Another aspect of post modernism is the elevating of feelings over fact. Stemming from the idea that truth is based on one's own perceptions, rather than on objective reality, how a person feels about something is reason good enough to believe it as true.
Again this is contrary to the Bible's view of truth and reality. Truth is objective, not subjective. Objective refers to that which exists outside of ourselves, while subjective has to do with how we perceive things from our own perspective. While it is true that we all perceive things differently to an extent, reality exists apart from ourselves.
I am concerned that the Bible is all too often interpreted via feelings. Years ago a leader of a congregation told me that his conviction regarding a particular controversial biblical topic was based on his gut feeling. While it is possible that his feelings were in line with what the Bible objectively taught, should those feelings be allowed to dictate what our life standard should be?
While we may not overtly state that we hold certain convictions based on feeling rather than clear Biblical teaching, I have a feeling(!) that we do this more often than we might readily admit.
2 comments:
Hi, Alan I hope you don't mind me commenting...It's Michelle, hello. Anyway I have a question regarding your thing or maybe I'll call it Torah blog sorry I just don't know what to call it.(first I'll say I enjoyed and agree)but I'm curious as to how you would judge if someone is going there and how would you discern whether someone is coming from an opinion or a biblical point of view or where they are confused between feelings and biblical fact.. How would you discern this? Is your comment based on a certain people or random??? I'm just trying to understand and learn and maybe squeeze out whatever else might still be down there.. Thanks
Michelle,
That's a really important question. What makes the situation difficult is that we have such a high view of people's own personal opinions rather than valuing first and foremost what the Bible says. Thankfully God, the Author of the Bible is alive and longs to help us with this. We need to pray that he helps us discern the difference between his Truth and people opinions. But there are no shortcuts. We need to regularly and seriously study the Bible in order to understand it.
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