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“To define saving faith apart from feelings… is futile.” -John Piper
John Piper is a total trip and he and I are seldom in agreement, but I think he really gets a few things right. That quote is from a tiny clip of his speech at the T4G conference. I can’t link to it, but it’s a common theme with him, as you can see from some of his prior articles and blog posts such as,“The Problem with American ‘Christianity’,” in which he says, “In the last 200 years, Christianity in America has been distorted — or, to use a more serious word, ravaged — Christianity in America has been ravaged by the dominant teaching that decisions for God are more basic in defining a Christian than delight in God.”
Lord, all in good humor here, but you better check me for a fever or a head injury, because I seem to be in complete agreement with John Piper….
So what triggered this post was a whole lot of objections to that statement of Piper’s, “To define saving faith apart from feelings… is futile.” He goes on to explain that he is using “feelings” in the context of “affections.” He tries removing some of the feeling adjectives from the Bible, to try and demonstrate what faith without affections might look like. It is indeed, futile. You simply cannot have an emotionally detached, intellectual faith devoid of feelings.
So, I was really curious about the outrage and also apparently, a glutton for punishment, so I poured over the complaints and asked a few questions. The essence of the objection is that we can’t control our feelings. We don’t want to be accused of, “not having enough faith” because we aren’t “feeling it.”
This was my conclusion:
We do have a great deal of control over our feelings, but I think many Christians falsely learned that feelings are bad, deceitful, and can’t be trusted. Then people are shamed for having feelings that are actually right on, but contrary to the dominant narrative being sold.
I need to really object to this modern, cultural idea that we can’t control or change our feelings. I have just seen that false narrative sow so much complete destruction. Talk about robbing people of their power. You become nothing more than a powerless victim of your own feelings. You have no authority or control! You’re ruled by the whims of your own biology.
With all good grace and humor here, I am frequently an emotionally over wrought middle age woman prone to melancholy and anxiety, and I can control my feelings, at least 90% of the time. It’s a discipline, it takes practice. You have to learn how to take your thoughts into captivity. When I am at rest, abiding in His peace, it is way more doable than in times of stress, but it is totally doable. We are not slaves to our own emotions.
Absolutely no one, except perhaps God Himself, should ever tell you how to feel or force you to feel something that you don’t. That much is true. If your feelings have been yanked around by other people, taking control yourself is going to be much more challenging. It’s a discipline, a life skill, it takes some practice, but it totally can be done.
I’m not a fan of repressing our feelings, but rather expressing and resolving them. I think we should talk to God about what we are feeling. The Bible is full of very passionate people expressing their feelings. There are lamentations, anger, grief, defiance, praise, you name it, somebody in the Bible is going to be expressing it. That kind of intimacy with God is what helps us to build a relationship, containing real affection. Our faith is a love affair, not an intellectual exercise.
Piper says, “Christianity in America has been ravaged by the dominant teaching that decisions for God are more basic in defining a Christian than delight in God.”
Yeah, I sure hear that. I can’t tell you how many times I have been approached by people who clearly take no delight in God. In fact, many have even suggested that if you take delight in God you’re probably doing it wrong. God is all about being utterly miserable, donja know. If you feel good you’re probably in sin anyway.
Pffffttt. There just isn’t a raspberry big enough to counteract that nonsense.
Anyway, my heart goes out to many of those objecting, to the pain I see hidden behind some of those words, to the myriad of man made expectations within churchian culture that have left so many confused and disconnected from the Lord who has so much intense and passionate affection for us, for you.
Can you imagine if what defined us as Christians wasn’t our opinions or objections, but rather the sheer delight we have in God?
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See, there's this thing called biology... 
I also have mixed “feelings” about Piper. I don’t agree with His staunch Calvinism and all the cognitive dissonance it creates, but I absolutely love his teaching on desiring God.
And, by they way, It’s with the HEART one believes… (Rom.10:10). In fact, all our decisions are actually emotional ones. We justify it with logic afterward. What we should be throwing out is our mechanical, Spock-like Stoicism and embrace that the very essence of God is that He is LOVE. 🙂
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Amen to that, Mel! Piper can be an odd duck sometimes, but he really does get a few things right.
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Without faith it is impossible to please God.
Blessed are all they who put their trust in Him.
With the heart man believes, and with the mouth confession is made. He that hath and ear, let him hear.
Some people feel more than others. Some people think that feelings get in their way. But if someone told me they were worried about a certain numbness they were experiencing, I would tell them not to worry too much, that we should pray about it and trust in the Lord for the answer. Same way in the opposite direction if someone were too emotional all the time.
