What is real?

The common fallacy of gender theory, critical race theory, and sexual preference theory is that your feelings and experiences are the most real things of all.  So for gender theory, biology must always take second place to the perception or feelings of the person in that body -- even when they are at odds.  And for critical race theory, the perception of racism and how one perceives their own experiences become the unassailable truth that cannot be questioned.  Then sexual preference takes the same road in making preference the highest truth of all and that desire which dare not be denied.  You can add into this many of the common issues today -- from climate change to the way we view history.  Facts don't matter.  What is the most and ultimate reality is how we experience and feel something.

We live in a culture held captive by our feelings.  Yet we cannot do much about the feelings of others.  To deny them or challenge them is an ism of some kind or another -- and one not to be tolerated.  Facts have little impact on our feelings especially when feelings and perception are granted a higher value.  There is nothing that can challenge or question our feelings or the way we interpret or see our experiences.  But we lie to our feelings and our feelings lie to us all the time.  We claim that we are offended when the reality is that we look for ways to justify our anger, bitterness, and upset -- and give us the opportunity and the reason to injure others in response.

Christians are not immune from this tyranny of feelings and the lens of our experiences.  When faced with the choice between what God says and we want, we will choose what we want all the time.  So Christians avoid talking about sin and redemption and instead talk about the God who inspires and affords us the dreams to which we aspire.  The fact that Christians overall divorce at a rate close to non-Christian couples tells us something about the role of feelings and how we interpret our experiences.  Our feelings win out every time over loyalty and commitment -- and the goal of our feelings is happiness.  If our spouse or our children of our job or anything else stands in the way of feelings of happiness, they are the first of our realities to go.  We have taken literally Shakespeare's to thine own self be true.  I am not sure we understand what that means but it is a popular ideal that true to self, to feelings, to the way we view our experiences, and to our happiness is the most important truth of all.

The Christian, however, understands that there is a judge of feelings, there are values higher than happiness, and there is a reality more real than the way we view and interpret our experiences.  We stand under the conviction of the Law which knows our hearts better than we do and under the hope of the Gospel in which our hearts are reborn for the freedom of obedience to the Lord.  In confession we admit that it is not simply the things outside of us that are wrong but the desires and wills and feelings within.  They too stand under the bar of God's judgment and His justice.  But God gives us not what we deserve.  He gives us the blessing of mercy and forgiveness.  We must do more than apologize for our feelings, we must confess them and deliver them over to the mercy of God to see what is more real than our feelings and more profound than our personal experience.

Our prayer is not that our feelings may win or we trust our experiences most of all but that both come under God's judgment and His grace by the power of the Holy Spirit.  I think of how this is expressed in the Collect for Easter 5:

O God, You make the minds of Your faithful to be of one will. Grant that we may love what You have commanded and desire what You promise, that among the many changes of this world our hearts may be fixed where true joys are found; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Our feelings are neither the domain of our joy nor are they the reliable conveyors of that joy.  Only the Lord and only the grace of God can rescue us from the tyranny of our feelings and the blindness of experience.  The most real things of all are not within us or even around us.  This world is a reality that is passing away.  We are dust and unto dust we shall return.  But God is preparing a new heavens and a new earth and raising us up from the dust of death that we may dwell in Him and with Him without the impediment of sin, evil, death, and change to corrupt us again.  Our prayer is not to satisfy our feelings but to love what God has commanded and to desire what He has promised for here is the true joy that our longing hearts desire and here alone.

The feelings that entrap us are hardly more than sentiment.  The love that God has revealed through His Son is not sentiment but the love that rescues the unworthy and undeserving at the greatest of cost and yet willing to bear it all -- for you and for me.