Feeling, Thought, Truth

October 6, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: The Free Church In The Changing World

II Theology and the Frontiers of Learning
5. Feeling, Thought, Truth

Religious beliefs create considerable anxiety when religious feelings are contradicted by rational thought. Religion is felt by the emotions and expressed by thoughts and words. John Wesley was converted at Aldersgate when. His heart felt "strangely warmed" as he read Luther's commentary on Paul. He felt religion; that made all the difference in his life. On the other hand, the reflective philosopher would argue that what makes all the difference is religious knowledge possessed by the mind and expressed in logical, factual ways.

In discussing feeling, thought and truth, I want to emphasize that none of these can be slighted if one is to possess a faith that fulfills the demands of a reasoning mind and satisfies the need of hungry emotion. The wholeness of religious truth depends on these priorities. But this full-bodied religious truth is many times not achieved when growth is stunted because of a wild monopoly of feeling or a sterile assumption that only mental processes matter.

This gap in communications between mind and emotion is not newly discovered; it has existed for a long time. In his new book, ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE, (Alfred A,. Knopf, 1963), Richard Hofstadter observes, (p.55), "Since some tension between the mind and the heart, between emotion and intellect, is everywhere a persistent feature of Christian experience, it would be a mistake to suggest that there is anything distinctively American in religious anti-intellectualism. Long before America was discovered, the Christian community was perennially divided between those who believed that intellect should be subordinated to emotion, or in effect abandoned at the dictates of emotion."

First, our feelings: they represent as much of our real self as bone, blood and tissue. We flush with anger, or pale with grief; our internal organs flash a message disturbance or excitement when we are threatened or exhilarated. Who would say that we could still be human if we no longer felt joy and sorrow, anticipation and regret, assurance and fear, hope and despair? But it is also true to human experience that our emotions are something like potential delinquents in society. Trouble comes when the course of events pushes them across the line from normal to disturbed.

Feelings have always been recognized as great forces in the reaching of goals. Cyrus Gordon, whose studies in the archeology of Bible lands have provided cause for considerable discussion, made an observation pertinent to the theme of emotion. (BEFORE THE BIBLE, Harper and Row, 1963, p. 299). Calling attention to the personality of King David, Dr. Gordon pointed out that this warrior-king was also a singer, poet and dancer. This was not a contradiction in character because parallels are found in other ancient Mediterranean cultures where music, poetry and dancing were part of the "complex for training the troops." The archaeologist goes on to point out such parallels as "the warlike character of the dance," the recitation of poems from memory while moving in time to the rhythm, and the reference in the ILLIAD to the dancing performed by warriors.

Religious use of emotional expressions - dance, song poetry - are at least as ancient as the expression of feeling as an aid to the art of war and the morale of troops. Religion was felt before the creeds were written.

There is an illustration close to home which seems enlightening to me. To the best of my recollection when Midtown Plaza was opened and the fountains filled the pool at the north end of the mall, there was no provision for turning over to charities the monies that were thrown into the pool. People tossed pennies, nickels and dimes into the pool? Why? Because they had heard of wishing well traditions or lucky fountains in Europe? Whatever the cause of the impulse, there is little reason to believe that this was a gesture of charity. After the coins accumulated, my recollection is that then the Midtown operators announced that the money retrieved would be given to good causes. Even today, the signs are quite inconspicuous that coins in the fountain will be given to charity. People throw away money because they feel like tossing coins into the fountain. If the signs said that the proceeds would go for some evil purpose, the pennies would still shine from the green-tile bottom. Perhaps there is much wishful thinking that pennies cast upon the waters will return (with interest) after many days. But certainly throwing coins in the fountain is emotional impulse, not reasoned decision.

