way I see it, everything we perceive is through the medium of feelings.
However, the feelings we get from reading the Bible, or from talking to other
people about God, are usually very different from any of these "spiritual
emotional feelings" that people may experience at church or when they think
they are close to God. The later is very much less on an interlectual level
and some people see this as a reason to not trust these type of feelings. I
presume this is because they are worried because their, "mind", isn't in
control as much. Can we trust our feelings and take it for granted that we
are not kidding ourselves and that our subconsciouses are not playing tricks
on us? It is a very difficult question, but, as every philosopher or thinker
who has trodden on this ground knows, as soon as you start doubting the input
of your senses you end up with the only knowable fact being your existance.
This is a futile exercise and proves nothing, but it does demonstrate that
whilst the senses are imperfect, they are all we have! If we don't have
*faith* in our senses, then we would never get out of bed in the morning for
the fear that what we perceive to be the sofa is in fact a ten foot cheese
breathing dragon! So what does all this add up to? Well, if we feel that we
haven't had a shave for a long time, we have sufficient implicit faith in our
senses to act upon them and to shave, is it then dangerous to act upon
feelings or perceptions of God?
Someone has a feeling which purports to be an experience of God. Something
has caused that feeling. The cause is either God or not! The only reason we
could have for doubting the validity of the experience would be if something
else that was not God was creating this tremendous illusion or forgery. What
or who is capable of such trickery?
1) Drugs...
Unlikely, most Christians are aware of any narcotics in their system!
2) Your conscious mind...
Since you are testing the validity of the experience with your
conscious mind, you would know of it's origin.
3) Your sub-conscious mind...
This *should* be a genuine worry until you have done enough research
into it. If your subconscious mind is trying to fool you then it
obviously *wants* your conscious mind to believe it was God. You are
trying to force yourself to believe in God despite not having enough
evidence for your conscious mind to believe. This is bad! I think a
solution is; when you are building up experience of God, to keep a
close eye on what your motives are. I think the correct ( only? )
motive for becoming a Christian is that God is real to you and you
want to give your entire life to Him and serve Him, *regardless of
what that may entail*. If you are getting into it for the wrong
reasons then I imagine the thought of giving your life to Jesus and
doing anything that he asks would be very worrying, because it
threatens to take away whatever it was that you were hoping of
getting out of Christianity.
Though my personal faith has it's up's and down's like everyone
elses, for the vast majority of the time, the doubts I have that
maybe my sub-conscious is playing tricks on me remain low. However,
if you want to avoid slipping into blind-faith, "keep on the ball".
There is never a time in my opinion to stop thinking of these things.
4) Satan...
I know from personal experience that Satan can construct experiences
that appear to be of God. At first glance it can seem like we have no
hope of telling who is putting these things in our heads. I think the
key lies with prayer. If God is working in our lives, any revelation
or vision or experience that He chooses to give us will not just be
an isolated event, but I believe that it will fit into your life like
a jigsaw piece. Life with God should not be like charging up a
capacitor every time it looses it's charge, but a continuous
relationship, this is implied by giving your life to Jesus.
Therefore, the closer you are to God, the more the Devils deceptions
will stick out like a sore thumb.
Cheese, this has got longer than I thought! :-))
To finish, what I think is:-
If you analyse your motives constantly, and you live a life so as to minimise
the trash that you suspect gets between you and God, then you can reduce the
probability of being, "duped", with feelings to very small, and you can get
on and enjoy good feelings, trusting that they are the products of an
enhanced relationship with God and nothing else.
Thank you for listening,
The Chief Slime Monster.
