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Source: (consider it) Thread: The role of emotion in religion
Gamaliel
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This comes out of the thread about Mary. The extent to which we can legitimately use emotional response as a yardstick in determining what we sanction or believe.

It ain't a dig at EE, but it comes from some observations he made - viz. that his lack of emotional response in an attempt to 'pray to Mary' acted as an obstacle - in his view - against the practice.

I found myself wondering what would have happened had he had some kind of 'ecstatic experience' instead?

Now, I don't want to single him out - I'm simply using it as an example to get a discussion going.

Because on the other hand, Mousethief argued strongly against the emotions coming into the equation at all ... at least as far as I could see. Yet I know for a fact that the Orthodox do get emotional and weep buckets when they sing 'Oh Virgin Pure, Immaculate ...' the 'Rejoice oh Unwedded Bride' song.

I'm Welsh, so a certain amount of hwyl and sentimentality doesn't bother me at all ... in fact, it's part of my make-up. I'm allowed to be sentimental ...

But how do we use or harness emotions and what role do they or can they play in spiritual discernment - or otherwise?

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Horseman Bree
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One of the points to be made about meditative or contemplative practices is that controlling emotion is key.

At the other end of the scale, Pentecostal-style emotiveness (e.g. speaking in tongues) clearly relies on an emotional component.

I think it is arguable that containing or expanding emotive expression is part of most people's religious experience. Why else would "we" pay so much attention to the emotional experiences of the Saints or the austere practices of certain monastic orders?

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Jack o' the Green
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I find emotions a bit of a problematic paradox for want of a much better phrase! On the one hand, I don't think we can carry on doing very much long term without some emotional pay back whether that's going to the gym, praying or eating healthily. Will power on its own can only keep us going for so long. Also, emotions can tell us something valuable and truthful about a situation. The feelings of empathy or revulsion when seeing a vulnerable person being harmed for example. Emotions give us an insight or perspective into the situation which a purely rational observation wouldn't. Similarly, I can't ever imagine listening to music 'rationally'. Those sorts of experiences are not irrational. Perhaps they are better described as trans-rational. However, I also feel that strong emotions can also distort our perceceptions - which shouldn't be a surprise since any strong emotion inhibits thinking. These can be anything from falling in love to the emotions whipped up at political conferences or rallies, to the brooding hatred of a perceived slight which blows up out of all proportion.
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Ad Orientem
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quote:
Originally posted by Yonatan:
I find emotions a bit of a problematic paradox for want of a much better phrase! On the one hand, I don't think we can carry on doing very much long term without some emotional pay back whether that's going to the gym, praying or eating healthily. Will power on its own can only keep us going for so long. Also, emotions can tell us something valuable and truthful about a situation. The feelings of empathy or revulsion when seeing a vulnerable person being harmed for example. Emotions give us an insight or perspective into the situation which a purely rational observation wouldn't. Similarly, I can't ever imagine listening to music 'rationally'. Those sorts of experiences are not irrational. Perhaps they are better described as trans-rational. However, I also feel that strong emotions can also distort our perceceptions - which shouldn't be a surprise since any strong emotion inhibits thinking. These can be anything from falling in love to the emotions whipped up at political conferences or rallies, to the brooding hatred of a perceived slight which blows up out of all proportion.

Yeah, that sounds about right to me.
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Evensong
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:

But how do we use or harness emotions and what role do they or can they play in spiritual discernment - or otherwise?

Emotions are part of our humanity, just as our intellect, our physicality and our souls are.

To repress them in religion is to be only partially redeemed. To let them control you is to be only partially redeemed.

A hard one.

Meh

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Gamaliel
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That sounds about right to me too, Yonatan and Ad Orientem, and also Evensong.

So I s'pose the issue is where we set the boundaries and where we apply 'control'.

I've certainly felt 'emotion' in both RC and Orthodox services, but there's something more restrained about Orthodoxy iconography, for instance, which appeals to me as it seems more balanced somehow.

That said, there's something about the clarity of some of the RC liturgical texts that has a certain 'ring' and beauty about it ...

Same with some Anglican liturgies and I daresay lots of others besides.

I s'pose it's the deliberate attempt to whip up or harness the emotions in some way that is where the trouble starts.

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IngoB

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Emotions belong to the appetitive rather than apprehensive powers of the soul in scholasticism. I think that this is a very helpful characterisation. Is it right or wrong to have an appetite for pasta rather than pizza? Neither, normally. Is it right or wrong to have an appetite for child porn? It is wrong. Is it possible to develop an appetite for beer or coffee, if one does not have it now? Yes, it is possible. In the same way, emotions sometimes are a "matter of taste" where there is no right or wrong as such, but sometimes they can be judged against a standard of faith and morals. It falls to reason to judge this apart from the emotion itself. Furthermore, emotions are not generally unchangeable, indeed, they are often a matter of habit. They can be trained consciously, and are often trained unconsciously.