Without religious feeling, religion, literally, is inhuman, because to be human is to be emotional. Yet this reality of human experience is an occasional source of amusement, vexation, frustration, even turmoil in a church where practices and procedures are not dictated by ecclesiastical authority. In the course of worship services I conduct, sometimes the brass cross is the symbol; sometimes it is not. It is placed today to be a visible reminder that religion is felt here, too. Many of you are indifferent to the presence or absence of traditional symbols. But I know too, that there are those among you who feel that the cross should never be absent; and that there are those among you who feel that the cross should never be present. While I shall deal with religious symbols more extensively in a few weeks, I would merely quote a German mystic (quoted by Dean Inge) who said, "The cross of Golgotha cannot rescue thee from the evil one unless it be set up in thine own heart." On the other hand I would observe that the cross is not a particularistic symbol alone that signifies Christian rigidity, intolerance and partialism, but a symbol universal in both space and time in human culture. But this dual observation may not comfort feelings.

The late Professor J. B. Pratt in his book of lasting interest and insight, ETERNAL VALUES IN RELIGION, relates, (p. l48) how he once asked a very ignorant Chinese monk the meaning of a prayer, "Namu Omito Fo which he religiously repeated many hundred times every day. He answered very simply, 'I do not know its meaning. I only know it helps your heart to say it over and over when you are in trouble.'"

But whether everyone likes it or not, thought is a characteristic of religion,too. We place great value on rational thought—that is, we believe religion can make sense to the mind and be subject to the conditions of reasonable thought. Last week, I quoted from Albert Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus," and afterwards was criticized, and rightfully so, for insufficiently explaining why I used it. The quotation was, "we are prey to our own truths, once we have admitted them, we are slave to them."

To claim that our religion is a thoughtful, reasonable one is to compel us to think and talk about religion on the grounds of thought and reason. We want to know meanings. Only in our irrational moments can we say with the Chinese monk, "I do not know its meaning. I only know it helps your heart to say it over and over when you are in trouble." Because we are committed to reasonable thought, we have been freed, for the most part, from irrationality of feeling without thought.

I have been helped to understand this about myself and ourselves by a rather remarkable anecdote. For some time, entirely without my subscription or real interest, I have been on the mailing list for an extremely fundamentalist religious magazine. In something of a vague, courteous gesture to the unknown person who believes I need this, I do leaf through it before tossing it in the round file whose contents soon reach the city incinerator. The following item, I did clip, however: The item carries this caption, "God helps listener to sell his real estate." The item relates how a family who moved to a new location were carrying a difficult financial burden because they had been unable to sell their property in the city where they had lived previously. In a letter to the magazine, the man wrote how he and his wife had been praying about this real estate dilemma—and the following are the exact words printed, "I promised God that if he would open a way for me to sell it, I would give him 10 per cent commission. The same real estate agent that had said he would be unable to sell at the price I had asked called me long distance and advised me he had a buyer. The price he said they were willing to pay was approximately $500 more than I had originally asked. Only God could arrange such a transaction as this."

I have no doubt that certainty of God's special favor provided a warm, emotional glow for the seller—it's nice to make more money than you hoped for, particularly by way of heavenly salesmanship. But again to return to my acceptance of Camus' words "that we are prey to our own truths, once we have admitted them, we are slave to them," such impulsive nonsense is not for us.

Attempting to look in a reasonable way at whatever God's nature may be, the real estate transaction presents numerous problems: Why didn't God arrange the transaction at the asking price? The seller would still have been pleased and should have still given God 10 per cent commission; the buyer would have been $500 better off. This would have been a far more cooperative arrangement except for the real estate agent, who must have been both persistent and persuasive and got none of the credit, although I assume he got his commission in spite of divine brokerage.

When you think about it – is this God's nature, to help certain individuals out of a financial difficulty, while ignoring the prayers of hundreds of millions of others? I am at a loss to see how any thoughtful person, of whatever religious affiliation could say "Yes, God operates this way in commercial transactions."

I am captured by the reasonable belief that this attitude is a gross and offensive way of recognizing the nature of the creative and sustaining power that resides in our Universe. I do not quarrel with anyone's right to so believe; but to me it is utterly unreasonable and I am slave to such a way of thinking.

All persons have feelings. We would have similar feelings as the persons who hold such religious beliefs utterly unlike our own. The difference is interpretation. Individual minds attach different interpretations to the feelings.

