Uncontrolled Feelings - "Hard Keepers"
I John 4:9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
Even God himself shows love, He doesn't keep off to the side, projecting some emotional tide in our general direction. God is love, the Bible says, and God defines love in how He behaves, by sending His Son to pay our debts and build a bridge for us to the Kingdom.
What a contrast, to what most human beings think of as love. We think that marriage should be built on love, alright, and yet we define that as an emotional warmth. Following that reasoning, it is no surprise to see people 'falling out of love' as fast as they fall into it, divorcing at almost the same rate at which they marry. It strikes me that our western culture has the hardest time to comprehend love as a course of behavior, because we have not been in the habit of arranging marriages for centuries. While I am not about turning marriage on its cultural head in that way, I can certainly appreciate that in cultures that practiced arranged marriages, there was greater opportunity to "grow in love"...by caring for each other before the affecion was necessarily in place.
Ephesians 4:19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
For more context, it helps to read verses 17-19: This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
A good old-fashioned word, 'lasciviousness', it means living for the sake of feelings, and in pursuit of feelings, or particularly, the "highs." While a certain generation of people (I have in mind, as an example, the 1960s and 1970s) sought to live for what felt good they were living in a horrible bondage of lusts, and calling it, 'freedom.' Some have learned to know better; many did not.
We are predisposed, since the disaster in Eden's garden, to follow our feelings. "Do what feels good" leads to addictions of all kinds, and all their exploitative consequences, including disease, pornography, disintegration of family structure and society with it.
If God's loving us were about His emotionality, if He needed to feel our love before deciding we deserved salvation, He probably would not have sent Jesus. Try to imagine knowing all about all in the world, as God does, and you can imagine being overwhelmed on a mind-numbing scale.
But we have allowed feelings to numb our minds, to the extent that our culture is filthy and greed-based, building lives and measuring success on the acquistion of position, possessions, and power. And we spend other people, to get it, whether it is those who work in sweatshops for a few pennies, or those who are stripped of dignity for our guilty entertainment in dirty movies and magazines.
Rule Your Emotions - "I Just Don't Feel It"
John 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the ruth shall make you free.
Truth, no matter what some philosophers want to make of it, is truth - it is what (and who) it is, a non-negotiable point of reference. Truth is at once a comfort, and an obstacle, because it is of black-and-white character, while the world and its lies create a buffering fog of gray areas.
My dad used to tell me little bits of his experience flying reconnaissance missions over Vietnam. Trying to make me appreciate the sensation of vertigo as he experienced during take-off on night flights, Dad told me how implicitly pilots must trust their gauges when their senses said something completely "real" but just as completely untrue.
Living in this world is alot like being a pilot in dark or heavy fog. If we imbibe the Word of God and cling to its lifeline, the Truth will see us through. But if curcumstances woo us to set aside the Truth and follow our feelings, then we are in true peril, whether we "feel it", or not.
No Excuse
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Both of these passages show us the way to Truth - that God's love is not just what He does, it is first who His is. Go back to the Garden of Eden, and hear God the Father giving Adam and Eve the choice, to trust and obery, or disobey and die (Gen 2:17). After their disobedience, their rejection of truth in favor of deceptive feelings, hear God promising a savior to come, in time, and mend all brokenness (Gen 2:16). "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
The promise of salvation, the pledge of God's self-sacrificing charity, is in the "seed." This is the literal male sperm, which in human reproduction achieves the conception of a child. No woman produces seed, not Eve, nor the virgin Mary, nor any other woman. What God promised, then, was that part of His own being would enter Creation through a surrogate womb, and this Son of Man, the Author of life, would untimately defeat the serpent, and sin, and death, to bring eternal life back.
God is the giver of life, the sustainer, the redeemer, and the meaning of life. At every wrong turn we take, God is there with a way back. God is truth, and He is love, and that is how some of the most profligate lives have been washed clean.
God's love, like His truth, either draws people in, by illuminating and comforting, or drives them away, because His love exposes so starkly the contrasts in hearts that are bent on rebellion. In any case, the love of God is radiating upon the whole world. There is no excuse for any person to claim ignorance of the love of God. Sometimes it is a matter of perspective, yes...but perspective is the easiest thing to change.
A Religious Hypocrite - The Beginning of God
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.
We all know this, about ourselves. From the time we are able to pluck beautiful wildflowers from a summer meadow, to make a daisy chain or a bouquet, we are reacting in appreciation to the marks of majesty surrounding us. It is intuitive, before we ever know the meaning of 'intuition,' that true beauty is born of good, and this leads us onward to seek love. Something inside the soul, where the image of God resides, tells us that love is that bottomless source of beauty and good, that will satisfy. I think this is why younger children are more easily excited by simple things. It is also why so many famous artists lived lives of struggle and despair, having given up love, to pursue a hollowed beauty.
We have not looked (in these one-sided discussions) at the idea of 'religion' itself. I think it is necessary now to be discrete with the definitions of 'religion', which is an attitude towards God, and 'relationship', which is simply, knowing God.
Religion is the pursuit of God through man's ideas of what may apprehend and appease Him. In a truly twisted way, the manmade religions of this owrld result not in the finding of God, but in the state we see today: groups of people hating and reviling each other as they compare the philosophies and methods they have devised. Religious people end up self-absorbed, self-conscious, and self-centered. It may not always appear so, but this is the state of things with people whose hearts are fired by doubt and filled with the hope of finding a "more inclusive" way.
Relationship, on the other hand, is man inviting God in. God is never lost, as we are, He merely waits to be asked in. Then, His Holy Spirit pervades, revives, restores, and renews. We find ourselves equipped to love others, friends or foes alike, and directed unerringly to behave towards others as we would like them to behave, whether or not they do. Love springing from relationship is joy amid the tribulation, plenty in the midst of privation. It does not have to be manufactured, or "put on." But love that is orchestrateed through religious routine, is never complete, and is always founded on doubt: have I done enough? have I tried hard enough? have I been good enough? Religion springs from fear; relationship rises from faith. This is why the scripture quoted by the apostle James states that "true religion is the care of widows and orphans." Meeting the needs of those who cannot do anything for you in return, and doing so from a position of gratitude to God that He has so loved and equipped you, is bona fide religion...because it is grounded in relationship.
The seeker who tires of chasing God through ritual and deed, can "find Him" at last by a very different approach, by simply capitulating with the whole heart. Here am I, and nothing I do seems to be enough. I need your mercy, because I could never earn your favor.
That is reaching the end of the human rope....and at the end of that, the beginning of God.
Mark 16:18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
This verse if part of what the risen Christ foretold for believers, before His ascension. It is a glorious verse, for it deals with God's perfect work being done, with evil being confounded, in the aftermath of the Crucifixion, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus. "With God all things are possible," from the saving of a rich man to the handling of deadly serpents without harm.
The Church must not settle at claiming the love of God and preaching the love of God. The Church must understand that the love of God is the power of God. God's love, which He speaks well of (commendeth) toward us, is the power that conquered sin, that defeated death by dying and coming to life again. That is the same power wanting to be unleashed to work through Christians everywhere.
Imagine, what could happen, if we just took up the yoke of Christ exclusively, and lived the love of God wide open....
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