Big Questions: What Am I Feeling?

Today we’re starting a new series looking at some of the big questions that I believe are helpful, if not necessary, in reading Scripture well. With that in mind, the question in title of this post — What am I feeling? — may come as a bit of a surprise. After all, if we want to encounter God and God’s truth for our lives in the text of Scripture, surely how we feel about it can only get in the way! Right? Well, that depends. Let’s look at it a bit more closely.

I’m starting with this question because it touches on our immediate, visceral response to the text. No matter what we read, we’re going to have some direct reaction to it, whether it’s excitement, inspiration, anger, or rejection. Even not feeling anything at all is still a reaction! None of these responses is in itself ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but they are important for us to notice and understand.

The main reason why I put this question first is because it keeps us honest as readers. As much as we’d like to think we can come to a text as purely objective individuals, that’s not the reality of being human. We come to any text with a pre-existing set of beliefs, values, and experiences, which are always going to shape how we experience it. Here are a few quick examples to show you what I mean. Back in my youth when I was concerned with the question of infant vs. believers’ baptism, I was shocked to find that both sides of that debate used the same proof texts (e.g., Acts 2.38-39) to justify their positions. Or, irrespective of their beliefs about family life, a man and a woman are most certainly going to have a different response to passages like Ephesians 5.21-6.9 or 1 Corinthians 11.2-15, because they make different demands upon them. Likewise, gay and lesbian readers are going to have a far greater emotional response to Romans 1.18-32 than most readers by virtue of their different lived experiences from straight readers.

The point is that there is no ‘default human being’ who can come to a text ‘clean’. We all bring ourselves to the text. And that’s not a bad thing at all. In fact it’s a wonderful thing! I often talk about the ‘arena’ of faith. And for each of us, our arena is nothing other than our lived reality, which includes our culture, class, sex and gender, sexuality, and skin colour. That arena is where we are called to wrestle with God — and in this case, wrestle with the God revealed in and through the Bible.

So, being aware of and honest about how a given text makes us feel is important for intellectual and theological honesty. And, if we’re going to bring our experiences into our application of a text anyway (which is to some degree inevitable), we might as well be intentional about it, and make a point of bringing our whole self to the text.

But there’s a further reason why identifying our feelings and reactions is helpful. This is an insight that St. Ignatius of Loyola understood well, and it provides a helpful theological justification for paying attention to our feelings when reading the Bible. As Paul Robb put it, Ignatius:

came to recognize that human experiences of joy and desolation, of enthusiasm and depression, of light and darkness, are not just human emotions which vary like the wind in a storm, but are the means by which we recognize the movements within our spirit stirred up by the Spirit of Jesus. (”Conversion as a Human Experience,” cited by Au & Cannon Au, The Discerning Heart).

Noting my immediate response of revulsion to the story of Jehu’s rebellion, for example, may not tell me much about the passage in question, but it does tell me a lot about myself. And since we come to the Bible not just to understand it but also to be transformed by it, this is really helpful data.

So then, the question of how a text makes us feel is important for at least three reasons: First, for the sake of intellectual honesty; second, because it helps us bring our whole self to a text; and third, because our feelings tell us something important about ourselves, our beliefs, presuppositions, and values.

Again, our emotional reactions aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’. We don’t let them determine our interpretation, nor do we reject them out of hand. Rather, we treat them as data, like anything else. “This passage made me feel sad.” “This story disturbed me.” “I was excited by this!” Identifying these feelings is a great and necessary place to start our engagement with a text, but it’s just the first question of many.

Reflection Questions

1. Read through the following verses and identify both your feelings and what parts of your identity, values, or life experience may have contributed to those feelings:

a) “These you shall regard as detestable among the birds; they shall not be eaten as are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey, the buzzard, the kite of any kind” (Leviticus 11.13-14).

b) “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10.25)

c) “Yet [women] will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.” (1 Timothy 2.15)

2. Read the following verses from the Parable of the Prodigal Son and think of kinds of personal experiences that might lead a reader to resonate with a) the father; b) the prodigal son; c) the faithful son:

‘There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate.

Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” Then the father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”’