http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15732732/what-is-the-day-of-the-lord
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The Deepest Part of You: How Feelings Relate to Choices
Which is more revealing of the “real you”: your spontaneous and unguarded emotions, or your purposeful and intentional choices? Put another way, which is more fundamental to who you are: the feelings that spontaneously erupt from your heart, or the choices that you intentionally make?
At Bethlehem College & Seminary, I teach a class called “Foundations of Christian Hedonism.” Alongside the Bible, we read Piper, Edwards, Lewis, and more. We talk about the supremacy of God, the indispensable importance of the affections, the Christian life, and pastoral ministry. I love it.
One stimulating aspect of the class is identifying tensions and disagreements between our favorite Christian Hedonists and wrestling together with them. Last semester, we discovered a seeming dissonance between how Piper talks about feelings and how Lewis talks about the will.
Piper’s Grief
In chapter 3 of Desiring God, Piper explores “Worship: The Feast of Christian Hedonism.” In doing so, he accents the importance of feelings, emotions, and affections in worship.
Piper emphasizes that genuine feelings are spontaneous and not calculated. Feelings are not consciously willed and not performed as a means to anything else. He gives numerous examples of feelings — hope (that spontaneously arises in your heart when you are shipwrecked on a raft and catch sight of land), fear (that spontaneously arises when camping and you hear a bear outside your tent), awe (that overwhelms you as you stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon), and gratitude (that spontaneously erupts from the heart of children when they get the present they most wanted on Christmas morning).
“Feelings are spontaneous, unsought, unplanned. They are our immediate and natural reactions to reality.”
The most poignant example of spontaneous feeling that Piper describes, however, is the grief that poured from his heart when he received the news that his mother was killed in a car wreck. In that moment, “The feeling [of grief] is there, bursting out of my heart” (91). No planning, no performance, no decision — just emotion and feeling. And here’s the crucial bit: “It comes from deep within, from a place beneath the conscious will” (91).
Lewis’s Prayers
At the same time, we were reading Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm. In Letter 21, Lewis discusses the frustrating irksomeness of prayer and the nature of duty. One day, when we are perfected, prayer and our other obligations will no longer be experienced as duties, but only as delights. Love will flow out from us “spontaneously as song from a lark or fragrance from a flower” (154). For now, we contend with various obstacles and impediments.
Even still, we have rich moments in the present — “refreshments ‘unimplored, unsought, Happy for man so coming’” (156, quoting John Milton). But then Lewis makes this statement:
I have a notion that what seem our worst prayers may really be, in God’s eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling and contend with the greatest disinclination. For these, perhaps, being nearly all will, come from a deeper level than feeling. (157)
In other words, our best prayers may be the ones we pray even when we don’t want to pray, when our prayers are not riding on positive feelings toward God, but are actively, deliberately trying to overcome resistance within us. The will, Lewis might say, rises from deep within, from a place beneath even our feelings, proving who we really are at bottom.
Clarifying the Tension
We can see the tension, can’t we? Are feelings deeper than the will (as Piper says)? Or is the will deeper than feelings (as Lewis claims)?
Before evaluating, we need further clarity. We can begin by noting key areas of agreement. First, both Piper and Lewis agree that we ought to distinguish feelings from the will.
Second, they seem to agree about some of the key differences between feelings and the will. Feelings are spontaneous, unsought, unplanned. They are our immediate and natural reactions to reality (like birds singing and flowers blooming). The will, on the other hand, involves intention, planning, choice, and execution.
Third, both Lewis and Piper agree that the will and the feelings ought to be viewed in some sort of hierarchical arrangement, with one being “deeper” than the other. We might call this sort of arrangement of the mind’s faculties a “tiered psychology.” Certain faculties are deeper (or perhaps higher) than others.
These three points of agreement help to clarify the tension. The arrangement of the mind’s capacities into different levels implies that one level may somehow be more important (or at least more revealing). The implication, in both Lewis and Piper, is that one level is more genuine, more authentic, more reflective of the real self (one could say, deeper). The corresponding implication is that the other level is somehow less genuine, less authentic, and less reflective of the real self (one could say, more superficial).
So then, which level better reflects the real self — our feelings or our willing?
From Feelings to Passions
We turn now to evaluation. And this is where we might simply conclude that one of them is right and one of them is wrong. Or perhaps, that both of them are wrong. That sometimes happens, even with very intelligent authors. My own goal, however, is to honor the truth in both perspectives by attempting to take up whatever aspect of the truth each author is emphasizing. Perhaps with some minor modifications and clarifications, the two perspectives might yet be reconciled.
For example, Lewis and Piper both refer to feelings. However, the older word for the phenomenon they are discussing is passions. Passions are the immediate, spontaneous reactions or motions of the soul.
Reframing feelings as passions enables us to see how Lewis and Piper can be reconciled. On the one hand, Lewis is correct that the will is deeper (or higher) than the passions. In classical tiered psychology, the intellect and the will are considered the higher faculties of the soul, with the intellect as the faculty that reasons, reflects, contemplates, and judges reality, and the will as the faculty that moves toward or away from what the intellect perceives.