So when someone feels nothing, or even revulsion, when performing a devotion to Mary, does that tell us anything about that devotion as such? That could or could not be the case. We need to reason whether this is a "matter of taste", a habit, or an expression of a deeper standard (of faith and morals). Can such emotions be changed? Most likely, yes. An appreciation of such a devotion could be habituated in most people. Whether it should be depends on the judgement of reason that we have made (and personal circumstance / preference).

quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
One of the points to be made about meditative or contemplative practices is that controlling emotion is key.

This comment may give a rather false picture of contemplation, or more precisely, the preparation for contemplation. If an emotional storm rages inside, then the usual control thereof in our everyday life is to "bottle it up": to suppress any external show of emotion and to deaden where possible the internal turmoil. But that is quite counterproductive to contemplation. Rather, if we can imagine emotions throwing us this way or that, then the way to handle this is simply to return to some focus point. Over and over again, a mere re-focusing of attention whenever the mind is getting pushed elsewhere by the inner turmoil, without anything else "added" (like a judgement of what is happening). This tends to "control" the emotions eventually, but in a rather different manner, by a kind of exhaustion against the "proper object" of meditation (to which one returns the mind again and again). Furthermore, the response to contemplative experience is generally emotive, though the expression varies with the personality of the person and to some degree with the techniques being used. This can range from the welling up of some tears (very common) to convulsive ecstasy (not so common). Trying to control this response would be very unnatural.

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EtymologicalEvangelical
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I would just like to point out that I was not talking about 'emotions' in the post referred to in the OP. I was talking about 'experience' of which 'emotion' is a subset.

After all, consciousness is an experience. Would anyone say that "my basic awareness of myself is an emotion"? I think not.

Everything in our waking lives is experienced, even the most logical thought. Therefore it is an error to assume that when one is talking about experience, it must be interpreted as 'emotion' (or 'subjectivity') and, even worse, 'sentimentality' (which, of course, is a highly loaded word).

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Zach82
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Fair enough, EE, though I think it would help if you gave us an idea of how you think experience ought to play into theological discourse, especially how it interacts with the conclusions drawn from scripture or reason.

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Panda
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I must admit I largely distrust emotion in worship. I have never yet raised my hands while singing, because I have never felt moved to. For me, it would need to be unconscious to be valid, otherwise I'd be doing it for its own sake, and then it wouldn't be anything to do with worship, it would have been a decision to do so, for some other reason. I would already be analysing it - see, I'm hopeless.

I recognise that in worship, some people are moved to close their eyes, sway from side to side, raise their arms or anything else. Without judging them, to me it looks like an emotional response, and if it were me I would worry that my brain has taken a back seat, and therefore I am not longer worshipping God with all my mind, as well as my heart and my soul.

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Rosa Winkel

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Emotion can happen, but when it becomes the goal we're into dodgy territory. For many worship becomes the same as them feeling emotions.

I went down this route once. It's when I realised what I was doing that I wondered whether my spiritual experiences were simply that of emotions, and I began to call the existence of God into question.

I believe that we should allow emotions to occur, but not plan for them.

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Zach82
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quote:
Emotion can happen...
Don't be silly. I'm an Anglican.

[Biased]

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orfeo

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High or Low, though?

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Gamaliel
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That's fair enough, EE and thanks for the correction, I had rather emphasised emotion rather than 'experience' in the OP and recognise that an 'experience' need not carry a heavy emotional charge ...

The OP was triggered by your post on the Mary thread but wasn't meant be a detailed dissection of it.

Thinking about it, though, the fact that I'd defaulted to a position where I was considering emotions in general rather than 'experiences' which may or may not have an affective element, indicates that I may well have been exposed to an imbalance in the past.

I can see Ingo's point on this one and can understand how it would be wrong to try to clamp down on an outbreak of tears or even (rarely) convulsions in response to the silence of contemplative prayer ... but I suspect in such instances there would generally be someone who knows how to deal with these things ...

On Panda's point about raised hands, swaying from side to side etc. I think it is possible to become habituated into that. This was certainly my experience in charismatic circles. I was pretty put-off - repulsed even - by charismatic style worship when I first encountered it but gradually I became acclimatised to it and began to do the hand-raising and eye-closing and the swaying and much else besides.

The same would hold true, I suspect, had I encountered Roman Catholicism instead. I'd have probably baulked at prayers to Mary and the Saints initially but gradually become acclimatised to these practices in the same way as I did to the worship style of charismatic evangelicalism.

I may well have had 'experiences' too in a more Catholic setting in the same way as I had 'experiences' - real or imagined, good, bad or indifferent - in a charismatic evangelical one.

I would say, though, that there is a self-hypnotic tendency in certain forms of charismatic spirituality and I've heard the same thing said of certain liturgical practices ... but I wouldn't say that either was necessarily a full-on form of self-hypnosis.

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Gamaliel
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Perhaps, then, I ought to change tack and talk about an 'experiential response' rather than an 'emotional response.'

How do we validate those?

