Feelings

Feelings

© 2011 George Dunn

One time I said, “If you only believe in what you can see then you must not believe in love.” Now if you are a Christian you probably know why I said this. It was to logically demonstrate that although you cannot see God, this does not mean He doesn’t exist or that His existence should be unbelievable.

Someone close to me responded to what I said in a way I believe would be typical of or at least agreed upon by many people in our day and culture. He said, “I believe in what I feel in my heart.” ...

Now these kinds of emotive references to the heart typically make biblical, conservative Christians wince because of Jeremiah 17:9 which says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Not only this but we live in a very liberal culture that will think with their feelings, rather than learn to temper their feelings with logical thinking. It is better that the mind through reason, should lead our responses.

Well, instead of ramming Jeremiah 17:9 into the face of the responder with a ‘turn or burn’ kind of attitude, I tried to use their statement as a reference point to reason with them. I think this approach is helpful if you really wish to get your point across. Unless you understand what the other person is actually saying, and are able to show them your empathy to their position, you haven’t really earned a hearing from them and this will probably play out in their reaction to you.

This is how I countered the person responding to what I said:

I too believe in what I feel in my heart, but I must qualify this because my heart alone can be deceptive. The feelings in our hearts such as anger, happiness, sadness, etc... are not tangible or material. But you know that they exist because the amygdala, the hippocampus, the basal ganglion, and the thalamus, etc… parts of the brain all working together, render these feelings based on experiences we process intellectually. We can always sense (see, touch, smell, etc…) materially what leads to a feeling. We see or hear children laughing and playing, we recognize a pleasant fellowship between them in their behavior and this is a pleasing experience to us; therefore our brains process a feeling of happiness.

What we don’t see materially is the cause of a particular material experience. For instance, we cannot see the wind, but we do see the trees swaying to and fro which is the material experience that we can sense; which in turn renders an individual a particular feeling based on how one’s brain processes the stimuli. Just because we cannot see the cause of the experience, does not mean that the experience does not exist.

When Spirit of God which is the unseen cause, condescends to save a person, radical changes immediately take place bringing about a gradual process of transformation, whereby the actions of the person become the seen experience by himself and others. This experience when processed intellectually gives the person a feeling of assurance, joy and a freedom from guilt! I am one of these people and because of what I have experienced; I can feel Jesus in my heart. Hence in this way, I am able to agree with whom I was having this dialogue, who said and I quote, “I believe in what [or who] I feel in my heart.”