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Right? Another word for “faith” is “trust.” Trust requires an emotional component to it, because if your faith is exclusively reason based, then it isn’t really “faith” at all, it’s simply a rational decision. Nothing wrong with rational decisions, I’m just saying we can’t really call that faith or dependence or trust. Without faith it is impossible to please God. He wants our heart, our love and our emotions.
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“…imagine if what defined us as Christians wasn’t our opinions or objections, but rather the sheer delight we have in God.
I really appreciate and agree with this article. Well said!
From that proclamation, I base this observation. “Feelings” have been widely misunderstood and misinterpretations of Scripture about them abound. Faith indeed must be solely founded upon an inner conviction, beyond mere emotional response. That’s not to infer that emotional response cannot accompany such sincere conviction.
The problem is that we are to trust the conviction; it is stable, anchored to a fixed position. Emotions are contrarily prone to a constant state of flux. The true conviction of faith is far more than a hope. It is a gift from God, and once received, like God, it is never changing.
Of course, some elements of faith change as spiritual growth widens horizons and adds knowledge to our experience. But the central points of faith – the true God, the elementary principles of Christ – remain perpetually fixed, a sound foundation on which to build.
Faith without feelings may be philosophically astute, but produces a severe puritanical experience void of affection and empathy that godly feelings provide. So, yet another two-sided coin – faith and feelings are needed to experience the full blessings God intends.
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Oh, I really like what you said about faith being a gift from God. That’s another important piece of the puzzle. Our emotions can run wild and we can even loose our capacity for reason, but our faith is not exclusively in our own hands. I think that really trips some people up too, because we get this kind of works based idea that it’s all up to us to get it right.
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Yes! I totally agree with you. Emotions are all throughout the Bible. As another commenter pointed out, God is love after all.
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Amen! God is love, indeed. 🙂
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Right on times ten, or twenty, or let’s make it a hundred. I can’t imagine a sinner genuinely saved who can not respond in some way to his deliverance. l’ve seen some who just want to hug somebody! I like that. Hug a Jesus person with skin on. Okay some don’t want to be touched, so I’ll leave the reaction to Jesus. He’ll do it right.
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LOL! Great comment, Oneta. That’s it exactly. It kind of reminds me of the guy at the end of, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He’s singing, he’s hugging people, he doesn’t care, God is just that good and he’s alive to praise Him.
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My dad was Debbie Boone’s body guard for a day, so I know about feelings. Whoa, oh, oh, feelings. And I do believe that a relationship without emotion is not a real relationship – something’s wrong. Being a Christian is more than academic knowledge. Somewhere in the mix there should be shame, fear, amazement, sorrow, gratefulness, wonder, awe, and love. “Oh, How I Love Jesus” starts with “Oh” for a reason: Emotion. “Amazing Grace” is emotional. And who could deny “He Touched Me” relates to feelings? With the mind and with the heart, or there’s a missing part (yeah, I know what I did right there).
Piper’s Calvinism is irritating. There’s that. But he’s right on this, as you say. Good post.
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Yes, amen! Thanks, Anthony. We can’t sing all those great songs without some emotion. They’re actually love songs, after all. I think it was focus on the family I was listening to, but a guy was talking about psalms as being like country songs and it gave me a chuckle. We people can be just like that, lamenting to God about how even our truck left us. But that’s a good thing, that’s part of His design, we are a people with feelings. David is pouring out his heart.
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IB, after the last two items I wrote… this hit me like a ton of bricks.
I’ve heard too many times recently about following your heart. That’s a tough riddle to unravel when your heart has been heavily influenced by others who’ve manipulated. Still, God’s gift of Grace has often surprised me and Faith becomes the substance materializing into that which can only be accounted for by Jesus Christ.
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I think you need a heap of grace, you need to have the Lord pour His mercy and forgiveness into those parts of your heart that has been wounded. So that is exactly what I am going to pray for you, that you just soak in His goodness, just breathe in His perfect understanding and mercy. You aren’t just forgiven, He absolutely delights in you, just as you are.
I think we often get caught up in falsely believing we must choose to follow either our heart or our head, but God actually wants to purify both, to make them both work as good guides for us. They are not separate parts going in two different directions. Some people like to issue warnings like, “don’t follow your heart.” Well, my heart will take me right to the Lord every time. I absolutely should follow it because it always directs me to the Lord. The condition of our heart is kind of everything. We can’t just abandon our heart because we fear it is misleading or broken. God is in the business of healing, of making our hearts whole. 🙂
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Thx IB, I’m listening – even if the tears are streaming. Thank you, Sis.
