Many (most?) of us in our culture struggle with what role "feeling" plays in our ministry and relationship with God. PARSE regular Mandy Smith offers a helpful perspective. -Paul
I rarely start my day asking, "Is my relationship with my husband real? What if I've just imagined that I love him? Is it safe to trust that he loves me?"
And I rarely start my day thinking, "Exactly what is the rate of my husband's hair growth? Why does he like creamy peanut butter when obviously crunchy is the best? If I don't know these things about him, how close can we really be?!"
Instead, he hands me my morning cup of tea and I ask him how he slept. And our day begins.
"Not feeling God right now…"
It's a common thing for me in my ministry to hear, "I'm just not feeling God right now." "Would you mind asking someone else to pray to start our small group? It seems inauthentic if I say things I don't feel." or "I really am struggling with what I think about the evolution/creation debate so I don't feel comfortable coming to Sunday services right now. I just want to be real and it seems hypocritical to come when I don't know what I believe."
We have ideals of what our faith should feel like—God is close, God loves us, we are precious in his sight. And we have ideals of how well we should believe—I know my position on every theological and cultural issue and have my arguments all thoroughly backed up with scripture and research. But when we have such high ideals for what faith looks like, how do we get on with the process of just living this life of faith? Especially when human feelings and understanding can be so fickle?
Why are we okay with that elusive nature of human relationships and not with our relationship with our God?
Maybe there's a third option: just doing. Faithfulness in my marriage doesn't mean I always feel mushy feelings. Faithfulness in my marriage doesn't mean I fully understand my husband's physical, mental or emotional inner workings. And yet I am faithful by living life with him, raising these children together, getting up each morning to tea and small talk. And in the midst of that there are the gifts of warm feelings and moments of insight into his mysteries.
Why are we okay with the elusive nature of human relationships and not with our relationship with our God?
I think Lauren Winner, author of Mudhouse Sabbath, is onto something. She says, "Practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity. That is not to say that Judaism doesn't have dogma or doctrine. It is rather to say that for Jews, the essence of the thing is a doing, an action. Your faith might come and go, but your practice ought not waver. (Indeed, Judaism suggests that the repeating of the practice is the best way to ensure that a doubter's faith will return.)"
It's common for Christians to have community rituals: weekly worship, public prayer, taking communion. But what are our personal and family practices which remain constant when feelings and understanding come and go?
A sense deeper than feeling
This has something to do with managing our energy, as Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz unpack in The Power of Full Engagement:
"Rituals provide a stable framework in which creative breakthroughs often occur. They can also open up time for recovery and renewal, when relationships can be deepened and spiritual reflection becomes possible. The limitations of conscious will and discipline are rooted in the fact that every demand on our self-control—from deciding what we eat to managing frustration, from building an exercise regimen to persisting at a difficult task—all draw on the same easily depleted reservoir of energy."
I see Christians exerting so much energy managing their doubt and persevering through the darkness of God's distance. But this kind of approach takes self control, a resource which we have in limited supply and which could be better used in other ways. Instead, rituals and regular rhythms of individual and family life—whether it's regular sabbath practices, times of prayer throughout our days, regular commitments to acts of service—can help make our faith more of a doing and less of a feeling or thinking. There is still room for occasional emotional highs and moments of intellectual clarity but they come without being forced. And when they do, they're seen as a blessing, not a requirement.
If you watched me in the course of my ministry it would be easy to think that I always feel God's presence or I always feel sure of what I believe. I don't.
If you watched me in the course of my ministry it would be easy to think that I always feel God's presence or I always feel sure of what I believe. I don't. But after years of frustration from wanting to feel more or know more, I have chosen to give up the constant monitoring of the "close to/far from God" spectrum and the "doubt/belief" gauge. Instead, I just pray at the beginning of meetings and sing the doxology at the end of services because that's just what we do.
I don't do those things because I always believe them or because I always feel them. I do them because I trust with a belief deeper than thought and a sense deeper than feeling that they are true, even though my feelings and understanding come and go.
