Randall J. Vandermey's God Talk
The prioritization of feeling over thinking in our culture today can be attributed, at least in part, to the shift in language from I think to I feel like. In many cases, I feel like has replaced I think. “I feel like penguins live on the North Pole.” “I feel like we went to Chick-Fil-A last week.” “I feel like that’s wrong.” “I feel like that lamp is too dim.” These are all statements that I could hear in a conversation with my peers this weekend. “Feeling” that something isn’t right allows you to not confront another person regarding their life choices and gives the feeler an exemption from thinking. Arrogantly, we have left thought behind for the sake of feeling good about ourselves.
Feeling is a personal thing and can be hard to describe because it involves one’s personal experience and nervous system. Signals are sent to the brain …show more content…
through neural pathways in order for the brain to respond in an appropriate manner. Neurons do not use words or sentences to relay sensory information to and from the brain, so by feeling like X, the feeler gets a free pass on explaining his or her stance on an issue and avoids the pursuit of truth through gaining competence on the subject at hand. By using the words feel like instead of think, we alienate ourselves to our own experience, as opposed to pursuing what is true. Ultimately, prioritizing our feelings over expressed thoughts and our own pursuit of truth is both prideful and negligent. I have encountered this kind of reasoning in conversations with my little brother Cyrus. Occasionally, he will confuse his opinion for fact and use his feelings to justify that opinion. When I try to help him see that he is mistaking his opinion for fact, he tells me that I don’t know how he feels and that I am wrong, though I am trying to provide concrete evidence in pursuit of truth. When Cyrus cites feelings or experiences instead of facts, it halts debates and arguments in their tracks. Refuting Cyrus’ feelings with logic then implies that he didn’t have the experience or invalidates his experience.
When we become entrenched in a feeling relationship with God, we can stray from His Word, through which He has imparted knowledge of Himself to us.
Through His Word we can know our God and have thoughts about who He is. In a thoughtful desire to pursue truth there becomes a right and a wrong way of thinking about God, allowing us to discern heresy from sound theology. In his book God Talk, Randall J. VanderMey states that “close attention to Christian language— its possibilities as well as its poverties—can open the mind, reawaken wonder and strengthen faith” (VanderMey 16). It is important that we examine how prioritizing feelings over thoughts has affected our relationships with God. Instead of thinking thoughts about God and desiring to have knowledge about God, we prioritize feeling His presence and when we don’t feel His presence, we doubt His omnipresence. However, when we seek out truth about who God is—the thoughts about God that are written for us in Scripture— these thoughts about God become our thoughts, which in turn can produce feelings. How much more deep and rewarding is the feeling that we can attribute to
truth!
This language of justification through feeling can corrupt our understanding of faith.
By relying on feelings in our relationship with God, we become complacent, expecting Him to “show up,” relying on an outside stimulus to “stir up” a reaction or feeling in order to assure us that God is actively speaking to us. However, true faith requires action. When we have concrete thoughts about God based on who He has revealed himself to be in His word, we have the opportunity to trust something outside of ourselves over a reactionary feeling from within. Without acting on a set of beliefs, they remain just that—beliefs. It is not until we trust those thoughts enough to step out into action that we can have true faith.
Taking action according to thoughts that have been expressed about God complements the emotions we feel and provides us with a more holistic and tangible faith. God did not create us strictly to be thinking beings but feeling beings as well. To say that we must stop feeling would also suppress an aspect of the human experience. Emotions and feelings enhance the human experience and help us understand God in fresh ways. In fact, to say that we can only come to know God through thought would be limiting our God to our intellect. The beauty of our all-powerful yet loving God is that not only can we know about our God, but also we can experience His presence in a tangible feeling through the Holy Spirit.
Our feelings are reactions to what we encounter in our daily lives and they are justified in and of themselves. However, in an effort to pursue truth to the uttermost, we must get to the thoughts behind the feelings and emotions. Each of us feels a certain way about a certain stimulus because of the framework of our worldview and we must diligently examine that framework in order to continually pursue truth.
Feeling is a personal thing and can be hard to describe because it involves one’s personal experience and nervous system. Signals are sent to the brain …show more content…
through neural pathways in order for the brain to respond in an appropriate manner. Neurons do not use words or sentences to relay sensory information to and from the brain, so by feeling like X, the feeler gets a free pass on explaining his or her stance on an issue and avoids the pursuit of truth through gaining competence on the subject at hand. By using the words feel like instead of think, we alienate ourselves to our own experience, as opposed to pursuing what is true. Ultimately, prioritizing our feelings over expressed thoughts and our own pursuit of truth is both prideful and negligent. I have encountered this kind of reasoning in conversations with my little brother Cyrus. Occasionally, he will confuse his opinion for fact and use his feelings to justify that opinion. When I try to help him see that he is mistaking his opinion for fact, he tells me that I don’t know how he feels and that I am wrong, though I am trying to provide concrete evidence in pursuit of truth. When Cyrus cites feelings or experiences instead of facts, it halts debates and arguments in their tracks. Refuting Cyrus’ feelings with logic then implies that he didn’t have the experience or invalidates his experience.
When we become entrenched in a feeling relationship with God, we can stray from His Word, through which He has imparted knowledge of Himself to us.
Through His Word we can know our God and have thoughts about who He is. In a thoughtful desire to pursue truth there becomes a right and a wrong way of thinking about God, allowing us to discern heresy from sound theology. In his book God Talk, Randall J. VanderMey states that “close attention to Christian language— its possibilities as well as its poverties—can open the mind, reawaken wonder and strengthen faith” (VanderMey 16). It is important that we examine how prioritizing feelings over thoughts has affected our relationships with God. Instead of thinking thoughts about God and desiring to have knowledge about God, we prioritize feeling His presence and when we don’t feel His presence, we doubt His omnipresence. However, when we seek out truth about who God is—the thoughts about God that are written for us in Scripture— these thoughts about God become our thoughts, which in turn can produce feelings. How much more deep and rewarding is the feeling that we can attribute to
truth!
This language of justification through feeling can corrupt our understanding of faith.
By relying on feelings in our relationship with God, we become complacent, expecting Him to “show up,” relying on an outside stimulus to “stir up” a reaction or feeling in order to assure us that God is actively speaking to us. However, true faith requires action. When we have concrete thoughts about God based on who He has revealed himself to be in His word, we have the opportunity to trust something outside of ourselves over a reactionary feeling from within. Without acting on a set of beliefs, they remain just that—beliefs. It is not until we trust those thoughts enough to step out into action that we can have true faith.
Taking action according to thoughts that have been expressed about God complements the emotions we feel and provides us with a more holistic and tangible faith. God did not create us strictly to be thinking beings but feeling beings as well. To say that we must stop feeling would also suppress an aspect of the human experience. Emotions and feelings enhance the human experience and help us understand God in fresh ways. In fact, to say that we can only come to know God through thought would be limiting our God to our intellect. The beauty of our all-powerful yet loving God is that not only can we know about our God, but also we can experience His presence in a tangible feeling through the Holy Spirit.
Our feelings are reactions to what we encounter in our daily lives and they are justified in and of themselves. However, in an effort to pursue truth to the uttermost, we must get to the thoughts behind the feelings and emotions. Each of us feels a certain way about a certain stimulus because of the framework of our worldview and we must diligently examine that framework in order to continually pursue truth.