A Publication of the Piedmont church of Christ

Piedmont Primer

Vol. 1, Issue 2

Page One

Do we mistake emotion for faith? By Brent Veyon

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6

Does God direct your path in life, or do you direct your own way?   When determining the truthfulness of a teaching or an action, do we make our judgments based on our emotional attachment, or on the word of God?   Is faith based on emotion or is it based in the knowledge of God's word?  Remember what Jeremiah the prophet said:  "O LORD, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps." (Jer. 10:23)  We can either walk by God's direction, or we can hold our hand over our heart, and say "I feel it right here" and thump our chest as if it had some scripture tatooed on it.  When we rely on emotion, we reject God's direction, and replace it with our own.     With emotion as our guide, we are merely feeling our way throuth life, like a suddenly blind man who gropes for his way.

We are left with the, all too often, misguided whims of our own desires.  These emotional responses have plagued mankind from the beginning.  In the beginning Eve, "saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eye, a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate." (Gen. 3:6)  Eve felt it was right to eat, but God had instructed them differntly.  Also, Cain was given the proper direction, but instead chose to try and remove Abel's righteous example. (Gen. 4:1-8 see also I John 3:10-12)       The Ecclesiastes writer also saw man's problem when he stated "that God made man upright; but they have sought out many schemes." (Eccl. 7:29)  Man tends to invent ways to fulfill his own desire, and the first thing we sacrifice is the uprightness for which we were made.       It does not matter how much knowledge you give man; he will tend to reject it in favor of his own feelings.  Then he will set out to rationalize his desired outcome, by filtering out any facts that are contrary to his own feelings.  Without any real proof, he is soon left with nothing more then an indescribable feeling in his chest.      However, the scriptures teach us that our faith in God has substance, and our faith is evidence. (Heb. 11:1)  Substance is something you can lay hold of, and evidence is something that proves what is true.  Our faith in God is something that can be proven.  Therefore, our faith has to be based in the knowledge of God's will, it is something we can prove (Rom. 10:1-3, 14-17).  However, it is not, as so many say, something "I feel right here"; holding their hand over their heart as if this were some sort of proof.

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