Reflections on Lent, #5
I am reading Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Today, from p. 54, I quote:
"I have put great emphasis on the fact that Christians worship because they want to, not because they are forced to. But I have never said they worship because they feel like it. Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshiped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. Feelings are imporant in many areas but completely unreliable in matters of faith. Paul Scherer is laconic: 'The Bible wastes very little time on the way we feel.'
"We live in what one writer has called the 'age of sensation.' We think that if we don't feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feelings much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting."
Lent is not about feeling our way to the cross. It is about a choice of focus, despite how we might feel. I daresay that in his flesh Jesus did not look forward to the cross, because as God he was feeling the full weight of sin for the first time, not just nails and lashes (as horrific as that was). Feelings are wonderful parts of life, but not the basis of it.
"I have put great emphasis on the fact that Christians worship because they want to, not because they are forced to. But I have never said they worship because they feel like it. Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshiped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. Feelings are imporant in many areas but completely unreliable in matters of faith. Paul Scherer is laconic: 'The Bible wastes very little time on the way we feel.'
"We live in what one writer has called the 'age of sensation.' We think that if we don't feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feelings much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting."
Lent is not about feeling our way to the cross. It is about a choice of focus, despite how we might feel. I daresay that in his flesh Jesus did not look forward to the cross, because as God he was feeling the full weight of sin for the first time, not just nails and lashes (as horrific as that was). Feelings are wonderful parts of life, but not the basis of it.
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