Let’s not talk about reality, let’s talk about our feelings.

I was having coffee with a good friend and we got on the topic of feelings. A few years back, a relative of mine said, in an attempt to diffuse family tension, “Let’s not talk about reality, let’s talk about our feelings.” Frankly I couldn’t see the point, because the most meaningful thing in that suggestion was to discern between reality and our feelings. Feelings are irrelevant and often dangerous, at least when they become the motivator for action. Start with love – the world says that love is the most important thing in relationships, whole industries are devoted to helping you find it and keep it, and by love they mean that warm fuzzy passionate feeling. I’ll fall back on C.S. Lewis for the rebuttal; he discusses love and Christian charity in Mere Christianity.

But Love, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.

I pointed out in the chapter on Forgiveness that our love for ourselves does not mean that we like ourselves. It means that we wish our own good. In the same was Christian Love (or Charity) for our neighbors is quite a different thing from liking or affection. We ‘like’ or are ‘fond of’ some people, and not of others. It is important to understand that this natural ‘liking’ is neither a sin nor a virtue, any more than your likes and dislikes in food are a sin or a virtue. It is just a fact. But, of course, what we do about it is either sinful or virtuous….The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. …whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.

Consequently, though Christian charity sounds a very cold thing to people whose heads are full of sentimentality, and though it is quite distinct from affection, yet it leads to affection…

This same spiritual law works terribly in the opposite direction. The Germans, perhaps, at first ill-treated the Jews because they hated them: afterwards they hated them much more because they had ill-treated them. The more cruel you are, the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become — and so on in a vicious circle for ever.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.

Likewise, forgiveness has no relationship to whether or not we still feel pain regarding the offense that was committed against us. Pain or no, as Christians we are still required to forgive.

Please understand; I am not anti-feelings. Feelings are a gift from God. Genesis 17:17, Abraham laughed. Matthew 2:10, the wise men rejoiced. John 11:35, Jesus wept. But feelings, other than the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, should never be the impetus behind our actions. When we act in ways designed to produce certain feelings, we are almost certainly going to be disappointed – if not in the short term, then in the long term, because feelings frequently change. Good feelings follow good actions; when my daughter was hearing all kinds of “self-esteem” nonsense at school, I told her that if she did the right thing whenever there were choices to be made, she would have self-esteem. Feelings are the product of actions and thoughts.

In addition to using our actions to channel our feelings, we can also actively counter our feelings by controlling our thoughts the same way we can control anxiety. Nature abhors a vaccuum, so we must practice the discipline of replacing one thing with another.

Finally, my brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are right, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there is any virtue and if there is any praise, think on these things. Do those things which you have also learned and received and heard and seen in me. And the God of peace shall be with you.
(Philippians 4:8-9)

This is not a matter of being a “Pollyanna” but instead of using the switchgear of practicing a mental discipline to put the train of our thoughts – and consequently our feelings – onto a different track. And once we change that track, we also change our destination.