Lent 2026 Day 28 – Emotion and Reason
Earlier this Lenten season, I expressed some thoughts and questions I had about the influence of the Holy Spirit. Does He communicate with us through feelings? Thoughts? Reason? I think it's all of the above. Chapter 1 of the book “The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith” by Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens helped me understand this.
The Givens make the case that there are different ways of knowing. We can learn much through reason, but not everything. We can learn much through emotion, but not everything. Reason and emotion don't have to be mutually exclusive, nor should they be.
They use art as an example. Reason tells us how a beautiful painting was created, but it cannot tell us what it means or how we are supposed to interpret or react to it.
In most of life’s greatest transactions, where the stakes are the highest, it is to the heart that we rightly turn, although not in utter isolation from the rational and reasonable. But whom to marry, when to discipline a child, when to let go of a dream, what sacrifices to make and promises to keep—these are decisions best made when emotion is moderated but not obliterated by reason, by logic, by “scientific” thinking. And these decisions are certainly made, not in the absence of truth, but in recognizing those very truths which logic and science may be powerless to detect. (“The Crucible of Doubt,” Chapter 1)
I had begun to think that some past experiences where I believed I felt the influence of the Holy Spirit testifying of truth to my heart might have been just me feeling really good at the time. After the fact, it would be so easy for me to rationalize them into irrelevance. But I cannot do that. Because if I am honest with myself, those experiences were more than just me being overly emotional. They were God communing with me. I know this because in those moments, I felt His love for me.
Do a camera, a DNA sequencer, and a full-spectrum lab report provide the truest, the richest account of who I am? Or do my spouse, my children, and my circle of friends? Love does not blur the reality behind the appearance. Love reveals reality. So why would we privilege scientific rationality over our intuitive, emotion-laden ways of perceiving truth? (“The Crucible of Doubt,” Chapter 1)
#100DaysToOffload (No. 155) #faith #Lent #Christianity