What role - if any - should the experiential play when 'we walk by faith, not by sight.'

Or, if we see them as having a role to play, how much weight should we put on them?

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Let us with a gladsome mind
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Barnabas62
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There's some confusion in the categorisation. Viewing emotions as somehow a separate category is striking me, increasingly, as a kind of dualism.

The ancient Jewish "shalom", which I suppose we get closest to by the word "wholeness" rather than "peace" seems to me to transcend this sort of dualism. The notion of our emotions being somehow opposed to our logical thinking processes can create a kind of fear of what we are actually like. The awareness of what we call emotion also happens in the brain. We love, we hate, we fear, we feel secure; these states are complex responses to often complex stimuli.

The language of "emotional intelligence", of "living closer to our feelings" seems to have a kind of handle on these things. To fear our emotions seems as crazy to me as fearing our attempts at logical thought. It's all going on together.

In that context, to be afraid of the expression of emotions in religious worship seems about as daft to me as to be afraid of the challenge to our thinking and behaviour which can arise in the same setting. Something real is going on when our emotions are stirred. What is it?

What we fear of course is the idea of being manipulated, or driven out of control. Have you ever seen the rage of an over-controlled person? That is also something to be concerned about. The suppression of emotions and emotional awareness can produce the most baleful of fruit.

It is interesting that the fruit of the Spirit includes self-control. But why should we think this just applies to this zone of the emotions which we are tempted to partition away? The misconceptions which lead to loss of self-control can just as easily be associated with our attempts at logical thought. We can rationalise our perceived needs; we're very good at it.

I think the journey towards greater wholeness involves understanding our emotions, recognising that they tell us something about what it going on both in us and outside us. Our emotions can be good friends, can point us in the direction of greater wisdom and self-awareness.

Often the biggest challenge is getting to know ourselves better. In that area as well, we know in part. A failure to understand the significance of our emotions to us, or worse, a desire to suppress that, will help to keep us ignorant of our very selves.

[ 05. May 2013, 15:55: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

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cliffdweller
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Perhaps, then, I ought to change tack and talk about an 'experiential response' rather than an 'emotional response.'

How do we validate those?

What role - if any - should the experiential play when 'we walk by faith, not by sight.'

Or, if we see them as having a role to play, how much weight should we put on them?

Wesley is really the one who added "experience" (which he called "experimental religion") to Scripture, tradition, and reason as a source of authority, no doubt influenced by his own "burning heart" experience. Wesley saw the role of experience as a "confirming" one. So you're not using experience to develop new doctrines. Rather, experience plays a role in confirming what you've already come to know thru the other three. So, for example, you learn of God's goodness or God's grace through Scripture, tradition, and reason. You then may have experiences of God's goodness which "confirm" that for you as an aid to faith. But experience divorced from the other three is unreliable-- you don't develop new doctrines based entirely on experience alone.

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ThunderBunk

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We are called to worship God with all our heart as well as every other part of ourselves.

We are made in the image of God, complete with our emotions. To exclude emotions from worship and from our wider life of faith is to be less than human. Much less than human, critically less than human. Emotions are not to faith what the appendix is to the body.

On the other hand, emotion which is expressed entirely on its own and with no intermingling of the other aspects of our humanity is repellent, because it is inhuman when isolated from those other aspects.

Wholeness, aka integrity, is the way to God. I don't achieve it more than fleetingly, but I am entirely persuaded that this is the case.

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Gamaliel
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Good observations, I particularly like Cliffdweller's take on the Wesleyan 'quadrilateral' - and I suspect that EE was using it in a similar way ...

I think integration in the way that Barnabas62 describes it is the way we should aim - integrating heart and mind. I always find that poetry, for instance, moves me most when there is a happy balance between form and feeling.

When I grow up I want to be like Barnabas ...

[Biased]

I do believe that experience can 'confirm' or reinforce what we have come to believe, but at the same time I'm wary of isolating it unduly from the other factors and influences - and I'm sure Cliffdweller and others here would agree with that, too.

As Mousethief observed on t'other thread, the Mormons use 'experience' or the kind of warm, fuzzy feelings someone may get if they ask God to confirm to them that the Book of Mormon and their whole warped package is true, as an indication of the truth of their message.

I suspect what happens in that particular case is that's something of an adrenalin rush that people experience - particularly those who have grown up with some kind of knowledge/acquaintance with the mainstream Christian faith. There's something 'transgressive' and vaguely exciting about 'pushing the boat out' in some way, about moving beyond the comfort-zone as it were. I suspect what the Mormon missionaries are doing is zoning in on that and using the 'feelings' that are evoked as proof positive that God is at work or that there's a conviction that their message is true. In that respect, it's a form of warped Wesleyanism ... taking the 'strange warmth' and make it stranger ... or making it a stranger to sound doctrine.

I'm reminded of the sons of Aaron offering 'strange fire' before the Lord.

