Christian Hedonism - Pt 2

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:34-39 ESV).

There are some who have wrongly come to the conclusion that faith can be neatly separated from feelings. They see emotions, whether good or bad, like a caboose at the end of the train that can be disconnected with no great loss. That’s not the way the Scripture talks about the Christian faith. It is not as though this train could go on chugging down with no love for God burning in the engine. This is especially true in the cases of repeated pain and rejection. In our reading today, Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (v. 37). I think the effort to distinguish saving faith from feelings of glad dependence and thankful trust and heartfelt admiration and pleased submission and contented resting and earnest treasuring is futile and hopeless. You cannot strip all those adjectives — glad, thankful, heartfelt, pleased, contented, earnest — from faith and have any saving faith left. What you have left is what the devil can do, or mere oxymorons like unthankful saving trust. In fact, I think the effort to define faith as something devoid of feeling is driven by an ancient and very modern belief in the autonomy of the human will that must be in final control of its destiny. Everyone knows we can’t immediately control our feelings or emotions or affections. You can’t make yourself feel thankful. You can say the words thank you, but you can’t make yourself feel thankful. It’s either there or it’s not. You can’t make yourself feel pleased or glad. Therefore, that view of human nature that says we have to be able to control our own destiny, our own salvation, has to say that saving faith cannot include things I can’t control. “I have to be in control,” they insist. That is simply not what the Bible teaches. The Bible requires many things of us that we cannot immediately produce because we are so corrupt and rebellious. Yet we are responsible to produce them because a sinful condition is no excuse for disobedience. Happiness is not produced by disconnecting from painful circumstances. Happiness comes from connecting to the relationship offered to us through Christ with our heavenly Father!