Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
We do not need the \u201cGod\u201d we want or the \u201cGod\u201d we do not want. We only need God as He truly is, irrespective of either our positive or negative desire.<\/p>\n
An overabundance of subjectivity is part of our fallenness as a race. Being emotional beings is not a problem in and of itself (God Himself has emotions.) The problem comes when our passions become more of a driver in our spiritual lives than they should be. Feelings are not intrinsically sinful. What we do with them can be.<\/p>\n
At any given time our emotions can be leading us closer to our Lord or farther away from Him. This is a function of how accurately those emotions are painting reality. It does not so much matter if they seem to us positive or negative. Most of us tend to know both poles of feeling on a regular basis and this is part of our nature as bearers of the image of a passionate, though perfect, God. What is far more important is how much credence we are giving to them as far as what they seem to tell us about His nature. It is in allowing either extreme to mediate our perception of God that we often get into trouble.<\/p>\n
Emotions and desires are intimately intertwined in the human heart. We tend to want what we feel is good and not want what we feel is bad. This may be an obvious point, but it bears repeating because how we deal with desires that are mediated by our emotions has profound ramifications for our spiritual lives. It can be argued that nothing is more important than who we ultimately decide God is because that is the greatest determinant as to whether we decide for or against Him. We dare not make that decision based solely, or even wholly, on whom we want Him to be or not be; to paraphrase the discovery of Moses: God \u201cis Who He is\u201d, nothing more and nothing less.<\/p>\n
Whether we like it or not who we desire Him to be is irrelevant to whom He is, but it is very relevant to who and where we will be eternally. It is vital that we come to know God as He really is. How best to get there is the problem we all face (and it should be stated here that the answer to this problem is not to elevate human reason at the expense of human emotion. Both our cognitive and emotive perceptions are equally fallen.)<\/p>\n
This is where both God and His word come to the fore.<\/p>\n
The answer to this conundrum is easier than we might expect it to be. The best way we can arrive at a true knowledge of Him, in defiance of what may be a faulty system that amounts to wish-fulfillment, is through a truly Holy-Spirit inspired knowledge of the Bible. We can learn to apprehend God\u2019s self-revelation of Himself in the pages of scripture, but the only way this happens is through both immersing ourselves in meditation on that scripture and praying that it will be made real to us by His Spirit. We must also ask that this true knowledge of the Divine will become the one thing we most deeply desire. As this prayer is answered both the Bible and the Spirit behind it will become reliable \u201cavenues\u201d to Objective Reality. Our subjective desires must yield to this reality if we are ever to come to know the Lord we profess to serve. Only then will we know Him not as we want or do not want Him to be, but as He really is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Copyright 2015 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved We do not need the \u201cGod\u201d we want or the \u201cGod\u201d we do not want. We only need God as He truly is, irrespective of either our positive or negative desire. An overabundance of subjectivity is part of our fallenness as a race. Being emotional beings is… <\/p>\n