I read an article today about “How to survive with an intellectual faith in an emotional church.” The fact is brought up that many, many churches today place a lot of emphasis, whether intentionally or unintentionally, on showing a great amount of emotion in worship, but in the midst of this there are members of those churches who don’t always feel that emotional, fire-like response to music, song, or group prayer. For them, intellectual spirituality – reading and analyzing passages of scripture, researching different ideas and views of religion, discussing one’s own faith – rather than emotional spirituality is what really helps them develop and understand their faith.
C.S. Lewis’ essay “On the Reading of Old Books” is referenced; in it Lewis points out his own preference:
For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.
While I don’t wholly relate to that last part (I do not often find myself working through tough bits of theology whilst smoking a pipe), I have on many occasions experienced that “nothing happens” phenomenon…And it can be quite disconcerting. Sometimes I think something is wrong with me; I think I’m not doing something right; I wonder why I don’t have tears streaming down my face or why I don’t have that perpetual happiness that others seem to possess and are always sure to make known (which, I admit, sometimes annoys me…I’m working on that).
But then I remember that, though we are all human, we are also individuals; each of us, though we are all created in God’s image, possesses a unique and complex network of qualities that absolutely no one else on earth or in time did, do or will ever possess. Like children of their earthly parents, God’s born-again children each display different aspects of God’s character.
Each is different, but all are related, and only by working with and for each other while remembering that each of us is a unique creation can we come close to reflecting the body of Christ.
12 Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ…17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 19 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. (1 Corinthians 12:12, 17-19; NIV)
Sometimes I have to force myself to remember that my usually unemotional personality does not make me an inadequate Christian. The fact that I don’t raise my hands while singing in church, that at times it’s difficult for me to empathize with people, that I simply will never be that happy-all-the-time person you see at nearly every church – These things do not “count against me;” there’s no metaphorical tally being kept of my emotional responses to the experiences of this world. I am the way I am because God made me this way, and I believe He did so for a reason.
4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. (1 Corinthians 12:4-6; NIV)
Photo: Ponder
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