I’ll take those prayers – Much love to you ❤
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So, in the ancient world, the “heart” was thought of (figuratively) as the seat of our thoughts, desires, affections, purposes, etc. It had more of the sense of “our inner being”, the totality of our thoughts and feelings, what makes us “who we are”. Raw emotions, if I am remembering correctly, were the province of the *stomach*. The heart is where feelings are processed (in ancient thought), incorporated into one’s self, and ultimately expressed in how we act them out. These are important distinctions to make when we approach the text. We need to understand “the heart” in the same way they understood it, if we are to make any sense of it.
It’s not just with the heart that one believes; according to Scripture, the heart is also wicked and deceitful. How do we make sense of both of those truths? If my heart is wicked and deceitful, how can I trust what it is telling me?
Our trust is not in “what is inside our hearts”, our trust is in Christ. Or put another way, our faith is not in the feelings that Christ generates within us, it is in the “object” of our feelings, Christ, in whom we put our trust. That too, is an important distinction.
I happen to be one of those people for whom faith and feelings are tightly intertwined, but I would stop short of saying that my feelings are “proof” of my faith, nor must feelings accompany faith to be *true* faith.
Love for God isn’t really a feeling, it’s a verb that is expressed through our *actions*, which of course can take the form of feelings and displays of emotion, but is certainly not limited to such, nor is it necessarily the most reliable barometer of our love. Feelings come and go, wax and wane, but Christ *remains* (regardless of how we feel about it).
This post is an example of what I call the “Your Faith Should Be More Like Mine” post. I know you have a hard time believing that faith unaccompanied by emotion is not somehow deficient, but bear in mind that it is God who apportions to each a measure of grace according to the riches of Christ – and who am I to question the portion He has given another?
For those whose faith is little more than a smoldering wick, who struggle to believe that grace is for THEM – to put another requirement for faith on them is simply cruel. It robs them of the assurance that the faith God has given them is *enough*. Sufficient.
The faith that struggles, the faith that intellectualizes, the faith that emotes – all are God-given and qualify as “saving faith”.
On that day, when we stand before our God in judgement, we will not point to the quality of our faith as our justification, we will point to Christ, our *actual* justification.
It’s not the strength of our faith (or the joy, or the logic or whatever) that saves us, it’s what we put our trust “in” that determines whether our faith is efficacious or not.
By the power of the Spirit, we nurture the faith we are given and we are content with it. It would be wrong then to covet the faith of another, as if to say, “This faith you gave me, God, is not good enough”.
Look, I get what you’re saying, I really do. I’m making this argument on behalf of tender consciences, those smoldering wicks that struggle to stay alit, for whom yet another condition to faith threatens to snuff out entirely.
We must be careful not to put conditions on faith where the Bible has not done so.
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Good comment. You’ve captured one aspect of the objection some people seem to have, that expecting them to feel something in faith puts an additional burden on them that is cruel. With all good humor here, that sounds very reasonable, very logical! It makes complete sense if you’ve ever been emotionally abused, had your feelings mocked, or been counted out because of someone else’s expectation that you just aren’t feeling it right. Also, of course we’re all different and some people are more demonstrative and passionate than others.
That said, do we really want to be redefining the nature of faith in order to protect someone’s wounding or to enable them to avoid ever addressing it? There are some very joyless, puritanical Christians walking around who approach Jesus with all the warmth of Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Is that desirable? Is that healthy? Is that genuine intimacy? Does it help our witness?
Piper says, “Christianity in America has been ravaged by the dominant teaching that decisions for God are more basic in defining a Christian than delight in God.” I have seen that, I have seen saving faith reduced to, “do you vote right, do you affirm all the right creeds, do you make all the right decisions for God?” People who just absolutely delight in the Lord are often cast out of these kind of systems. I remember a guy once who had a close encounter of the God kind and exclaimed “Holy crap!” The church eventually asked him to leave, they thought that was too blasphemous, too emotional, made people uncomfortable.
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“Do we really wanna redefine the nature of faith?”
Well, I guess that defends on how we’re currently defining it here. If we’re defining it as anything other than “a living, bold trust in God’s grace”, I will probably object.
Joy, as a fruit of the Spirit WILL follow faith. I think where we differ is probably not in how we define “faith” but in how we define “joy”.
