Once More, With Feeling

I've often been told that we need to watch our emotions when it comes to God.  That we should take care to not make an "emotional" declaration of faith.  The intent of this warning is to remind us of the very Biblical ideal of counting the cost of discipleship (Luke 14: 25-33).  I know people who have, at an emotionally charged moment, made a choice, only to later acknowledge it was a hollow decision.

So, the response has been that we need to better educate disciples.  Modern Discipleship is a class for new believers or new church members.  You learn everything you need to know about Christ and the Church so that you can be a better, more effective member of the Body of Christ.  And you KNOW you are saved.

In case you missed it, that was sarcasm.  Laid on liberally.

I am not opposed to education of disciples at all.  In fact, I encourage it.  But I cannot discount emotion.  I will not denounce the role it plays in our salvation, and our life in Christ.

The problem I have with the classroom approach to discipleship is that it is clinical, more impersonal than Biblical models of discipleship (think apprentices, with less Donald Trump), and that it is just plain lacking something.

Faith is not clinical.  It has never been, nor can it ever be.  It doesn't make sense in the clinical.  Clinical things are things that come from formula, from controlled environments.  Clinical things have their place, but not in faith.  I remember sitting in seminary classes as professors who had not pastored in decades, if ever, lectured us on the appropriate means of evangelism, discipleship, and church leadership.  I do not discount these men's intellect or knowledge.  But there were numerous times the very things they were teaching were being proved impractical, impossible, or just plain ridiculous by the work I was doing in the church.

The theories looked and sounded good.

But the variables in the real world that killed these theories were people.

Emotional people.

Students who knew, front and back, the message of abstinence from sex until marriage- even had made public commitments- still slept with each other.  No amount of 'book learning' could overpower their emotional drive and hormonal impulse.

How many of us know that the right thing to do is to have mercy and compassion on the poor, yet when the poor knocks on our door or walks up to our car at a stoplight, we ignore them?  Be it fear, or perhaps distrust, we just choose to ignore.

On the flip side, is it logic, is it knowledge of the Biblical ideal of "lay down your life for another" that makes a man risk his life to save another person from harm?  Sure, they know, but without some sort of emotional kick in the butt, we'd do nothing.

I'm just trying to make you feel.

What if God wants us to be emotional?  What if He wants us to react viscerally to the things in our lives?  Maybe God wants us to feel anger at injustice towards others.  Maybe He wants us overwhelmed with the FEELING of love toward the one we are married to, as well as the action of love.  Maybe He desires that we have an uncontrollable passion and emotion to cry out to Him in song, in hope, in fear, in tears, in doubt, and in despair.

David would weep and dance and shout before God.  Moses would grow defiant before God.  Jesus was brokenhearted and fearful before God- and also passionate.  Many have felt awe, or fear, or hope, or a welling up of an emotion that has no name when in God's presence. 

This is not bad.

We are human, and God made us to be emotional. To be stirred my the strings of a beautiful or haunting melody, to have tears leap to our eyes at the sight of a long missed loved one or the birth of a child.  He made us to get emotional over these lesser things- why then should we avoid emotion with Him?

He wants us to feel, because when we feel, we act.  Our emotions give fire to the facts in our head.  To live dispassionately is to be an encyclopedia- full of facts but only active as a doorstop.


I need to feel the emotions to remind me I am alive from time to time.  Yes, they are dangerous, unpredictable, and often illogical.

Just like the God who created them.

Second Chances

There is a scene from the movie City Slickers, where one of the characters, Phil, is having a bit of a meltdown.  He's lost his wife, his job, his family- really, his manhood.  The other characters try to buoy his spirits, but nothing is working.  Finally, Mitch, Phil's friend since childhood, reminds him of a phrase they used often while playing baseball and a ball got hit to some place they couldn't retrieve it from.  "Do over."  Basically, that one didn't count, so do it again.  Forget it, and move on.

I use the terminology of chances- we all get a first chance, and if we're fortunate, a second, third, etc.

God had chances.  His first chance was Adam.  Things were going good, so He made Eve.  Things were still going well, so God left them alone in the Garden with one warning- don't eat from that tree.  Others are fine, but not that tree.  Of course, we know they ate from the tree, with a little prompting from the Serpent, and the First Chance started down the tubes.

God set out to save it with the Law.  He told Man how to gain redemption- and man, was it hard.  It seemed impossible.  Yet, Man took God's difficult Law and made it harder. 

God made Man with free will.  Man made bad choices.  God made the Law to rescue Man from bad choices.  Man made the Law God.

And so, God's First Chance ended.

You'd think He'd give up- all the heart-ache Man caused Him.  But He didn't.  See, Man was good, somewhere.  And the Law was good, as God intended before Man perverted it and it's intent.

God needed a do-over.

But, rather than forget all that had gone before, He built on what was Good.  He would marry the Law and the Man into One- the Christ, the Messiah.  Man would need not keep all the Law so rigorously, because the Man-Law would fulfill all the obligation.  The Man-Law must be fully Man- but He must also be fully God. 

So, God gave His Son.

Jesus is the Second Chance for mankind.  The Do-Over.  Where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded.  He honored God down to His last, painfully uttered words that speak volumes:  "It is finished."

You and I- all of us who have accepted this sacrifice Jesus made for us- have entered into the Second Chance.  The new life, the second Adam.  Had Jesus just died, our sins would be covered.  But because He lives, because the story didn't end on Friday, but just began on Sunday, we are forgiven and able to be more alive than ever.  We are free, free to begin again.

Now, if we have accepted Christ, we can begin.  But each day, each trial we endure, is a chance to re-embrace that Second Chance.  Lost a job?  Lost a loved one?  Contracted an illness?  Experienced failure?  All reasons to go back to Christ.

Just like when things are good is an excellent time to embrace the Second Chance.

Maybe things have been tough on you lately.  Maybe life has kicked you in the rear- or the teeth- and you just want to give up, to quit. 

Go ahead.

Die to that old way.  Die to those trials.  Give them to God, get counseling, talk to the problem maker, have a good cry, open up to the friend.  End the first chance, and embrace the opportunity to start over.

Live your Second Chance as only you can.

As only Christ makes possible.