Our Feelings Can Lie

By Chris Sparks

I love "Star Wars." George Lucas seasoned the whole series with hope, steadfast and sure. His stories succeed at what Chesterton considered the whole reason for fairy tales: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

And yet, for all that, there are some things that Lucas got wrong.

One thing is the central piece of advice to Luke Skywalker: Listen to your feelings. Let your feelings guide you.

Now, sometimes it’s important to do just that. Sometimes, you need to pay attention to your pain. It will lead you to recognize you need medical treatment, or perhaps therapy, or spiritual direction, or Confession, or some other form of assistance. If you’re hurt, it’s important to listen to your feelings.

If you’re well-trained in a particular field or have a special gift or talent for a particular discipline, your feelings may be worth listening to, as well. If you have certain spiritual gifts, the same. Rightly, carefully, and prudently discerned, your feelings can be important guides to the actions of the Spirit of the Lord or the spirit of the enemy, or even to your vocation, to the particular gifts and talents given you by God.

Rightly, carefully, prudently. Those must be your watchwords if you listen to your feelings.

Why?

Your feelings can lie. In fact, they often do.

It’s not really your fault. After all, we’ve all inherited the consequences of original sin — darkened intellect, weakened will, and disordered desires. We grow up and live in communities of similarly wounded people, some cooperating with grace and some not; some wise, some foolish; some good, some bad, and many a muddle in between. Our hope is in the truth that at the root, we are good, created by a good and loving God who sent His Son to save the world, not condemn it. Our hope is in our origin and our end because our present circumstances are a bit of a mess.

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The world, the flesh, and the devil — these are the foes in the present age, and all can have an impact on our feelings. If our bad days, our ill health, or the temptations whispered into our ears become what we listen to, we will go badly astray.

How do we keep clear of these dangers?

Well, we can’t avoid all of it. Inevitably, the Christian life in a fallen world is a combat. Because we are called to love, so too are we called to fight the forces of unlove, of anti-love. The combat isn’t the point of the Christian life, but rather an inevitable side effect. We are called to true love, first and last — that is the point of the Christian life. Saint Faustina explained Christian love well:

Love does not consist in words or feelings, but in deeds. It is an act of the will; it is a gift; that is to say, a giving. The reason, the will, the heart — these three faculties must be exercised during prayer. I will rise from the dead in Jesus, but first I must live in Him. If I do not separate myself from the Cross, then the Gospel will be revealed in me. Jesus in me makes up for all my deficiencies. His grace operates without ceasing. The Holy Trinity grants me Its life abundantly, by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Three Divine Persons live in me. When God loves, He loves with all His Being, with all the power of His Being. If God has loved me in this way, how should I respond — I, His spouse? (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 392).

The Lord has proven His love for us through the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of His Son:

The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him? Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth (1 Jn 3:16-18).

True love is total gift, total generosity — a total gift given with wisdom and virtue, of course, not a simple vomiting forth of everything that passes from within; not a parasitic attachment to those around you; not codependency or mere neediness. True love is generous and free — generous because free. And one of the great tools for detachment, for true freedom, is suffering.

Suffering can show you what’s real and what’s not, what’s truly necessary and what’s not. It can scour away bad habits, unhelpful illusions, and set us free from ourselves, from the world, and from the devil. It can be a means of participating in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, a powerful source of grace. Indeed, suffering can break hearts of stone and leave room for hearts of flesh — the cut given to the branches in order to graft them on to the Vine (see Jn 15:5); the fire purifying the silver (see Prov 17:3; Mal 3:3; Is 48:10). Suffering can make us more like the Crucified Christ.

But suffering can also lead to vices, to unhealthy coping mechanisms, to self-destructive behavior. Suffering can lock us in self-regard, convinced of our superiority because of our pain rather than because of our virtue. We can be tempted to believe in the midst of our suffering that all those who are not similarly suffering, who are apparently all right, who seem to be living happy lives, who seem to be rich, healthy, and successful necessarily owe to us whatever we want. We can come to believe ourselves entitled to draw from others whatever we think we need, rather than acknowledging that the demands of justice and mercy bind even the victims of suffering and evil, and that the Christian life demands forgiveness and generosity, even to those who have wronged us. Suffering done badly can lock us into an endless spiral of suffering, complaining, and self-pity — the sort of thing that, left unchecked, makes life a hell on earth and us an unbearable cross for our neighbors.

Suffering is what we make of it. If we welcome the grace of God, live gratitude for the gifts we’ve received, and hold on to faith, hope, and charity, we, too, can become light to the world, salt of the earth, and the face of God’s mercy to our neighbors. If we lose sight of Christ in the storms of this world, though, it’s easy to slip beneath the waves of pain, suffering, and evil. Thankfully, He’s there with the grace to keep our heads above water, reaching out through the created order, through the Church, and through all those who serve truth, love, and goodness in this world to help us get our footing again. Saint Faustina tells us, “Oh, if only the suffering soul knew how it is loved by God, it would die of joy and excess of happiness! Someday, we will know the value of suffering, but then we will no longer be able to suffer. The present moment is ours” (Diary, 963).

So as we continue to face this time of pandemic, of economic turmoil, isolation, and suffering for so many of us, let us remember the Passion of Christ and know that God knows suffering, as well. Let us remember the forgiveness Christ extended to those who were crucifying Him. Let us not make the mistake of assuming that just because we feel terrible and our neighbors seem fine that all is well. Everyone has crosses to carry; everyone is facing challenges these days. Let us be just and merciful, both to ourselves by addressing our legitimate needs and to others by asking of our neighbors what is appropriate as well as being generous to our neighbors according to the demands of both justice and mercy.

Pray for me, that I may practice what I preach. I’ll pray for you.

Jesus, I trust in You.

Chris Sparks serves as senior book editor for the Marian Fathers. He is the author of the Marian Press book How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question.

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash.

 

 

LAMDVD

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