Feelings

Because our loves are disordered our feelings are often unreliable indexes to what is true about us. Feelings are real, and powerful, and must be dealt with. Sometimes they sync up with what is true about us, many times, they do not. They are treacherous, temporary, and tangled.

Treacherous because they reflect the disordered loves we all have. At points, then, which we cannot easily identify, feelings lead us to internalize, articulate, and respond to our lives in distorted, that is, idolatrous, ways.

Temporary because changeable. Their fleetingness betrays any claim we may have on them as a foundation for morality or life’s direction.

Tangled because, following from fleetingness and the disordered loves each of us experiences, feelings enmesh us in a never-ending maze of perspectives and possibilities from which we cannot extricate ourselves.

The struggle is to bring our (rebellious) loves into sync with our creation as God’s beloved creatures bound to the freedom of serving him throughout our lives. The good news is that in Jesus Christ - his life, death, resurrection, and ascension - God has both reclaimed and restored his wayward creatures. What we could not and would not do for ourselves, God has done. What we can and must do is learn to live from love for God alone, which the Holy Spirit “pours” into our hearts (Rom.5:5).

Our feelings, important though they are, carry no ultimacy (beyond what we allow them). Because ultimacy entails intimacy however, what we allow ultimacy has great power in and over us. This is where we must beware the treachery, temporariness, and tangled character of feelings. The reality of God in Jesus Christ, his love for us, and his call and claim on us is the vantage point we are given from which to trust the Spirit to the syncing work mentioned above. And thus we will get better and better at identifying the marks of our still-disordered loves and resisting their siren calls to order our lives by them.