Then too, tradition and culture, as well as our individual emotions play a strong directing role in the way our minds will interpret emotions that sometimes simmer, sometimes burn, sometimes boil. An Islamic mystic who has an overwhelming emotional experience of the reality of the divine, interprets the experience in Islamic terms – Allah is one, there is no other; and Mohammed is his prophet. The magnificent religious experiences of the ancient Hebrews recorded in the Psalms are interpretations guided by their belief in the one God of Israel. Roman Catholic mystics interpret the overwhelming emotional experience in the structure of the Trinity, the sacraments and the saints. Protestants may have a vision of the saving Christ of the gospels, the saving presence of God in the person of His son. Other mystics express the feeling in nature hymns or a poetic apprehension of a mystic one Humanity. But Buddhists do not have Christian religious experience; Christians do not interpret religion in Moslem terms.

The Free Church in a Changing World attempts to interpret these experiences in ways that answer the demands of reason and knowledge, because we profess to accept the requirements of scholarly disciplines and reason in our time. We should not be contemptuous of emotion because we are then scornful of a large part of the human experience. It is our task to interpret the emotions with knowledge and reason. That this may not always be comforting; that this sometimes requires a regretful farewell to comforting, but outmoded religious expressions may be an astringent experience, but it should not diminish the requirements to which we must measure. That is our way now; there is no turning back. Our thoughtful search must be for ways to announce the truth as we find it. We aspire both to integrity in the ways we think and honest expression for the ways we feel.

The Free Church in a Changing World seeks the reconciliation of creative thinking and emotional fulfillment without sacrificing either one. We should be lifted toward this task by the words Thomas Jefferson once used, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never win be." (quoted by Hofstadter, ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE, p. 300).

This leads us to the third point today. Truth, at least for us, must meet certain dimensions established by a reasonable mind and be so in tune with our feelings that our efforts to make truth live will not be impotent or irrelevant.

Pilate asked the perennial question, "What is Truth?" No answer has ever been stated that would satisfy all or even a large part of those who seek. J. B. Pratt, (op cit. p. 133), pointed to something we may look for when he wrote, "The things we believe must be true if we can see the truth; but if they are to have power over our emotional and volitional natures they must be made to glow with reality feeling." In that sentence he compressed several of the various measures of truth:

That the reality we experience can be accurately perceived in our minds.
That those beliefs which we hold cohere with each other.

In the Free Church, most of us have been particularly congenial to pragmatic truth – we are guided to actions which demonstrate that the proposition we believed was true. In the way we live, a truth must not only be accurate in its mental form but prove to be true when we act in terms of the belief.

Many of us are aware that there is a current of criticism in the flowing river of Free Churches to the effect that we are becoming increasingly "political." I believe this is inaccurately phrased. It seems to me that we are becoming increasingly issue-conscious. That is, in the course of the continuously erupting crises that involve people in their lives today, if our religious associations have vitality then there should be continuous displays of actable truth. If truth is not actable in terms of current issues, when or how can it be?

In her famous biography, "John Adams and the American Revolution," Catherine Drinker Bowen remarked in the Prologue, (xiv), "War with Britain was not a revolution – only a consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1755 - 15 years – and before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington."

This resembles what our way of truth is doing to us—making us issue conscious. Even as the American Revolution was in the minds and hearts of people for years before its expression, so the growing consciousness that religion can make sense and the application of reasonable thought to our emotions are setting us on a glad journey of actable truth. The opposite of feeling is not reason – the opposite of feeling is insensibility or unfeeling. The values we hold intellectually are quite in accord with the feelings we profess about the value and dignity of all persons. Thus our ways of truth have deepest meaning when they take form in the conduct we exhibit in the issues that matter.

In conclusion I would remind you of two statements. The first is from the Commission Report, THE FREE CHURCH IN THE CHANGING WORLD, (p. 27-28) "The religious enterprise should be one of active and fearless thought as well as purification of feeling and commitment of will."

The second is from that remarkable New Testament letter called 1st John, the fourth verse of the second chapter. Speaking of the God in whom this unknown Christian believes, he wrote, "He who says, 'I know him,' but disobeys his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected."

That unknown of an ancient world put a plain and simple stamp on the most difficult, but also most fulfilling of all religious experiences, that the truth is not in us unless we act it out in life.