If you take a deep dive into a Bible lexicon, you’ll discover that the word that we render in today’s English as “joy” has strong shades of having the sense of “comfort” or “to be comforted”, and “relief”. We tend to think of “joy” and “delight” in terms of the feeling we get when one would, say, unwrap a present or some other unexpected surprise. We have lost all sense of the comfort/relief aspect of the word, but during the time that our Scriptures were recorded, that aspect remained intact.
This is how the original readers (hearers) of the Scriptures would have understood the word, so we must also. This is just a basic rule of exegesis and hermeneutics – the text can not say to US, today, what it did not say to THEM back then.
So if we are defining joy, at least insofar as it is used in the Scriptures, as “happy, happy, happy”, again, I’m gonna object.
I’m gonna suggest that the joy (as we understand the word today) that we experience in the Lord arises out of FIRST experiencing the comfort and relief found in the Gospel promises – the heart of our faith.
My concern is SO not about “protecting someone’s wounding”. It’s about protecting their FAITH, about not robbing them of their comfort and relief, from which joy (as a feeling) and healing may then arise.
I’m concerned that in forcing a narrow definition on the word “joy”, we are distorting what the Scriptures actually teach.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; I will say it again, rejoice!” is not a command for us to obey, it is a promise for us to believe! It is the promise that when we are unable to have joy – in the fullest sense of the word – that He Himself will be our Joy. He will stand in the gap for us, sufficient in every way.
I absolutely refuse to define what “delight in God” ought to look like. I know how it manifests in my own life; I also know that I don’t know enough about another person, based on the small sliver of their life that they allow me to see, to judge whether or not joy exists in another, much less whether it is genuine or not.
You’ve experienced the sad outcome of suspicion for emotional religious displays. I’ve seen it too, and acknowledge that it is a real danger.
I am simply pointing to the dangers on the other end of the spectrum, which are every bit as real. Instead of being cast out for having “too much” emotion, imagine being cast out for having “not enough”.
When we insist that anything (works, “joy”, whatever) must accompany faith in order for it to be “genuine”, we’re putting the poor Christian on a pendulum that swings back and forth between pride – Look how joyful I am! – and despair – Why can’t I be joyful? Both of these extremes are harmful to faith. I’m not sure you entirely appreciate that.
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A helpful distinction is between transitory feelings and abiding affection. The former is what gets people in trouble, generates Twitter mobs or stupid tweets, alienates and often, pleases….until immediate circumstances change, and back in the doldrums you go. The latter is what faith is, it abides. I had such a powerful encounter with the living Christ in 1986 that no matter the circumstances—cancer twice, myasthenia gravis, a stroke—my faith in God’s goodness has never waivered, and my pleasure in Him abides.
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Praise the Lord for finding you and for helping you get through some major health challenges. I’m really grateful to God for His incredible kindness.
I think I’m going to disagree a tiny bit, it’s not actually transitory feelings that get people into trouble and cause Twitter mobs, it’s the condition of our hearts. We people will blame anything for the problem but ourselves. So Twitter, the medium we are using to express ourselves becomes the cause of the evil, and when that’s too silly, we blame our transitory feelings. The problem being, transitory feelings are often the result of an unrenewed mind, suppressed feelings, and panicked thinking. Twitter mobs are a great example, that’s like a group of people having an anxiety attack and trying to stomp out a spider. Nobody wants to deal with their own feelings and anxiety, they just want to squash and silence whatever is making them uncomfortable.
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True. By the way, I LOVE disagreement–that’s my prime learning mechanism. I possess a very content mind and disposition, anxiety and panic are pretty much unknown states for me. The closest I came to panic was after the stroke, when I was paralyzed in an ICU, and assailed by fears. But I repeated Psalm 23 like a mantra, and calm descended. For a time, I had a Twitter account, only for the purpose of following two relentlessly positive individuals–Kurt Warner and Tim Tebow. Now, blogging is my substitute for Twitter and Facebook.
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A number of thoughts, IB. I didn’t understand initially what Piper was talking about when he referenced “decisions for God.” I think that needs to be handled with care. In my own life, I made a decision to believe God long before I delighted in Him or could truthfully say I loved Him. Not everyone is like me. We should avoid, in my opinion, lumping all believers into the same box and saying, It has to be THIS Way or it’s the wrong way.
Second, I kind of bristled at the “faith apart from feelings is futile” line because I supposed, as so many atheists do, that the opposite of feelings was reason. The idea that feelings and not reason is vital to our faith, seems contrary to Scripture. But the more you explained, the more I saw that wasn’t actually what he was saying.
