Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday May 2, 2006

You never know just when a chance statement will cause you to actually think. I try to avoid such statements as I have discovered over long years that to think requires the weighing of facts and other issues that really shouldn't matter all that much. That I am not alone hit me as though the latest version of B-Series Bombers had unloaded on me.

A man whom I have known since childhood, who is also in the easy life of a minister, he even wears his shirt backwards, God knows I have enough trouble with my buttons in the front, said to me in answer to a question:

"I don't need facts; I already know how I feel."

The above would not have surprised me coming from a member of our group, but coming from this dear man whose group has effectively emasculated any feeling from worship or life for that matter actually shocked me. Well, not really, but in a younger day it would have.

Is there a counselor among us who has not cried out, "Oh, God please stop this raging river of unchecked feelings I must listen to each day." The wail means that the listeners hear otherwise normal people attempting to justify every imaginable aberration under the sun with the deeply held conviction that feelings are to be the controlling factor in life. Such mental ninnies posit that feelings trump common sense and duty to those dependant upon your fidelity, why intense feelings even cancels the mandate of scripture.

A man told me recently that he no longer 'Felt anything toward his wife.' I noticed that because he no longer 'felt' he assumed that a feeling of nothing entitled him to abandon all responsibility to the family.

Many state they no longer feel like being what they were born, so they make some grotesque outward change and this change makes them 'feel better' about themselves. I suggest that Christ can and will make a deep change within the inner sanctum of their heart. And yes, ultimately they will 'feel better' about themselves!

A republican associate even claims that this inner change causes hard core democrats to 'feel better' about life. I find this hard to believe, but then stranger things happen daily. I did read that President Bush is going to be 'more truthful about the impending war with Iran' as he is certain the America people will 'feel better' when armed with the truth of how he feels.

The primary (no political intent) difference between a godly person and what Jude calls 'brute beasts' is simple: The godly person is guided by principle and the brute beast by instinct or feeling. So, how are you doing? Are you feeling or principle?

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2006 Use with credit

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