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Zach82
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Just for an idea of how this sort of thing plays out- whenever the sacraments are discussed here on the Ship, the debate will break down between the people who feel in their hearts that Jesus is with them when they do communion with pizza and mountain dew, and people who look in the scriptures to see where God has promised his presence.

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leo
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quote:
Originally posted by FooloftheShip:
We are called to worship God with all our heart as well as every other part of ourselves.

But the 'heart' in the Judaism from which that command comes was believed to be the seat of all thought - in our terms, 'the brain'.

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ThunderBunk

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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by FooloftheShip:
We are called to worship God with all our heart as well as every other part of ourselves.

But the 'heart' in the Judaism from which that command comes was believed to be the seat of all thought - in our terms, 'the brain'.
So what, then, is the distinction between "heart" and "mind"? What point is being made by the distinction? Does the point translate in any meaningful way to the northern European post-Enlightenment mind? And indeed into English?

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ThunderBunk

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quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Just for an idea of how this sort of thing plays out- whenever the sacraments are discussed here on the Ship, the debate will break down between the people who feel in their hearts that Jesus is with them when they do communion with pizza and mountain dew, and people who look in the scriptures to see where God has promised his presence.

Do I spy a false dichotomy being constructed? I think I do. When Christ promised to 'tabernacle' in us with the Father, it wasn't in some kind of monstrance - a part of us set aside. It was in us, in the squishy, uncomfortable bits, including our emotions, as much as it was in the bits we prefer to show to God.

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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".

Foolish, potentially deranged witterings

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balaam

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
High or Low, though?

The emotions or the churchmanship? [Biased]

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Mudfrog
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Emotions can be affected in response to God, as our personal response to a reading, a prayer, a sacrament. Sometimes our emotions are affected by our repentance, our sense of forgiveness, by the very presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Emotions should never be the means to 'feeling religious' - they are the outcome of a spiritual experience.

Do we not feel sorrow for sin?
Do we not feel relief at forgiveness/absolution?
Do we not feel joy in praise, peace in prayer, love for Jesus?
Do we not feel excitement at the thought of the hope that is within us?

Can we simply be sterile and cerebral in worship which surely is an encounter with the living God, with his Son, our Saviour?

Have you never read the psalms?

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LeRoc

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I think there are different ways of expressing emotions. I am a farmer's boy from the North-East of the Netherlands. We usually don't express our emotions a lot, and when we do it's only when we really mean it. I think there is a certain 'genuineness' to this that can be rather nice.

I've been to evangelical/pentacostal a number of times where basically everyone was waving their hands with an 'extatic' look on their face. I have to admit that my first reaction was: 'fake emotionalism', but I realized that I had to let go of my prejudice and accept that these feelings are at least partly genuine.

Still, this kind of services isn't for me. I tried to participate in the handwaving once (for a short time). I felt very hypocritical, expressings emotions that I didn't have. But if I wouldn't participate, I would stick out as the only one who didn't go along with this. So obviously I don't go to this kind of services much.

However, I don't think it's right to assume that people who don't show their emotions in this way are 'cerebral'. I went to church this morning: there was a beautiful sermon that made me see a Bible passage in a new way, there were nice songs, and during the Intercessions people shared some moving stuff and supported eachother. I definitely had emotions there, even if I didn't show them much.

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no prophet's flag is set so...

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I have felt that emotional experiences have somehow replaced the more robust aesthetic approaches to faith and religious experience. By this I mean, the immediate felt emotions, those which we can label. Such immediate emotional experiences, even if overwhelming do not seem firm enough to trust for making judgements.

There has been a dumbing down of religion to the level of feeling in a whole raft of consumer-oriented marketting of religious joy (I think this is what Oprah sells too). I often hear people talking about what they personally get from their church, how it makes them feel, the warm glow etc. and wonder how it got to the point that what we personally 'get' from an experience of a mass, liturgy or church service is the only thing of importance. No wonder so much of church is empty for so many.

But there is something deeper about emotion, something about its access to beauty and truth which informs knowledge, and it can be reached through sensory experiences and emotions, but it mustn't be overwhelmed or swamped by the immediate feelings, rather use feelings as data with which to inform the mind.

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Kaplan Corday
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quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:


Have you never read the psalms?

The psalmist often comes across as just bloody miserable and confused.

Was it the Moravians who placed orthopathy on the same level as orthodoxy and orthopraxis?

Discussion upstream of the Book of Mormon's being touted by Mormons as somehow self-authenticating through the response which it engenders in readers, made me think of Calvin's explanation of how we know the Bible to be the Word of God: testimonium spiritus internum. How is that experientially different from what the Mormons are pushing?

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Barnabas62
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Inner conviction is a personal matter. It only becomes a group matter when a group discovers they all have a similar inner conviction.

The group confirmation does not automatically make such shared responses true, nor does it make them false.

Much of this argument explores the premise that an emotional response cannot be trusted to be a true response. Well, there is this thing called a test.