Additionally, the soul also has two lower faculties: “sense apprehension,” which receives impressions from the senses, makes snap judgments about those impressions, and stores the impressions in memory; and “sense appetite,” which immediately reacts to what the sense apprehension perceives and thus is the seat of the passions.
Thus, the human will frequently has to contend with the disinclinations of the feelings at the lower level. While the will can restrain and sometimes overcome the passions, it doesn’t directly control or direct the passions. The very term passions suggests that we are passive; they aren’t consciously willed or decided upon in that moment. They occur spontaneously.
The Will Constrains Passions
Reframing feelings as passions demonstrates the truth in what Piper emphasizes as well.
Piper is adamant that feelings (passions) are spontaneous. Thus, when he says that his grief comes from “beneath the conscious will,” he means the grief bypasses conscious decision-making in the moment. Our feelings are more like snap reactions than considered responses. They are spontaneous, not because they are necessarily deeper (or more reflective of our genuine self), but because they are closer to the surface, more visceral and therefore frequently intense, and almost always tied to some bodily expression (such as tears or laughter).
Even Piper’s example of extreme grief suggests the will’s capacity to restrain and overcome the passions. When he receives the news of his mother’s death, he takes his own baby son off his leg, hands the child to his wife, and walks to the bedroom to be alone, before collapsing in tears for the next hour. In other words, as grief begins to bubble up, Piper’s will is able to temporarily hold back the floodgates of the passion until he is alone and able to give expression to them. He puts on the brave face until the occasion for release is right.
The Real You
So then, we now have a tiered psychology, consisting of the higher powers of intellect and will, and the lower sense powers. The will performs actions; the sense powers experience passions or feelings. What then can we say about which level is more genuine, authentic, and reflective of the real self?
“Both our actions and our passions, our willings and our feelings, are reflective of who we are as embodied creatures.”
The truth is that they both are. Both our actions and our passions, our willings and our feelings, are reflective of who we are as embodied creatures. This is doubly so since our passions flow from all of our previous history, including our beliefs, the stories that we tell ourselves, our experiences, our memories, and our choices. While the will does not despotically direct the feelings, the higher powers can train and cultivate habits of heart that spontaneously flow in particular directions.
Again, we can infer this from Piper’s story of grief. While Piper may not have consciously chosen feelings of grief in the moment, he had, for 29 years, been shaped and molded into the kind of person who spontaneously responded to that news in that way. The spontaneous tears and visceral sorrow of that day were the fruit of nearly thirty years of motherly kindness and filial gratitude, of hundreds of tender hugs and bedtime kisses, of lively dinnertime conversations and glad-hearted, lifelong obedience to the fifth commandment.
One can imagine a different mother, a different son, a different relationship and history, different choices and actions, a different setting, and therefore different feelings when the phone call comes.
With Piper and Lewis
Thus, we don’t need to choose between Piper and Lewis on the will and feelings. We can bring them together. We are complex creatures, bodies and minds, capable of both spontaneous reactions and intentional responses. We make choices and experience feelings, and our choices shape our feelings and our feelings shape our choices.
This is how God made us, and this is how he is remaking us in the image of his Son. With our new hearts and transformed minds, we willingly offer our bodies (including our passions) to God as our spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1). We put off the old man, with its desires and practices, and we put on the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of our Creator (Colossians 3:10).
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What Is Peculiar About Married Love? Ephesians 5:25–31, Part 3
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.
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Why Would God Call Me ‘Helper’? The Modern Struggle with Womanhood
For Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. (Genesis 2:20)
Helper. Many women in our day have chafed at this word, at this characterization of our calling from God. A helper is clearly not in charge. A helper is not usually center stage. A helper may feel (and rightly!) that she has gifts and talents that enable her to do the work better. A helper rarely gets as much recognition for her work. A helper may feel like a second-class citizen. And we could go on.
Some of these assumptions may be true, some are outright lies, but all of them miss the point. Each of the above statements comes from the perspective of fallen creatures, socialized in the modern world; none seriously attempts to consider what the Creator himself had in mind when he designed and assigned callings to men and women.
“When God created male and female, he did not mean to glorify men and demean women.”
When God created male and female, he did not mean to glorify men and demean women, as if helper somehow meant lesser. God created humans — men and women together — as the pinnacle of all creation, crafting both in his very image (Genesis 1:27). He created them with distinct and complementary attributes, inclinations, and gifts that make them indispensable to one another and to his plan for filling the earth with his glory.
Helper with Equal Honor
Now, God did make man first, and he gave man the primary responsibility (and accountability) for the outworking of his plan (Genesis 2:7, 15–17; 1 Timothy 2:13) to extend his glory (Ephesians 1:10). But by giving man primary responsibility and accountability, did God intend for Adam to be a mini-god on earth, decisively higher than his wife, who was also made in God’s image?
No. Before God made Eve from Adam, he humbled Adam by permitting him to discover how impossible his task would be without help — God’s help and human help. God had already indicated that it was not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18), but then he set Adam to naming all the animals, building to the discovery that “there was not found a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:19–20). Then, at the creation of Eve, Adam’s “at last” shows the relief and delight he felt (Genesis 2:23). He knew he needed a helper for this mission.
Woman, then, was not created as a subjugated slave, but as a means of mutual blessing for them both. She was, and is, an essential partner and helper in the grand work of subduing the creation and filling the earth with God’s imagers, giving glory upon glory to the eternally worthy God.
The twisted lie that Adam is more important, that Adam’s call means power and privilege, and Eve’s subjugation, springs out of the pride that human hearts have harbored since the fall. Men too often have been puffed up to lead with domineering power, and women too often have been puffed up with righteous indignation, asserting that they have just as much of a right to power and privilege as men do.
“Self-centered, bullying leadership was never God’s plan. Neither was self-centered resentment when called to help.”
Of course, Adam could not assume responsibility (and accountability) without the associated ability (and burden) to make critical decisions. But all throughout the Bible, and especially in the life of Jesus, we see that every earthly power is subject to the righteous and holy God. A holy exercise of any ability may not please everyone, but it is never to be self-serving or oppressive, and is always to be characterized by humility and self-sacrifice. Self-centered, bullying leadership was never God’s call. Neither was self-centered resentment when called to be helper.
Pride on Both Sides
At this point, I expect some women today want to say, “But men’s leadership throughout the ages has rarely reflected humility and self-sacrifice. Men have abused power and oppressed women (and others) in every generation!” Yes, they surely have. And I’m not excusing that in any way. To the contrary, we long and pray for justice in this earthly life, and my soul trembles when I see men misuse their authority. If you believe for a moment that a righteous and holy God will not hold men accountable for such sinful behavior, you are not familiar with the God of the Bible. Judgment is real, and it is coming.
At the same time, we can’t condemn men without acknowledging that women, too, have been guilty of being more concerned about our own image, advancement, power, and perhaps even “rights” than about honoring our God by being the kind of people he made us to be. God’s people were made to humbly, sacrificially, and joyfully welcome the privilege of their God-given callings and delight to reflect God’s own beauty and righteousness in those callings. Oh, how men and women should both fall on our faces in repentance — and thanksgiving — as we acknowledge our failures and lean on God’s loving grace through Jesus.
Exceptions and the Rule
We cannot escape the conclusion, then, that God made men to act as the head of our homes and our churches. In a few cases in the Bible, as a desperate measure revealing desperate times, God called women to leadership roles typically assigned to men, but Scripture doesn’t suggest that God altered his original plan. There is no indication, for example, that after Deborah there were a growing number of women judges (Judges 4:1–16), or that Abigail, after quietly taking initiative to protect her community from the poor judgment of her “worthless” husband (1 Samuel 25:14–35), and later married David, took charge in that relationship.
When Jesus enters the picture in the Gospels, we do see women deeply involved in and around his ministry (as in Luke 8:1–3). If anyone would have been justified in lording his power and position over others, it would have been Jesus, but he never led that way (Mark 10:42–45). He clearly loved and welcomed women’s contributions to the ministry. At the same time, however, Jesus did not name women among his Twelve. Paul, too, treats women with a remarkably high regard throughout his ministry, even commending Phoebe as his messenger to the church of Rome (Romans 16:1–2), but he clearly did not ordain women as pastor-elders (1 Timothy 2:12–3:7).
God’s ways often turn ours upside down, but this we know for sure: God does not want us to sin and rebel against him, but to see the all-surpassing wisdom and love behind his design and eagerly dedicate our lives to his call. We bring glory to God when we believe and joyfully obey him.
Are We Helping?
Sisters in Christ, it is wonderful that God has called us to be helpers. We are helpers in God’s very image, and we alone are made to bear God’s image-bearers. What a sacred and holy responsibility! If God has given you a husband, you were made to fit with and help this man whom God has charged with leadership. If you aren’t (yet) married, but would like to be, the word helper is a reminder to be wise and discerning before accepting a husband. Choose a godly man you will gladly help as he leads.
If we humble ourselves before our God, we will have the opportunity to use our faith, creativity, discernment, gifts, and abilities to join with, build up, and encourage husbands, pastors, and other male leaders. If we bring a humble servant-heart and true joy in Jesus to our task, who knows how we might change relational dynamics and contribute far more than we can think or imagine?
Are we helping? Is our spirit filled with discontent and envy at the calling God has given us, or are we delighted to be given such an important opportunity to rule and reign with our men under Christ? Are we judging rather than trying to understand? Are we critical rather than compassionate and encouraging? Are we faithful — trusting that God has placed the male leaders in our lives for his good purposes?
Women, let’s set aside our own distorted views of what it means to help and ask God to show us how he planned this calling to be a blessing to us, to the men in our lives, to our community, and to all creation. We live and serve to please One, and he delighted to make us helpers in his grand plan. Oh, that we may delight in this calling too.