Feelings are, of course, central, as in, God started it all: we love Him because He first loved us. I mean, love is at the center of our relationship with God, even though we may not cognitively acknowledge it. Why Jesus came is because God loves us. Why we love Him is because He first loved us. It’s starts with Him, is upheld by Him, is all about Him.
One more thing: I don’t believe feelings are bad or always deceitful, but I don’t think they can be trusted, simply because they ARE subject to change. They come and go based on our circumstances. We are fearful when something fearful comes into our sphere. But God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. If we fix our eyes on the Rock of Who He is, the momentary changes that initiate delight or fear or guilt or joy can be replaced with God’s peace that surpasses understanding, and His joy and self-control and assurance. And yes, delight.
Becky
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Interesting thoughts, Becky! They are a bit similar to what OurLady is saying above. Anita, right? I think that’s her name. 🙂
I guess I kind of put this in the context of marriage. It would be tragic to have an emotion-less marriage, an arranged marriage people entered into only out of a sense of obligation and duty. There’s nothing wrong with duty and obligation but God is love! How can we know Him if we don’t have love? Well, we can’t according to the Bible. Second, I don’t understand how we can be saved, rescued, ransomed, redeemed, ravaged even, and not be absolutely delighted about it. It seems to me like gratitude alone would lead to delight. I also think when Paul says “rejoice, and again I say rejoice,” that really is a commandment. It’s not just a suggestion. Also, he says it in the midst of miserable circumstances.
I do realize we all have different personalities, different ways of expressing ourselves. There are some people who are more demonstrative than others. We can even see some denominational and cultural differences.in our worship styles. But the basic premise of having affections, feelings, delighting in the Lord, is surely shared by everyone?
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Eventually, yes. From my own experience, I had to grow into the emotional part of the relationship. Sort of like an arranged marriage, I guess, if you want to use that analogy. I understood that love was demonstrated by obedience, and there’s not a lot of emotion generally attached with obedience. But the thing about God is that He is so kind and so merciful and so good, He does generate love , but that grows over time, I think, as we accumulate the experience of His faithful provision. The image I have that is strongest for me, is Him holding my hand even through the hard things. Sort of like Jesus showing up in the furnace with Shad, Mes, and Abed. He didn’t have to stand with them, but He did. The more I understand about God, the more I love Him. So to me, it’s no surprise that those who don’t know Him well don’t feel a great deal. I didn’t. But I knew intellectually that He loved me and I accepted that He had rescued me from my sins. It just took time for me to move beyond, grateful.
Becky
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Becky, do you ever wonder what happens to those who never grow in love, who never experience the joy of the Lord, those who just obey as you are suggesting, as if obedience was the epitome of love? That is exactly what Piper is talking about when he says, “Christianity in America has been ravaged by the dominant teaching that decisions for God are more basic in defining a Christian than delight in God.”
So, not trying to sound critical here, I know you yourself love the Lord dearly, but you are of the mindset that seems to believe that decisions for God are more basic in defining a Christian than delight is. And obedience than becomes our highest expression of love. But what if our obedience is resentful, disagreeable, we aren’t motivated by love at all, or worse it is fear based, we only obey because we think God is going to cast us out and torment us for eternity if we don’t?
Those whose obedience is not rooted in love, those who don’t delight in the Lord, leave the faith entirely, especially during college years, young adulthood, the moment the world comes up against their beliefs.
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IB, I’d say that someone who doesn’t grow in love probably doesn’t know Jesus. Someone who looks at “keeping the law” as the end all, is the very person Paul was teaching against in Romans 3 and following. But we can’t ignore what Jesus said about keeping His commandments if we love Him. I think that’s much more apt to be the case in today’s society—it’s all about how you feel, don’t you know? If we have that ooshie, gooshie feeling then we love Jesus, but if we are mad at Him? Well, that’s OK, too because that’s how I feel. The problem with being controlled by our feelings is the very ephemeral nature of our feelings. Just heard a wonderful sermon from Habakkuk 3 and the point was clear: no matter our circumstances, whether a bleak future or a dismal present, or a failed past, God is still Someone we can rejoice in. There’s a permanence in this relationship, and anyone who gets tired of jumping through hoops, who throws in the towel because he’s tired of well-doing, maybe doesn’t have that kind of long-term relationship.–the “through sickness and in health” kind.
I think there is obedience and there is quid pro quo (to use a term that’s been in the news of late!). I think some people dance the dance because they think, like Job’s friends, that God will then owe them something. But if they get Job-like suffering instead, they’re out of there. That’s not obedience. Never was.
Becky
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