The first time I told my wife I loved her, I was deeply convinced of the truth of it. However, my understandings of truth and love were in both cases considerably less than they are now. Now when I tell my wife I love her, all that richness of understanding has been added to the words. We discovered that falling in love was a step on the way to long term loving. The strong feelings and the equally strong commitment have reinforced together the life journey we have made.

I think there are strong parallels in the journey of faith. It is indeed a matter of the whole self, heart and mind and soul and strength, engaged in a pilgrimage of loving God and our neighbour as ourselves.

Both/and, Shipmates. So Blaise Pascal is half right.

quote:
The heart has reasons that reason cannot know
That can elevate the heart too far. I don't want to do that either. Bringing both heart and reason into harmony can be a long journey. I guess in some sense each needs to be both respected and verified on the way to trusting the truth of things. When I talk about inner convictions based on my almost forty years of faith pilgrimage and over 47 years of journeying together with my wife, I know on deeper levels what I'm talking about than I did at the start.

So I don't want to knock experiences, either my own or other peoples, whether I think they are caused by emotional or intellectual apprehension.

I once came out of a celebratory event where there was much high praise going on. I was very angry, was absolutely sure I was in the presence of emotional manipulation. I stomped around the place in a foul mood for almost half an hour then joined up with my wife, who was concerned for me. After I'd unpacked my anger, she said something I have never forgotten. "People were expressing joy. How can you possibly know the extent to which God was involved in their experience? Aren't you just feeling bad because they were joyful and you were not?"

She was quite right; particularly about the last point. I had spent half an hour reasoning my way to the intellectual conviction that this was manipulation, and that was how I'd explained it to my wife. But I'd discounted a source of my own strong reaction. I was "outside" the joy and so had some need to minimise its significance for those who were "inside" it. Like a child told to stay in the house, I was looking out of the window at other children joyfully at play. I was jealous of the joy.

I'm not universalising that experience either. But it taught me something profound about rushing to judgment over the experiences of others.

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Adeodatus
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I'm deeply wary of emotions in religion. Emotions are fickle and unreliable. If we define "love" or "joy" as emotions, then what I love or rejoice in today, I could feel utterly indifferent about tomorrow. And if religion becomes primarily about emotion, then where does that leave virtues such as duty, or obedience, or perseverance?

And when was the last time I was asked "What do you think about this?", rather than "What do you feel about this?"

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Barnabas62
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Emotions are fickle and unreliable.

They can be, of course. It depends how much weight you put on them. I suppose the distinction is that they are more reactions to matters of the "now" than they are reflections on the matters of the "now". But what are they unreliable about? Certainly not our immediate personal reactions.

They can teach us things about ourselves that we do not fully appreciate. And in some case would rather not know. There is much self-deception in rationalising. It is not the same as being rational but we sure can kid ourselves successfully that it is.

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ThunderBunk

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What of the unconscious? I suspect that this is what we're really talking about: the place of responses not programmed and validated by the creators of a particular liturgy or the doctrinal formulations of a particular denomination.

To me, the most important characteristic of the unconscious in this context is its capacity for simultaneous lack and excess: it is always both excessively present and notable by its absence. The unconscious is never quite where the conscious mind is, and therefore appears absent. On the other hand, it is powerfully and unequivocally where it is, and that power feels excessive to the conscious mind because it cannot control it.

Well, that's partly what we're talking about; some emotional responses are written into the script: a certain form of ecstasy in pentecostal worship and in the Easter vigil, deep sorrow and even weeping during the Good Friday liturgy. What do we make of these? What happens if we are involved in these liturgies but fail to have the prescribed emotional responses?

Barnabas62's posting above gives an answer to the last question, though I would personally want to say that the outrage at experiencing the extent to which emotional responses are written into liturgical structures is as valid as attributing his anger to finding himself excluded from those responses.

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balaam

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quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Emotions are fickle and unreliable.

They can be, of course. It depends how much weight you put on them.
My emotional response to the liturgy varies, that does not mean the meaning of the words has changed.

We are told to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." (Deuteronomy something) which means everything, emotions included.

The danger comes when those leading the worship expect others to have the same emotional response to the worship that they are having, jumping for joy is one emotional response, storming out angrily is another, sitting there bored when others around you are in ecstasy is a third.

If we allow people to use there emotions in we should expect a variety of responses. Where everyone is acting the same I tend towards scepticism. There may be something in this, or it could be just my emotional response.

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SvitlanaV2
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I think there are different ways of expressing emotions. I am a farmer's boy from the North-East of the Netherlands. We usually don't express our emotions a lot, and when we do it's only when we really mean it. I think there is a certain 'genuineness' to this that can be rather nice.

I've been to evangelical/pentacostal a number of times where basically everyone was waving their hands with an 'extatic' look on their face. I have to admit that my first reaction was: 'fake emotionalism', but I realized that I had to let go of my prejudice and accept that these feelings are at least partly genuine.

