When we see through our feelings. . .

Though I am hardly the first to say it, it is clear that we have lost our ability to laugh at ourselves, to take important things seriously, and to take unimportant things (like self) not so seriously.  It has been documented in too many different ways to ignore.  The whole existence of satire humor such as the Babylon Bee and the Onion is a call to take a break, take a chill pill, and to relax.  Nobody needs this more than Christians who are prone to depression and despair as they look at the state of the world and the state of Christianity today.  We are gravely tempted to mirror the way the world operates among things that offend -- to have hurt feelings, to be a victim, and to decry how meanly or insensitively we were treated.  But that does nothing except exacerbate our feelings of depression and despair and prevents us from remembering that God is God and we are not.

The first mark of the progressive agenda is to pay too much attention to feelings.  Indeed, the whole GLBTQ+, gender identity, cancel culture, rewrite history, sanitize the public square, and label humans as enemies of nature agenda is driven more by feelings than anything else.  The sexual revolution is the result of the if it feels good do it generation.  Gender identity says the body cannot define and is not to be trusted in the pursuit of identity.  Cancel culture and history revision is done precisely because facts get in the way of feelings or offend those feelings or must be altered because of their potential to offend.  Sanitizing the public square, providing safe space for university students, and the very label of hate speech is all about feelings and not much about a sense of humor or even common sense.  Making humanity an enemy of nature is taking an offense to the point of absurdity.

Our feelings are gifts from God but when they become the preeminent things that identify us and the criteria by which we judge everything else, those feelings become a prison.  They hold us captive to something not objectively truth or real apart from the truth or reality we give to them.  In the Church it is a sad and regrettable truth that we reject what God says because we find what God says offensive -- especially with regard to sex.  That cannot be what God says because I either do not like what it says or because what it says hurts or offends me.  In the congregation, how many people leave because of feelings hurt by pastors who are claimed to be insensitive to them and their needs or the failure of people to recognize, appreciate, or acknowledge them?  How many Christians walk out the door of the congregation because they did not feel welcomed, accepted, or esteemed by those in the pews with them?  At the same time, people will remain in congregations that preach and teach unfaithfully and even heresy because they do feel welcomed, accepted, or esteemed?  The problem here is not if this is God pleasing but if this serves us well as Christian people.

Much of this is because we have learned to take very seriously our feelings and less seriously the objective truth and voice of God speaking through His Word.  We listen more to the voices inside us (another name for feelings) than we do God's voice and then we complain because God appears to ignore us or remain silent in the face of our desires.  It is sort of like that old Babylon Bee post which shows a man sitting at a table with a Bible in front of him while complaining that God is not speaking to him.  If people are saying something with which we disagree, does that mean that they are not speaking or that their speaking is filled with hate or offensive?  

Politics and community have also been profoundly impacted by our failure to laugh at ourselves and our insistence upon trusting our feelings as the most trustworthy and authentic truths and voices of all.  Consider the disdain with which the political parties hold one another, elected officials hold other elected officials, and we hold those who disagree with us.  How do we work together for common good when we hold each other in such deep derision?   

I certainly take most seriously what God says and, although I do not always take it, I well recall the advice given me as a young pastor not to take myself too seriously but to take the office I hold and the means of grace as the most sacred things of all.  So, if you have read this, don't be so quick to feel offended, to complain that you are not appreciated or taken seriously, or to lament that you are not fully appreciated.  If you are a Christian, you are in the company of Christ who was Himself the subject of much misunderstanding.  At the same time, these things do not last but you will.  Because Christ has made you His own in baptism, fed and nourished you upon His Word and Sacraments, and will not surrender you to the world in which you live or the devil who roars about like a lion seeking someone to devour, you are in good hands.