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[My own view of faith is that it is a kind of intellectual courage. I
see it as having two aspects: (1) the courage to commit ourselves to
God even though we are never going to get completely unambiguous
evidence; (2) the courage to hold onto what we believe in the face of
momentary discouragement. However I would argue that ultimately it
must be grounded in some good reason to believe. It's one thing to
have faith to keep going when for the moment everything seems to have
turned against us. It's something else to have "blind faith" in
something for which there was no good evidnece to begin with. I don't
expect to see completely air-tight proofs, but I am also suspicious of
people who cannot come up with any reasons for what they believe other
than that they take it on faith. --clh]davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) (12/15/89)
In article <Dec.11.04.26.10.1989.25131@athos.rutgers.edu> mauls@warwick.ac.uk (The Chief Slime Monster) writes: >... Can we trust our feelings and take it for granted that we >are not kidding ourselves and that our subconsciouses are not playing tricks >on us? It is a very difficult question, but, as every philosopher or thinker >who has trodden on this ground knows, as soon as you start doubting the input >of your senses you end up with the only knowable fact being your existance. I, for one, trust neither my senses nor my thoughts. If I were to trust my senses then I would involve myself in all sorts of sinful living. If I were to trust my thoughts then I would make up all sorts of things about God which would be more appealing to me, probably eliminating concepts like eternal damnation and God's hatred of sinners altogether because they are exceedingly unpleasant things to think about. I might even convince myself that I am not a sinner after all because who really enjoys honestly facing up to the insidious filth and wrottenness that dwells within his very being. Unlike those philosophers and thinkers which you referred to, however, I know far more than the mere fact that I exist. I know the truth about reality which God has been gracious enough to reveal to me via His Word, the Bible. It, and it alone, is what I trust. Its words are unchangeable, full of wisdom and knowledge, and profound proclaimers of the truth and revealers of the nature of God Himself. I know not only that I exist but also why I exist. This is something that even the greatest philosopher or thinker, without the Bible, has never been able to figure out. Their big mistake was thinking that they could rely on their own thinking. Man's thoughts are tainted by sin. God's sinless thoughts are the only ones worth probing. I feel very, very sorry for those people who are basing their salvation on some sort of really neat emotional experience which happened to them. Ones own emotions can induce drug-like, immensely pleasing sensations which many people delude themselves into being of divine origin. It is even entirely possible, though these people never want to contemplate the possibility, that such emotional experiences were induced by Satan himself in order to give them exactly what they were seeking, i.e. good earthly feelings rather than a sincere relationship with God. The only way for a person to be sure of his salvation is for him to study the Bible. He will then be able to see if he has an on-going and sincere desire to be obedient to the commandments of God or not. God tells us that one of the ways that we can know if we love Him is if we want, from the heart, to be obedient to Him at any cost. 1 John 2:3-5 says "And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.". Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014 856 Grenon Avenue Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2B 6G3
jrossi@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (The Electric Sol) (12/17/89)
[In article <Dec.15.01.39.03.1989.17427@athos.rutgers.edu> bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) tells us that he trusts neither his senses nor his thoughts. If he did, he would be led to sinful living, and to rationalizing away his sin. >Unlike those philosophers and thinkers which you referred to, however, >I know far more than the mere fact that I exist. I know the truth about >reality which God has been gracious enough to reveal to me via His >Word, the Bible. It, and it alone, is what I trust. Its words are >unchangeable, full of wisdom and knowledge, and profound proclaimers of >the truth and revealers of the nature of God Himself. --clh] I emailed Dave a much longer reply, however, for the Net, my primary observation was the faultiness here is that Dave could not arrive at any knowledge contained within the Bible without first trusting his senses, and his thoughts. You cannot trust the Bible without trusting that your senses ( the eyes with which you read the Bible ) and your mind ( the brain that thinks symbolically, makes judgements, evaluations, and interprets ) are working properly. So if Dave trusts neither his senses, feelings, thoughts, etc. how can he trust that he understands what the Bible has said? Has Dave never experience the joy of being with God. Does this joy not count as an emotional experience? If it is an emotional experience how can one, who can't trust one's own experience, trust the experience is from God? -- -jrossi@jato.jpl.nasa.gov "Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils -ames!elroy!jato!jrossi is still choosing evil." -Cptn. Trips **********************STANDARD DISCLAIMER******************************