OUR FEELINGS

Have you ever had your “feelings” hurt or have someone tell you that you hurt their feelings? Do some people “get on your nerves”?

How do you respond when someone asks, “How are you feeling?” They rarely want to know, it is usually just an idiomatic greeting.

When we want to feel something physically, we can touch it. However, feelings can also occur in a metaphorical sense, as for example when, “all Egypt began to feel the famine.” (Genesis 41.55. The Israelites also knew what it felt like to be a foreigner (Exodus 23.9). 

In Waco, Texas, it would not be unusual to hear “All Baylor was sad that the Bears had lost another game.” There is some sense of “feeling” about the loss that the permeates the community with sadness (unless people are graduates of A&M or Texas).

The notion of “feelings’ is commonly reported in the Scriptures. For example, married couples were cautioned about feelings of jealousy between them (Numbers 5.14) and people could feel the pain of their own bodies (Job 14.22). God saw that Leah was unloved, so he enabled her to have children. Although Jacob seemed not to notice her feelings, Leah did and after the third child she said, “Surely this time my husband will feel affection for me, since I have given him three sons!” (Genesis 29.l34)

Even a feeling of security can be misleading (Proverbs 14.16; Isaiah 32.9; Daniel 8.25, 11.24; Amos 5.1; Zechariah 1.15), and David did not want the shame of his enemies gloating over him (Psalm 25.2).

Cultures respond to the feelings of shame in different ways. The Amish practice “shunning” whereby those who disobey a cultural rule will feel the weight of their behavior.

One physical response to the feeling of shame is to “blush.” In Ezra 9.6 we read, “O my God, I am utterly ashamed; I blush to lift up my face to you. For our sins are piled higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached to the heavens.”

When people don’t even know how to blush it is disgusting to the Lord: “Are they ashamed of their disgusting actions? Not at all—they don’t even know how to blush! Therefore, they will lie among the slaughtered. They will be brought down when I punish them,” says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 6.15)

When we “feel” something it is revealed in our actions and words. If I say, “I feel uncomfortable about doing that,” I mean that there is probably something wrong about it. On the other hand, we can “feel” good about something as well: “That song makes me feel happy,” or “I feel like this is going to be a wonderful day.” We could say that we are on “cloud nine” (not ten or eight for some reason) or we are “over the moon” and “walking on air.”

When we have feelings of anger and frustration we may become “hot under the collar,” “see red,” or “hit the roof.”

Feelings of fear may produce “butterflies in your stomach,” (not moths or hummingbirds) and you will be on “pins and needles” (not nails and fishhooks). 

Idioms like these add “color” to our speech and are interpreted metaphorically. Jesus, however, did literally feel the pain of his suffering, and before his departure from this earth he told the disciples, “In a little while you won’t see me anymore. But a little while after that, you will see me again.” (John 16.16) This would make them “weep and mourn over what is going to happen to me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy.” (John 16.20)

I remember the verse God gave me in Lae, Papua New Guinea, when Joice was in labor with Karol: “Weeping may endure for a night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 39.5) I had intense feelings at both ends of an emotional experience.

In July 1953, C.S. Lewis wrote to Mary Van Deusen: “It is a great joy to be able to “feel” God’s love as a reality, and one must give thanks for it and use it. But you must be prepared for the feeling dying away again, for feelings are by nature impermanent. The great thing is to continue to believe when the feeling is absent: and these periods do quite as much for one as those when the feeling is present” (in his collected letters, volume 3, pp.350-351).

Regarding our feelings, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4.15)

God gives us our feelings, and we look to the Holy spirit to help us interpret them.

Karl Franklin