Love: Decision vs. Feeling

As humans we are propelled forward by our emotions and our subconscious however much we like to think the rational part of us is the captain of our ship.

Love flows from our emotional state – it is not, as is so often preached, a statement of will. I have lost count of the amount of times I have heard preaches or have been told by Christian friends that, ‘Love is not only a feeling, it is more than a feeling. Love is a decision.’

That is folly.
It is a cold stark view of your innermost desires, which will harden your heart – it is not the poet’s or author’s view of life and it shows no understanding of how our brains work: of what being a human is.

It is far better to see love as a wild sea full of adventure, excitement, sorrow and grief. To sail into those waters means you have to make yourself vulnerable. You need to be ready for your emotions to be battered on the rocks and for your emotions to voyage to places you never knew existed. There will be days when you will be glad that you are alive and sharing the wonder with someone, others that you barely speak to each other as you cling exhausted to the mast.

It’s all emotional. It’s all about connecting at your core with another person. You do not brave the lashing waves and the salt stinging in your eyes and say, ‘Love is not only a feeling, it is more than a feeling. Love is a decision.’ For if you have become to believe that, then you no longer know love at all.

Think about what drives you to do incredible things. It is not a decision that is ‘more than a feeling’. It is your passion, your love for something that allows you to push through hardship, setbacks and disappointments. The intensity of your feelings will fluctuate, but it is still your feelings that will push you onwards, not a retreat into statements of intent.

I know why preachers say these things. They do not want people to throw away relationships when things become hard. And they are right in their intent, but not in their method. They tap into their belief that you should not live your life for yourself but as a sacrifice for others. This denial that life was given to you, for you is highly destructive. It is empathy and love that should flow out of you, not a death to self.

Better to come to know yourself and understand what it is to be human. To understand that to love someone will tear open all the boundaries of your emotions and feelings that you have known. And that this is good. Stay in that place and live a life that is full of love.

Why You Are Better Off Reading The Bible As Fiction

So you are encouraged in your faith to read the Bible. Not to falter in your belief that every word is literally true and that it is factual, inerrant and written in stone, as it were, by the hand of God. 

This would be a grave mistake. Reading the Bible as an account of factual real-life past events is more likely to end up in an information gathering experience in which you update your knowledge of the world and God – much like reading a huge library of books of Wikipedia pages.

There are benefits: it does increase cooperation and alignment of individuals in the real world that have the same belief system as you, although it can also cause war, death and famine.

It also causes shorter reaction times at the behavioural level and may explain why some people quickly decide that lifestyles or cultures that differ to their own, that don’t align to their factual understanding of the Bible, are wrong, sinful and an abomination to God. They often don't take the time to think through what is going on within people's hearts. Until that is they enter into true friendship with those people and that tends to cause a paradigm shift in the mind. This is sad. The Bible should engage with you on a deeper level. It should cause that paradigm shift to happen before you face them, before you cause great pain.  

But really if you want to increase your empathy and social skills, then you should read the Bible as works of fiction. Reading the Bible as fiction has the capacity to modify your personality traits.  It can provide you with simulations of social information and experiences that can prepare you for similar real-life interactions in the future. Reading fiction invites for mind-wandering and thinking about what might have happened or could happen. It causes you to look for relational inference and an examination of differing perspectives.

Reading the Bible as fiction, activates your imagination, helps you become a better person and increases emotionally maturity and empathy. It enables you to simulate in your mind how the truths it contains can allow you to have faith, hope and love in the now and in the future.

Reading the Bible as factual can lead you to religion, bigotry and tribal behaviour and may distance you from seeing the heart of God. And often love, the greatest of all things, is weaponised as a means of control and conformity.

Reading the Bible as fictional allows you to exceed mere information gathering. As a reader if you perceive the stories as possibilities of how something might have been, it will lead you to an active simulation of events rather than being a passive observer.
This is important.
Factual reading leads you to see the Bible as a body of work that is fixed in the past: as unchangeable, past completed events instead of stories to communicate deep truths in the now and your possible futures. Thus you tend to believe the flood for example must have been literally true and the truths the story contains cannot be retold or reimagined in the now or future.

Reading the Bible as purely factual does encourage you to think about actions and consequences, and whilst this may be useful it can lead to an obsession with following laws rather than looking to the heart to see the motives behind an action. And God is concerned with hearts and frees you from being obsessed with externals. Reading the Bible as fictional leads you to identify with the characters and provides a glimpse into their hearts and ultimately into the heart of God. It helps you see what they believe by being attentive to their behaviour. This is why fiction enables you to engage with beliefs as you focus on the characters' mental states and place yourself into the story.

In the Western world many Christians have largely lost the ability to read the Bible as fiction. And I understand that they would see articles like this as heretical, but I really think they are missing something profound and we are all a little bit worse off for that. It doesn’t undermine faith or a belief in God: it enriches and deepens a spiritual life.

Why not engage with the Bible not as a huge library of Wikipedia pages to increase your knowledge - but as stories in a vast library of fiction that God is weaving into your imaginations to awaken the divine.

Art: Joel Rea - The Promised Land

A Church of Shadows

My thoughts on my old church...

I returned to that shore & found her lying there.
She didn't recognise me, that empty vessel.
Her cathedral of rewards, only a church of shadows.
The wind brought the smell of new life over the waters.
And I thanked God for setting me free.

Photo: MorzhovayaBay, Kamchatka

Reflections on Deconstruction

𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐈 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝.

1) An institutionalised version of church with an empire mentality will rarely listen to criticism of itself.
2) The Church will seek to discredit the person or persons raising the concern or to deflect the issue.
3) Faced with questions from within, the 'church' will act as if it has autoimmune disease and seek to destroy those people who are actually healthy parts of it.