I always do my best writing (well, I do all my writing for this blog) late on a weekend night.
The past week, I have been questioning (thank you Brian, you know who you are) the role of emotion or religious experience in worship. I am starting to come to the conclusion that, because all things are from God, any emotion felt at any time is a form of religious experience if you use it to try and connect with God. Ultimately, every idea must be tested against scripture, but in the moment, the overpowering rush of any emotion should cause thanksgiving to God. I will confess to feeling a powerful wave of emotion listening to a secular song ("He was my Brother" - Simon and Garfunkel).It was such an overwhelming welling up of the chest that I felt it as a religious sensation-- God is in all the universe, and we diminish his presence if we say that only emotions felt from eight to noon on Sunday are valid experiences; every momentary feeling ought to reveal God to us, even if (to quote Brian) we "sin like pagans six days a week, then feel an unworthy sensation Sunday mornings."
Grace and peace.
Zachary, I enjoy your blog. You are thoughtful and articulate and do a wonderful job of describing things that are not easily described. I am just curious, what do you mean by "emotion" specifically? Are you talking about the type of emotion generated by a gifted speaker? Are you discussing the emotion felt when a song touches your heart? Are you talking about the emotion experienced when a person feels that they have touched God or felt overwhelmed by the presence of his Spirit? And are you talking about positive emotions such as joy and love or does your post encompass emotions such as fear and shame? Your message is thought provoking, so I want to try and understand it better.
ReplyDeleteSorry to take so long to answer Chris. As for emotion, I'm not sure that any particular type of emotion is very different from another. THat is, a speaker creates (in me at least) roughly the same emotion as a song. Even if that is not the case for you, I think that emotional perception is important. Negative emotion reveals truth as well, but in a different way than positive emotion. If we feel shamed or saddened, there is a reason for that, and truth to be found in asking why we feel that, and working to fix that. I hope that helps.
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