My Virgo horoscope in the newspaper read, “Before agreeing or disagreeing with anyone’s opinion, see whether you
can sense the feelings behind them. Emotional attunement will lead you
somewhere lucky.” More often than not these little gems are counter to
Biblical teaching. For Paul, looking at feelings and sentiment is not a
substitute for knowledge and understanding, nor will it lead you to luck. “And this is my prayer: that your love may
abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that
you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the
day of Christ,…” (Phil 1:9-10 NIV)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Unfortunately, the horrorscope speaks to more people of our day than does Paul. The world has a very real and dangerous problem growing. It has lost track of honest thinking. Paul was talking about honest thinking, the process of reasoning information through all of its corollaries and associations to its inherently logical conclusions. His way of thinking builds truth upon truth as closely as faulty human minds can approximate truths. It is a hard and arduous process because it counters the fallen human condition in two ways.
-----First, and maybe foremost, fallen human nature does not like being changed. It has no problem with change itself. It will change if it decides change is profitable. And it twice more loves to change others, for that tends to increase power, position, and opportunity. Certainly profitable! But when insight and knowledge (as Paul would call good reasoning) strike upon new truths, the thinker is compelled by them to conform. Otherwise, he must either abandon reason, or know himself as deceitful.
-----Second, and maybe why fallen human nature does not like being changed, is impatience. Self determined change is not a problem because all of the why’s and therefore’s about it were addressed in the process of determining to change. But when change is thrown upon one, he must explore its differences to integrate them into what of himself must remain the same. This takes time. Often lots. We don’t like time consuming efforts. They are costs. We like profit. We like fun.
-----It is more fun to maintain a coherent emotional set rather than a well reasoned philosophy. So, instead of spending life ironing wrinkles out of philosophical systems to ever more closely approximate answers for truth‘s questions, most people merely pick from mankind’s endless parade of ideas those which seem to satisfy their own moods. That consumes little time or effort. Moreover, if they are lucky and or good at it, they can construct very profitable realities from such cherry pickin's, even learning how to reason deceit. Which is the rub. Deceit fits well with fallen human nature. It so well produces rationalization as a substitute for good, honest thinking that most people don’t even know the difference. Then they grow into their own decceit, adding even more deceptive ideas to the parade. And well, that’s how the world works.
-----Still, it is profitable to sense the feelings behind other people’s opinions. But not for emotional attunement. What is true always remains the relevant issue of any situation. If emotions are not confined to being merely consequential, then thought does not rise to being merely reasoning. Clear and honest reasoning is the process of knowledge, understanding, and insight regardless of its difficulty. Knowing the mixes and matches of ideas and emotions behind another person’s opinion provides better insights for more appropriate responses to those opinions. Emotional attunement may lead to some luck, but honest thinking will lead to the fortunes of truth.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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