For a Feeling

I mentioned in this column last November my fascination of how much time and money we spend on sports for the main purpose of feeling something specific. That's really why we pour so much into sports - so that we will feel something. For most of us, that's our main takeaway from sports. In that article, I also mentioned why I didn't think that was necessarily a bad thing. We give sports so much because we want to feel something specific.

The same thing is generally true about most of life. We work in our jobs to feel something (security, success, worth, significance). We get married because we want to feel something (loved, safe, known). We watch movies, go on vacation, and have hobbies to feel something. People abuse drugs to feel something ... or to feel nothing. We choose our politics because of how we want to feel (and this year, "feel" is part of a prominent campaign slogan). We have oomph in our activities because we so strongly demand to feel something specific.

Our faith activities, no matter how noble we want to be, are often in pursuit of a feeling just as much. Gathering together on a Sunday morning, being in a Bible study, having Quiet Time (or not having Quiet Time), participating in (or arguing about) music, volunteering with the kids, bringing a crib to a family in need, sewing dresses for orphans ... let's face it ... we do these things at least in part in order to feel something in particular. Perhaps we want to feel something noble (obedient, faithful, helpful, closeness to God, purification after confessing sin) or perhaps we want to feel something a little more self-centered (significance, heroism, superiority, self-righteous), but we definitely look forward to this activity producing that feeling.

Feelings are a big motivator in every aspect of our lives, including how we live out our faith. This is true whether we want to admit it or not.

It's true (I most firmly believe), and furthermore, I believe it's unavoidable. It's not even necessarily wrong.

If I'm right that this is unavoidable, rather than deny it, let's embrace it. You can confess it with me, "Much of my motivation to do anything is so that I will feel something in particular." Denying this entraps us in a loop of continually denying what is universally true, and as long as we're in this loop, we have trouble making real progress.

Let's admit that we're moving mountains in order to feel something, stop long enough to evaluate what feelings we're chasing, and then assess which of those feelings are futile to chase. Or even which of those feelings are counterproductive and even harmful to chase. What feelings, then, should I be chasing instead? What do I need to do to chase those feelings? Am I willing for God to be the only truly fulfillment of the feelings He wants me to have?

In the West, we fancy ourselves thinking, rational beings, motivated by what's smart and logical. (That's how we want to feel, anyway.) However, we want to feel! How we spend money proves it. Even "scientific" shows on TV are produced in a way to make the audience feel something. Don't fancy yourself more like Spock than you truly are. Embrace that you're motivated by chasing feelings, and then work on which feelings you want to pursue.

Overwhelmed!

The images from Japan are overwhelming. Not only the largest earthquake in an earthquake prone country, not only thirty foot walls of water washing in, then washing out, entire neighborhoods, but living on the verge of a catastrophic nuclear disaster. I watched one video clip showing house after house being picked up and carried away like they were made of Styrofoam, and the only sound was that of dozens of people wailing as they watched their material lives float away and then crumble to bits.

It's so overwhelming. It's too much to see, too much to fathom, too much to feel adequately. I can't comprehend four nuclear reactors each in crisis. I can't imagine entire neighborhoods gone in seconds. I can't (and don't want to) envision thousands of casualties, let alone the likely hundreds of thousands. The years it will take to recover are too complex to consider. I feel badly for the victims, but I also feel badly because I can't feel badly enough. What I'm able to feel is far too small compared to what needs to be felt.

My tendency, like so many, is to shut myself off emotionally. Since I can't feel it adequately, my first reaction is to feel nothing. Then I won't feel so inadequate. I know there have been many tragedies of this scale in the past, and there will be more. And that thought makes me shut down all the more, because if just one of these overwhelms me, dozens of them absolutely bury me.

Part of the reason we feel overwhelmed is because we want to be adequate for whatever faces us. We want to have adequate solutions to the problems that arise. We want to provide adequate help - at least enough to make a real difference. We want to be adequate emotionally, that we can feel enough for the magnitude of the tragedies we face. And when we don't feel adequate, we feel overwhelmed. We feel the devastation of the tragedy - and on top of that, we feel the inadequacies - and on top of that, we feel overwhelmed.

But, does God ask us to be adequate? Does He expect us to provide all the adequate solutions? Does He expect us to provide adequate help to make things better? Does He expect us to have adequate enough feelings to match the magnitude of the situation? Or perhaps He expects to just do a little token something so that we can feel like we've done something?

God does not put on us the responsibility to be adequate for monumental tragedy. He does not call us to fix world catastrophes. What He does ask of us is to give ourselves to Him, especially when life situations are too big, especially when we are inadequate. He even asks us to give Him our inadequacies themselves. There are problems He allows that are bigger than we are, and in them, He wants us to give ourselves entirely to Him. So, when we pray and when we find ways to help, our goal should be to give ourselves to Him, not to feel like we've done something, or to presume that we're adequate to solve it.

We should give all of ourselves. We should pray fervently, give generously, and even help selflessly. But not in an effort to feel adequate or to escape being overwhelmed. We pray, give, and help as an act of giving our inadequate selves to the God who is completely, overwhelmingly adequate.