Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Religious feeling

By Peter Sellick - posted Thursday, 24 March 2005


Romanticism in the West came about as a reaction to what was seen as the cold hard rationality of the Enlightenment, life dissected into parts, nature described in terms of mathematics. The mistake of romanticism was to pitch rationality against feeling and opt for the latter. This polarity is with us today, either we think or we feel, either we go with our heart or with our mind. But this is an artificial duality - feeling is evoked by the cognitive and the opposite is also true: feeling may awaken us to something unthought. When we detach one from the other we produce a schism in the human psyche. So when we attend the liturgies of Holy Week we attend with thought and feeling.

Emotion alone is not a good basis for epistemology because it does not represent the world aright: it is subjective in the worst sense. But having said this we must affirm that emotion is a key indicator of the state of the self. The mistake of romanticism is to give what is indicated the status of truth without rational interrogation. But acting against our emotional impulses is a part of becoming an adult. The continuing effect of romanticism is evidenced when we are told that feelings are the true thing. What we get are unwise marriages lived out de facto and disastrous life decisions that are based on wellsprings of emotion.

We are placed in a situation in which our one experience of the divine, of ecstasy, is the experience of falling in love in which we are taken out of our senses by cupid’s arrow. This is celebrated because it offers an escape, even if often disastrous, from cold rationality. It has taken the place of God for us, the one who calls us out of ourselves. But it is not God, it may be hormones and sex and even a desire for death, but it is not God. If we look, we will find many an idolatry based on feeling divorced from rationality.

Advertisement

Feelings alone will not get us far when it comes to God. The mystics had to beware of feeling because they knew that they would lead them astray. The growth of the mega churches is based on the promotion of feeling and the denial of rationality enabled by a supernaturalist understanding of the Holy Spirit. When the main line churches take the soft option of inclusivity and recognise these movements as another form of Christian spirituality then an important line has been crossed. Not only will the derision of those who rail against religion be justified, but the church will sacrifice its unique vision for what looks like success but is really only the assertion of the narcissism of the modern self.

God does not reside in high flown emotion, an interaction with him may cause such an event but cause and effect must not be confused. This Easter we are reminded that we see God in the narratives of the Bible, not as abstract first cause, or divine instigator of the big bang but as revelation of what we are and what we were destined to be. We must admit that what we are does not come off well. We are mirrored in the welcoming cry on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem which turns into a demand for crucifixion only a few days later, in Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial and the fleeing of all of the disciples to their homes.

We are complicit in the rigged trial, the lies and Pilot’s real politic. When we understand these things we experience the judgment of God and that may be cause of feeling for us. When we see Jesus tormented in the Garden while his disciples sleep and we see him resolutely walking towards his doom, we experience the grace of God that survives even death. This may be cause for feeling of a different kind. This is as far as we need go in our search for God. Indeed, to search for God in places other than in this enstoried event is to go looking for ghosts.

This is the point that our modern persecutors of Christianity fail to see. When we talk of the Christian God we are not championing the possibility that there exists a ghost in the machinery of the universe. Our claim is that the historical event of Jesus of Nazareth defines our humanity. It is in this event that the tables are turned on us, the one whom we judged became the judge, the one we put to death became our source of life and freedom. This is how Christians should talk about the reality of their God, as the enduring truth of the enstoried event of Christ.

The early church had such a struggle to define its theology because this was a new definition of God that subverted the Greek pantheon and the civil religion of Rome while it carried forward a refreshed understanding of the God of Israel. The irony is that the old gods have been revived in our time. These include the God that the sceptics rail against as well as the enthusiast God of evangelicalism and of the naïve believer. The troubling thing about the church of our day is that is behaves as if the theological travail of the early church never happened, with the result that we have a revival of the old god of supernature. What we need is clear theological thinking, not explorations of “spirituality” or touchy feely workshops in which the participant’s feelings take centre stage in a parody of therapy. We must resist the turn to the self and direct our attention to the one who calls us to come and die.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. All

Article edited by Maggie Dunphy.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

4 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Peter Sellick an Anglican deacon working in Perth with a background in the biological sciences.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Peter Sellick

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of Peter Sellick
Article Tools
Comment 4 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy