3

February

Intellectual propositions vs. feelings

“It’s not intellectual propositions that make most of us believers.  According to English apologist Francis Spufford, it’s feelings.  ‘I assent to the ideas because I have feelings,’ said Spufford.  ‘I don’t have the feelings because I assent to the ideas.’  Can I say it like it is?  If your life lacks joy, no one wants what you have.”- Mark Batterson

“We are not thinking machines that feel, but emotional machines that think.”- Dr. Antonio Damasio

Mark Batterson continues Chapter 2 of A Million Little Miracles as he asserts that what attracts people to God is not:

  • the seen but the unseen.
  • the tangible but the intangible.
  • words but things that cannot be put into words.

Put another way, it’s beauty and creativity and mystery.  Certainly, Mark acknowledges, faith involves more than subjective feeling.  Because faith = absolute truth.  But, Pastor Batterson observes, the same God who took delight in His creation also created us with a remarkable range of emotion.

Therefore, Mark chose tov as his word of the year.  He describes tov as the most beautiful thing you’ve ever beheld with your eyes.  As a moment when time stood still.  Or as a time when you felt most alive.

In addition, Mark notes, more than 170,000 words comprise the English language.  However, biblical Hebrew contains only 8,000 words.  So, while more words exist in the English language, Hebrew words carry more meaning.  Thus, as Lois Tverberg wrote in Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewish Words of Jesus Can Change Your Life (2012):

“The richness of Hebrew comes from its poverty.  Because the ancient language has so few words, each one is like an overstuffed suitcase, bulging with extra meaning that it must carry in order for the language to fully describe reality.”

In conclusion, Pastor Batterson exhorts, God invites us to rediscover how big, how close, and how good He is.  As a result, through that process we reexperience original blessing.  We recapture original emotion.

Today’s question: How do you balance feelings with intellectual propositions?  Please share.

Tomorrow’s blog: “The scales of the habitual”

About the author 

Dave Henning

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}
Call Now Button