Overanalyzing the experience of God
You are in church, singing praises during worship, feeling this overwhelming love and joy for God, and suddenly, the feelings shift and you begin to ask yourself, “What is this? Why am I feeling this way? Is my heart truly in the right place or is all this just a part of routine?” and the feeling is gone. The moment you step outside yourself to contemplate your joy, the enjoyment quickly fades, and you lose sight of the overwhelming emotions you felt just moments before.
“The enjoyment and the contemplation of our inner activities are incompatible,” C.S. Lewis said in his book “Surprised by Joy.” “You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment; for in hope we look to hopes object and we interrupt this by turning around to look at the hope itself.”
Because self-examination causes you to temporarily part from the experience, you can only comprehend a glimpse of your spiritual relationship with God. Similarly to Old Testament Israelites’ hope in Christ being a “shadow of the things to come” (Col. 2:17, ESV). If the Israelites had mistaken this “shadow” as the real thing—Jesus, they would be placing their own thoughts and wills onto God’s promise, distorting it and leading to a dangerous reliance on personal feelings.
“Unfortunately this does not mean that introspection finds nothing,” Lewis said. “On the contrary, it finds precisely what is left behind by the suspension of all our normal activities; and what is left behind is mainly mental images and physical sensations. The great error is to mistake the mere sediment or track or byproduct for the activities themselves.”
The church of America has become hyper-focused on emotionalism: manipulating lights and music to encourage a response during worship, coining the term “cry-night” at church camps, and social media profiles that showcase the perfect relationship with God. None of these things are inherently bad. God created us in His likeness as emotional beings, so the way we worship God should include emotion, but this hyper-fixation on emotion may cause us to desire God less and the emotion more.
“If we're relying on the emotion that we're experiencing or the lack thereof, then we have the complete wrong focus,” Bible teacher Mr. Rappa said. “Where most churches have gone horribly, horribly wrong, is they're trying their hardest to create an emotional high. It is hugely problematic that we even look to the ‘emotional high' for our responsive growth.”
Emotions are unreliable, and when you look to them to measure your spiritual growth, your conclusion will be inaccurate. Rather than asking yourself, “Am I feeling God more?” ask “Am I growing in my love for His Word? Am I growing in my love for His people? Am I growing in my desire to serve?” We do not experience a spiritual high for the sake of the high, but for the opportunity to glorify God in it. When you feel down spiritually, don’t seek out another emotional high, rather seek the Lord who is the giver of emotions.
“A desire is turned not to itself but to its object. Not only that but it owes all its character to its object,” Lewis said. “It is the object which makes the desire harsh or sweet, coarse or choice, ‘high’ or ‘low’. It is the object that makes the desire itself desirable or hateful…I had been equally wrong and supposing that I desire Joy itself. Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my own mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value that of which Joy was desiring. and that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or body at all.”
When you experience an emotional high, appreciate it, and look to the object of your joy. Allow the experience to fade, and walk in the next step of obedience to grow in your faith.
“A spiritual or emotional experience isn't something that we should live in contemplation of,” Mr. Rappa said. “When it happens, we should enjoy the object of that experience, and thank God for the experience. Don't look for the next one. Just live in thankfulness for the one that you've been given.”
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