Jim's Primeval Journey: Feelings

I’m pretty much a feelings-focused guy. When I think about a topic, whether big or little, my feelings dominate. Let me say it another way: the topics I think about are those that I feel the strongest about. These days I’m stuck on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m sick over it. But it goes for personal things too, like my job. I got behind during a particularly crazy March and April, and until I’m caught up, all my job-thoughts revolve like satellites around my job-feelings. It feels lousy to be behind.

But the best way for you to get a glimpse of how feelings-driven I am, is to look at these Primeval Journey reflections. I am processing my baggage, and my baggage is heavy with feelings: curiosity, romance, guilt, hate, the freak-out.

God has feelings. “And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Gen 6: 6-7). His feelings are mentioned 3 times: “was sorry…grieved him to his heart…I am sorry I have made them.”

This is God. This is weird for me. Other aspects of God’s character are easier to grasp—OK, to believe. I get it that he is all-knowing and everywhere and all-powerful and perfectly holy. I don’t get it that he feels.

I think I know why I don’t get it. Because having felt things so strongly all my life, I don’t think I’ve ever had an untainted feeling. On my most God-loving, God-following, God-worshipping days, my feelings are tainted with self-centeredness and pride. Even when I’m thinking right (as right as I can), my feelings get twisted. Twisted around me. I can be thinking quite biblically about God’s goodness, but he only “feels” good to me when I’m feeling good about me (feeling cozy, comfortable, content). If I’m feeling bad about me, it’s like: “God, I know you are good, but could you please work your goodness a little more in my favor?”

I think one of the surprises waiting for us in the New Heaven and New Earth will be the sensation of pure feelings; righteous feelings; truly God-centered feelings instead of our always-a-little-bit-self-centered feelings.

But when God feels, he feels purely. Our struggle to accept the wrath of the flood (Gen 6-8) should make it obvious that there is a gap between his purity and our self-centeredness. We feel God was a little bit bad to react with a universal flood. But the flood was not God being bad; it was God being good. For me this is simply an article of faith. But I admit that my feelings haven’t caught up to my faith. That’s my point.

I feel things; God feels things. My feelings don’t line up with his feelings. For years I’ve prayed, “Lord let me see things as you see them.” Now I want to add: “Lord, let me feel things as you feel them.”