These meditations are part of continuing reflection on my part on the experiential side of being a Christian. I am far from having completely worked this part of my life out. I may even come back and expand on it later. But I do want to put my thoughts out there for the benefit of others.
Our emotions/affections/feelings are part of a whole-person response to the gospel. Our emotions are part of us and therefore any whole-person response to Christ ought to include the emotions. Put another way, responding to Christ should involve our whole person: mind, affections, will, and action. An emotional response to God shouldn’t be the goal in and of itself. The goal is that whole-person response which includes the emotions.
While our goal is to respond to the gospel fully, there is always going to be a gap between an ideal response and our response. A positive response is a grace-enabled response, but we have to trust God in Christ to cover the gap between what is ideal and what is real. God covering the gap, after all, is the story of the gospel. Ideally, perfect obedience and faith are the response to the gospel, but where we fail, Jesus covers us. Likewise, perfect joy and peace are the ideal response to the gospel. Perhaps we should be willing to trust Jesus to cover that gap too.
Emotional responses to God are not completely under our control. While we can’t and shouldn’t try to manufacture a particular emotional response, we should cultivate our affections toward God. This means that even though we have different dispositions and experiences (which are outside of our control), we have a responsibility to do things which are conducive to a healthy emotional response to God.
While any healthy conversion and spiritual life should have an emotional component, since these responses are not completely under our control, we probably shouldn’t try to prescribe a particular emotional experience as some kind of requirement for evidence of salvation (like some Pentecostals do with speaking in tongues).
A few things make this complicated. These complicating factors include temperament (some people are very emotional and others are more restrained) and experience (e.g., healthy emotional responses might come more easily to some than others; experiences of grief and calamity come into play; some people react to overly-emotional Christians by being overly cautious about expressing emotion).
There is also the fact that our emotions change over time. C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity (pp. 108-111), says the following, which probably applies also to our religious feelings (I’ll quote it at length because I find it so helpful):
Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending ‘They lived happily ever after’ is taken to mean ‘They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,’ then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from ‘being in love’ — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. it is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.
… In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober merest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and become at good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.
This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.
Finally, Christians who love the Lord often get an idea in their head, an ideal, and then apply it to themselves and others in a way that is well-intended, but sometimes is based on an overly simplistic view of the world. I have heard some people criticize people for coming to church and when they are asked, “How are you?” they answer “fine” when they are not fine. The ideal is that we would be honest and close enough to speak the truth if someone asks. However, this might be an overly simplistic reading of the situation. Often times people ask “How are you?” and it is not a request for information but a form of social interaction that is perfectly normal. I would hate for people who are going through difficult times to feel guilty as if they are lying to someone when in reality their response of “fine” might be a perfectly normal response in that social situation. Of course, I hope they will find someone in church to confide in if they need help, just like I hope people will take them aside and ask them how they are doing in a way that moves beyond social niceties. But I tend to be skeptical about overly simplistic views of what “ought” to be the case. In short, our lack of understanding about ourselves and what it means to be human can sometimes lead us to confuse nature with an unspiritual response.
Similarly, I hate for faithful Christians to feel guilty if they are not feeling like they think they “ought” to feel based on some ideal that doesn’t take into account our real experiences in the world. If we are giving ourselves to God, body, soul, emotions, and all, I don’t think we should feel guilty about not feeling a certain way. We must always seek the Lord–that is both required of us and within our control–but not some particular experience of him.
As far as I am concerned, I see plenty of room to grow in my emotional experience of God. I am reserved by temperament and experience. I am hesitant about the emotions because I have known many Christians who are emotionally driven. I also have had some very strong emotions, especially in my youth, and I haven’t always been good at managing them. And then, there is also the fact of suffering that we’ve experienced. These are some reasons based in temperament and experience that have led me to be more emotionally reserved, and as a result, I see room for me to grow in this area. I’m going to try to grow in being more open and willing to have emotional responses to God. I’m going to meditate on what God has done for me and who he is to continue to cultivate my heart’s emotional responses to God. But I’m not going to feel bad if I don’t respond like my neighbor does. I’ll trust the grace of God in Jesus to cover my lack of full emotion just like he covers my lack of perfect faith and obedience.
Earthen Vessel 