If we do speak of emotions and emotional responses, and have somewhat in the examples of Saul>Paul and Jonah, and consider their implications for us; it might be too easy for some to imagine only emotionless response is being recommended. As if there were no place for anger, or tears, of warm feelings and the like…God forbid.
Their matter of origin, though, is always of paramount importance and significance. The scriptures surely testify obliquely in places, quite plainly in others that our God is in no less possession of such, and/or moved by such. Jesus no less is testified to have looked about Himself in anger:
And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand.
At those present looking for excuse to accuse Him of “working” on the sabbath. Jesus sees all “lying in wait” for accusation, and the hardness of hearts doing so instead of showing mercy.
I will not deny knowing this working. I have seen it “too close to home” at times (or even many times) to admit or confess as having been so ensnared. A “light” has to be shown as on.
“Self” exaltation is no matter I am done with, nor immune to its corrupt tendency and outworkings.
I have only one place to look to see it “not” displayed. And that place is set for all reproval and rebuke and (usually only afterwards) grateful for His exercise. And this despite His lack of concern about how it makes me “feel” in the moment.
His lack of concern for our interpretation of Himself and what He says…well…at times it almost appears He doesn’t care much for making friends the way men do. Nor even with much keeping of them (the way men do). Then I am reminded. Of course! He is the savior form all that men do incurring dread consequence to themselves.
“Get thee behind me Satan”! Yikes.
“Will you (guys) leave also”?
“You guys are gonna run for the hills” (Why Lord! How could you think so little of “me”?)
Yet it is precisely because He has thought enough of us to have come in being sent, we are saved. Does that make us a something…or He an everything? This will be worked out or not.
And no one has ever loved me enough to tell me all the truth about myself…and certainly even Mom, though so greatly loved. My dear wife often comes closer, and at such times it is good she is well armored.
How often I could be found so wrongly interpreting this: “And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household”. I always preferred to think it would be “my righteousness” being resisted, when resistance (which produces heat) rises. O! stupid man! After all…I believe in the Lord! (Anyone else discovering they are not the last disciple? Or alone in Christ? Maybe even not so much in the know as they love to imagine? Ha!)
Yep, God’s way is perfect. And it would be so (even more?) distressing for me to go on at any length when speaking about emotions and their workings and consequences to deny fires I have started. I have burnt down whole households with fires I have started and allowed. And/or, even eagerly thrown gasoline upon. My deepest and truest testimony among men remains that no matter how wrong any particular man may, or can be (as myself being paramount example), there remains a wholly righteous one.
Yes. And yet, it is He who ministers the spirit of faith that bids us speak.
Yes, Jesus is kind enough to give us “things to do” while in these tents. And one of them (maybe the least of them?) is speaking to one another. But, we are not forbidden.
Saul was asked his why. “Why do you persecute me?”
Jonah was queried with “Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry?” Or, as in another translation: “Do you have a good reason to be angry?”
Good reason?
Who has it? Would He share it? (Come let us reason together)
Reason and emotion. They often seem at odds in us, especially when emotion(s) have the ascendancy. And may so easily fool us, or make fools of us. But we must also admit, and no less, bad reason and reasoning(s) cannot do less. For they will also end in unwarranted rise of emotion(s) from a place of falsity.
I have often written of that fellow Rutherford or Lord Rutherford, who upon first discovering how much (in his case little) of what we consider “matter” and material (as in solid) exists took to his bed, remaining there for fear of slipping through the floor. Everything is “mostly” space! Vast spaces on the atomic level such that his mind, now informed of this, filled him with terror. Obviously it would be plainly foolish to think such a bed, composed of atoms no less, would offer greater support. His mind in terror by what his mind deduced, hid from his mind a manifestly plain thing. And caused him to view another (the floor) as now insufficient to him. Something made too true to him to deny by his experimentation, upsetting all his prior understandings (and even experience(s), overwhelmed all sense(s) of good reason.
And so we too, as now in the Lord and under the Lord for discipling, discipline and tutelage may hear and discover things leading to utmost of upset. Our emotions may rise up seeking to get the better of us as the first disciples often discovered. The Lord always has reason for His saying and reason to be found in His saying(s), yet at first hearing their may arise a tumult. And in some cases (as we can see) even a rebuke or correction offered to the Lord. (Do you or I really need to ask Peter?) And our Lord never shies away from speaking what is to us often, that hard thing. Sometimes very hard. Really, and always…too hard a thing for any of us to understand but for God’s spirit.
The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Jesus…are you always trying to lose followers? It often appears so.
Or is it rather…show them how lost they are already?
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