I think you've brought in a very important set of factors here, namely race, culture and class. Pentecostalism came into being in the fleeting shadows of American slavery, and its greatest successes have been in the developing world. It draws on pre-Christian, or pre-Protestant, spirituality in ways that speak to many Christians around the world. Primarily European forms of Christianity don't do this, unless we're talking about the influence of the more rational, dualistic Greek ways of thought (?).

Pentecostalism has been described as a culturally avant-garde rather than as a backward movement, because it rejects the mind-body separation that has characterised most of Western Christianity since the Enlightenment. This might explain why it appeals to a certain contemporary thirty and fortysomething middle class constituency; there's a growing interest in asserting the unity of mind and body, and therefore the validity of religious experience. Pentecostal (or charismatic) worship combines beliefs and experience in a postmodern way that gives authority to individual interpretation and validation.*

Speaking personally, I don't think the liberation of the emotions has gone far enough. It needs to be combined with an intellectual liberation. I'm thinking of a genuine priesthood of all believers, rather than the theoretical priesthood we seem to have now. This may be part of a different discussion, though.

* See the Pew Forum's interview with Donald Miller from the University of Southern California.

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Gamaliel
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Who is Mudfrog asking to read the Psalms? All of us? A few of us? Particular individuals?

Sure, there are emotions in the Psalms, and as Kaplan has said, not always joyful ones.

But the Psalms aren't Romantic era poems in the way that the works of Keats, Coleridge or Wordsworth are - I accept that David may well have written some of those attributed to him, but even if he did they weren't composed in 'vacant or in pensive mood' by a moony adolescent sat up on a mountainside with his sheep.

No, the Psalms are largely liturgical texts - the 'hymnbook of the Second Temple'. There is emotion there, certainly - even a sense of dereliction in some of them - but they aren't like worship-songs and choruses in the sense that we have them today.

There's a balance here. I wasn't there, but I'd suspect that Barnabas62's wise wife was right in some ways but that his sense of outrage may not have been entirely due to 'jealousy' at other people's joy.

There may have been an element of that, but even though I was quite happy to dance, sing, clap and wave my arms around in my full-on charismatic days - there were times when I felt exactly the same as Barnabas62 describes here ... completely out of synch with the expected response.

Partly, at times, I'd concede that I was something of an Eeyore, but at other times it was because I felt things were being hyped or ratcheted up artificially or manipulatively.

There's a fine balance but I suspect most of us can sense when that line has been crossed.

I'm certainly not advocating a religious sensibility that is completely devoid of 'affective' or feeling elements - of course I'm not. I'm just wondering aloud about the role of emotions and also experiences - which, as EE has reminded us, don't necessarily involve a big emotional 'punch'.

One can have a sense of assurance or of strong conviction that isn't necessarily tied to a whizz-bang experience.

I s'pose T S Eliot puts is best in a passage in 'The Dry Salvages', one of his 'Four Quartets':

'The moments of happiness - not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination -
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.'

Hmmmm ...

'We had the experience but missed the meaning.'

I'm sure that's right, but equally, we can apply meaning to an experience in a misleading way - as in the Mormon example.

I think, in a weak attempt to answer Kaplan's question, that the Mormon approach differs from that Calvin suggested re the 'witness of the Spirit' and so on, insofar as it nests it in a particular action or experience - ie. asking God to confirm to you, by some kind of feeling or impression or inner conviction, that the Mormon message is true.

I can see the similarities between that and a more generally Protestant approach to the scriptures and to the apprehension of spiritual truths, but I think there are subtle differences. Calvin, as far as I am aware, was not directing people towards particular experiences - although he would clearly have thought of the message of the scriptures being self-authenticating in the way that the Mormons claim for their own, distorted message.

This, I submit, is where tradition (small t) and Tradition (Big T) come in ... Calvin wasn't operating in a vacuum but as part of a wider tradition - even if he was reacting against elements within that tradition (or Tradition).

I s'pose the Mormons were too, in a different way, insofar as they were an exotic off-shoot of a form of pietistic, somewhat millenarian Protestantism ... with some Pentecostal elements too. The early Mormons spoke in tongues, for instance.

They just took things further and beyond the pale as far as mainstream evangelical style Protestantism was concerned.

A good object lesson, I submit, in not becoming overly preoccupied with impressions and promptings and feelings.

The Oneness Pentecostals, for instance, the unitarian end of Pentecostalism, partly developed from an apparent 'revelation', impression or feeling that one of the early Pentecostals experienced at a camp meeting or rally. He was so excited by his apparent discovery that he raced through the camp enthusing others with the weight and import of his new-found 'revelation.'

In a word, he got carried away and was wrong.

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Mudfrog
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Yes, it was an open question to all.

I think that one does a great disservice to the Catholic, the Orthodox, the 'whomever' if emotion is ascribed only to the Pentecostal/Charismatic wing of the church.

Emotionalism is a dangerous thing - I remember being in one Charismatic meeting where people were 'up and dancing' as soon as the music started and before a word had been sung! Not to dance was seen as being in some kind of bondage from which one needed spiritual liberation. Complete tosh of course! The dancing seemed a bit 'put on' to me.

