Feeling Rightly

One of the things that sin does to people is warps their ability to feel rightly. God gave us emotions; they are a gift from him like our other senses meant to teach us about the world. We feel pain, a hot stove, pressure, and it teaches us about what is wise, what is safe, the way the world is. One of the most dangerous things that can happen to you is for your senses to start lying to you, your vision distorting, your taste buds hankering for poison, the sensation of pain feeling nice, and so on. A person in that situation would quickly perish.

All sinners are warped. All of us feel wrongly in some ways. This is why we can desire things that are evil or resist things that are lovely and good. When we are saved, God receives us just like we are, all broken and warped. He doesn’t receive us because our senses are more accurate or not as bad as others. He receives us for the sake of Jesus, only for the sake of Jesus. But when we get up the next morning as Christians, we have a long, hard process of re-learning how to feel rightly. There are certain habits, tendencies, and ways of doing things that feel right, that feel normal that we have to learn to feel differently about. And there are new habits, new instincts, new ways of being human that initially feel awkward and strange that we have to learn to like.

Some of that happens gradually, slowly, like growing up and suddenly realizing that you like onions when you used to be repulsed by them. But sometimes God determines to rip those old tendencies out of our hearts. He is a good physician, and He knows what requires immediate, emergency surgery and what we can grow out of.

In recent weeks, we have had the reality of abortion shoved in our face again. God is giving us another opportunity to learn how to feel rightly. We might wish there was another way, and it may feel offensive and repulsive, but sometimes when something awful is happening and hearts have become cold and hard, we need a violent shock so we can begin to feel again.