To Know and To Feel

Reflecting and feeling deeply are inseparably connected. I long to enthrone truth in its rightful seat of the soul. I am convinced that the deepest, most whole emotions cannot be realized until the truth is known and lived.Truth is a touchy subject to mention in this day and age. People get offended by the mere implication that such a thing exists.Social media, Hollywood, music, political leaders, the entire American culture is rapidly removing obligation to standards of right and wrong. To believe something as inherently infallible, much less, to preach and vocalize this belief, is perceived as domineering and oppressive.With all constants snatched from underneath their feet, the young people of today are left to the mercy of the violent, changeful billows of their own emotions in the search for meaning in life. No longer are the texts in schools framed on the foundation that a God exists who created and relates to the world. No longer is there a sacred entity for the sanctity of sex, like marriage between a man and a woman. All ideas are open to being accepted or denied, for none of them are really true.People call this absence of truth a liberation—the freedom to do or believe anything that appeals. This relativism is, however, a constant circle of imprisonment. The soul with nothing to guide her, nothing to surely believe, also has nothing to hope in.I believe that there is truth; I believe that the truth will set you free. I realize that accepting the existence of truth seems like bowing the knee to a merciless dictator. Doesn’t it restrict and despise the heart’s feelings and aspirations?So many of us have chosen to live in oblivion to the radical nature of reality in order to keep our ease and pleasure. I am asking you not to make this trade. Ignorance is not bliss.The truth is painful, disruptive, and demanding: and yet, it satisfies the deepest chasms of longing in the human soul.The truth that I know is a Person. He is larger than life. The enormity of His being rends hearts, steps on toes, and offends the world. He is like a forest fire in the sense that His presence is cannot go unnoticed, cannot help but make a difference. No one is casually friends with Him; they either melt in ecstasy before His glory and anoint Him with praise, or they despise Him, scramble to get out of His presence, set out to kill Him.In fact, they did kill Him.Jesus Christ, the absolutely good, the terrifyingly powerful, the boundlessly beautiful Son of God, gave himself over to the hands of men to be slaughtered. He sacrificed of His soul and His body to pay the unfathomable debt of sinners. He fell into nothingness that we might be found, was hated so that we could be loved.Then he broke death’s hold forever, and lives to redeem and make himself known to the world.Know Him. Bare your soul to the radioactive nature of His being. He does not starve hope—he satisfies the longings that haunt the uncharted depths of the heart.Most of us hide from Christ because we’re terrified He’ll squelch our desires. Truth, we say, is a tyrant that crushes dreams and makes war between peoples.Yes, the enormous weight of the truth cannot help but disrupt the ease of hearts, lives, and peoples. But it is not the wet blanket on the fire of feeling. C.S. Lewis writes, “It would seem that our Lord considers our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud-pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”Ignorance is not the gateway to pleasure. Ignorance sleeps in oblivion; it skulks from facing joy because it fears upheaval.Enthrone truth in its rightful seat of the soul, for to know and to feel are inseparably connected.“Know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:19). 78