But that is not what I am speaking about.
The psalms talk about joy and sadness, great rejoicing and the depths of sorrow.

How could any of the writers claim to 'worship the Lord with gladness' or to ask for the 'joy of salvation' if they never felt it?

How could David write such words as Psalm 51, to which successive generations have put such soul-moving music to, if he didn't feel the emotion that those words evidently reveal?

I dislike false emotion as much as the next stiff-upper-lipped-English-man but please, let's not deny ourselves our humanity and suggest that there can never be joy when we praise, grief when we repent, anger when we intercede for the unjustly treated and a deep sense of peace of mind when we pray for ourselves.

[ 06. May 2013, 11:54: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]

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Saul the Apostle
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It has a role.

Of course when, how much and who is ''in charge'' all come to mind.

A child likes to go around in circles as it gives him a sort of thrill. We are visceral animals, we like to ''feel'' and (some like) to get the ''hairs on the back of our neck'' standing - sometimes. Even the allegedly reserved English. After all the English civil war spawned some strange sects and off shoots of a more controlled early Anglican Christianity. Quakers quaked and Shakers shook. Levellers well did what they did!

Culture also comes into it too. But of course emotion is open to manipulations and pursue it as a goal in itself it will tend to dissipate and bite you in the rear.

The Pentecostal wing of the church has emphasised this element and used/abused it in worship services. More recently the house church movement has also been guilty of over egging the emotional in church.

Then there is the strong man (usually a man by the way) who manipulates the ecstatic worship (a few years ago we saw Todd Bentley Lakeland Florida) ). Then we have the vulnerable people who look to religion/ the church/ faith and maybe are incredibly open to new and dubious types of religion.

Emotions can be manipulated and the weak fleeced.

It has and should to a degree be part of our services, but degree is key as is context. Emotionalism in a raw and escalating way is very very damaging, as we've debated on the Ship (specifically) in terms of charismatic abuse over the years.

When this sort of church abuse takes place very few leave the room in a ''win win'' situation. There will be casualties.

Saul

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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."

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Mudfrog
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I would like to ask if there might be a correlation between the church goers who despise any form of emotional response to worship and those church congregations that are as cold as ice and show no desire to welcome strangers or even talk to each other.

My guess is that in some places you will see both things hand in hand.
It's no wonder many churches are closing.

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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton

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South Coast Kevin
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quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Emotionalism is a dangerous thing - I remember being in one Charismatic meeting where people were 'up and dancing' as soon as the music started and before a word had been sung! Not to dance was seen as being in some kind of bondage from which one needed spiritual liberation. Complete tosh of course! The dancing seemed a bit 'put on' to me.

I've been thinking much the same thing (see my italics) as I read through this thread, but there is a place for deliberately taking certain physical actions during praise / worship meetings, I'd say. Just like there are many prescribed physical actions in liturgical services (the standing, bowing, genuflecting etc.), in charismatic services there might be an expectation of clapping, raising one's hands or perhaps a vaguely on the beat dance (what I remember being called the 'Pentecostal two-step' [Big Grin] ).

Mind you, I prefer it when people are free to respond as they wish, with physically exuberant responses like waving your hands around being just as okay as remaining quietly seated. But I would draw that above parallel between liturgical and charismatic services; both styles are likely to have expected physical actions.

Actually, help me out here, liturgical worshippers - if someone didn't do the physical bits like the standing, the bowing and so on, would they stand out like a sore thumb and be looked on quizzically for not taking part? Or would their non-participation in the actions most likely be ignored or not even noticed?

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My blog - wondering about Christianity in the 21st century, chess, music, politics and other bits and bobs.

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Barnabas62
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quote:
Originally posted by FooloftheShip:

Barnabas62's posting above gives an answer to the last question, though I would personally want to say that the outrage at experiencing the extent to which emotional responses are written into liturgical structures is as valid as attributing his anger to finding himself excluded from those responses.

I suppose that might have been true for someone else! Concern about emotional manipulation is very common in people of my generation, largely because of the Nuremberg Rallies. I grew up learning all about them and how they had reinforced a cult of leadership and unthinking obedience. There was in my mind some equating of mass praise with Nuremberg, but that was a rationalisation. The real emotional issue was feeling "outside", responding to that.

Anyway, I'm a nonconformist. Generally I don't do liturgy, certainly not the written down kind. I do recognise patterns of course, thanks to Adrian Plass. "Spontaneous worship and how to arrange things so it always turns out the same".

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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

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SvitlanaV2
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quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:

Actually, help me out here, liturgical worshippers - if someone didn't do the physical bits like the standing, the bowing and so on, would they stand out like a sore thumb and be looked on quizzically for not taking part? Or would their non-participation in the actions most likely be ignored or not even noticed?

I can't speak for other people, but I find that in the Methodist church, the feeling is that all who are present will stand up or sit down as directed, unless they have a disability. In the Pentecostal churches I've been to, things aren't quite as rigid. There are times when some people are singing, some are being prayed for, some are praying quietly, some are praying aloud, some are crying or being consoled, etc. All of this is happening at the same time, so the idea that everyone has to be doing the same thing simultaneously doesn't exist to the same extent.
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IconiumBound
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The topic has elicited quite a lot of responses that focus on the externals of emotion being exhibited in worship; favorably or not. I have not seen any that speak to the practices of keeping emotions divorced from the worshipper; that is, what is generally called "spiritual exercises".

Are these such as "centering prayer", "walking the Labyrinth" or "Benedictine Spriritual Exercise" ways of keeping emotions out of worship?

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Mudfrog
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quote:
Originally posted by IconiumBound:
The topic has elicited quite a lot of responses that focus on the externals of emotion being exhibited in worship; favorably or not. I have not seen any that speak to the practices of keeping emotions divorced from the worshipper; that is, what is generally called "spiritual exercises".

Are these such as "centering prayer", "walking the Labyrinth" or "Benedictine Spriritual Exercise" ways of keeping emotions out of worship?

But why would you want to? Isn't the foundation of worship the very emotion of love for Christ?

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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton

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LeRoc

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quote:
Mudfrog: But why would you want to? Isn't the foundation of worship the very emotion of love for Christ?
I can see the value of temporary shutting off or pushing aside your emotions (like what can happen in some meditation techniques).

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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Ad Orientem
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quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Emotionalism is a dangerous thing - I remember being in one Charismatic meeting where people were 'up and dancing' as soon as the music started and before a word had been sung! Not to dance was seen as being in some kind of bondage from which one needed spiritual liberation. Complete tosh of course! The dancing seemed a bit 'put on' to me.

I've been thinking much the same thing (see my italics) as I read through this thread, but there is a place for deliberately taking certain physical actions during praise / worship meetings, I'd say. Just like there are many prescribed physical actions in liturgical services (the standing, bowing, genuflecting etc.), in charismatic services there might be an expectation of clapping, raising one's hands or perhaps a vaguely on the beat dance (what I remember being called the 'Pentecostal two-step' [Big Grin] ).

Mind you, I prefer it when people are free to respond as they wish, with physically exuberant responses like waving your hands around being just as okay as remaining quietly seated. But I would draw that above parallel between liturgical and charismatic services; both styles are likely to have expected physical actions.

Actually, help me out here, liturgical worshippers - if someone didn't do the physical bits like the standing, the bowing and so on, would they stand out like a sore thumb and be looked on quizzically for not taking part? Or would their non-participation in the actions most likely be ignored or not even noticed?

My experience is that no one really notices.
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leo
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quote:
Originally posted by FooloftheShip:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by FooloftheShip:
We are called to worship God with all our heart as well as every other part of ourselves.

But the 'heart' in the Judaism from which that command comes was believed to be the seat of all thought - in our terms, 'the brain'.
So what, then, is the distinction between "heart" and "mind"? What point is being made by the distinction? Does the point translate in any meaningful way to the northern European post-Enlightenment mind? And indeed into English?
The way 'heart' is used now is an expression of Western individualism.

Inappropriate to the Church as a corporate body.

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Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mudfrog
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# 8116

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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by FooloftheShip:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by FooloftheShip:
We are called to worship God with all our heart as well as every other part of ourselves.

But the 'heart' in the Judaism from which that command comes was believed to be the seat of all thought - in our terms, 'the brain'.
So what, then, is the distinction between "heart" and "mind"? What point is being made by the distinction? Does the point translate in any meaningful way to the northern European post-Enlightenment mind? And indeed into English?
The way 'heart' is used now is an expression of Western individualism.

Inappropriate to the Church as a corporate body.

Seriously? You think it's all corporate in the Bible? That there is no personal, heart-felt devotion to God?

I think Jesus would beg to differ - go into your closet, and all that.

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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton

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Angloid
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# 159

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Would you expand on this, leo? I might be inclined to agree, with a bit more detail. However, I very much regret that the Feast of the Sacred Heart was not given a place in the Common Worship calendar, and I think the image of our Lord's heart of compassion seeking to draw in the deepest parts of ourselves, including our emotions and things that 'lie too deep for tears' is both powerful and necessary.

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Brian: You're all individuals!
Crowd: We're all individuals!
Lone voice: I'm not!

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leo
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# 1458

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quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I would like to ask if there might be a correlation between the church goers who despise any form of emotional response to worship and those church congregations that are as cold as ice and show no desire to welcome strangers or even talk to each other.

My guess is that in some places you will see both things hand in hand.
It's no wonder many churches are closing.

My church is very objective in its worship yet also very chatty before and after it

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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com

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Mudfrog
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# 8116

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Nothing in the slightest bit wrong with being objective in worship. Nothing wrong with a bit of cerebral reflection, nothing wrong with practical service.

What i would also encourage is a sense of the 'heart-warming' experience of the presence of God. Is there any way of loving God without actually feeling it?

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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton

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