Last summer, when I taught my buddy Ian how to water ski, I issued this warning: “Once you’re up and out of the water, you will feel an overwhelming desire to pull your hands and the tow rope close to your chest. I guarantee it. But don’t do it or you’ll fall over backward! Tell yourself right now, ‘No matter how much I feel like doing otherwise, I will keep my arms extended and not pull in.'”
Guess what happened to Ian? He trusted his own will and inclinations more than the truth about how to succeed in this endeavor. He started off spending more time swimming than skiing.
For those of us in youth ministry, the word feel (and all its relatives) is the “f-word” that should concern us the most, not because feelings are bad but because the growing reliance on feelings as the guide for life is a challenge that cuts to the core of everything we’re called to teach our students about life in the kingdom of God. Our students are swimming in a culture where the authority by which decisions are made is feelings—which by the way, can change at any given point in time.
Feelings Are Part of Humanity
God has made us all to be emotional people. Emotions are not evil or bad in and of themselves. They are a God-ordained part of our makeup. The Scriptures are full of references to human emotion. To try to squelch our emotive nature is to squelch our humanity. In sharing in our humanity, the God-man Jesus Christ emoted across the full spectrum, from laughter and joy to sorrow and weeping. We must recognize the temptation to react incorrectly in a feeling-oriented culture: We throw out the beautiful baby of human emotion with the bathwater of misplaced emotional function.
Sin Undid Everything Good—Including Emotions
Like us, our kids are depraved human beings. Sin and its results have infected every corner of the world and every nook and cranny of our lives—including our emotions. In a post-
The World Stresses Feelings
Children want love and acceptance; and, like adults, they are willing to spend their money to get it. The basic premise of advertising to children and teens involves “luring” them with a basic felt need and “cloaking the message.” James J. Smith, a child psychologist who spent six years helping advertisers sell to children, cites an Oreo cookie ad as a perfect example. The ad flashes 30 images of happy children, but the product logo is shown only once. The intended result is to have children associate the cookie with feelings of love and happiness. Nothing is mentioned about the cookie’s taste or nutritional makeup. The appeal is entirely emotional. Kids choose to believe and live by “what I like” or what “feels good to me.”
They Lack Any Compelling Examples of an Emotionally Balanced Life
There are very few adults in kids’ lives who are modeling a lifestyle of balanced emotional management that brings honor and glory to God. In and outside the church, kids see adults (many times their own parents) choosing and living distortions of Christian faith and life based on what feels good to them.
What can we do in and through our student ministries to bring about a corrective shift that would lead to a balanced and biblically realistic knowledge of God’s true identity and how to live in His world according to His kingdom priorities? How can we teach our students to embrace a faith that shapes and informs their emotions, rather than the other way around?
1) Always, Always, Always Emphasize the Authority of the Word
Most students don’t realize all of their decisions in life are made based on some authority. Usually it’s a combination of authorities adopted unconsciously, including peers, media, parents, self, etc. While it is worth seeking out and accepting wise advice from these people and things, the primary authority we’re called consciously to live under is the authority of the One who made us.
We must teach our students to recognize, understand and embrace God as the authority in their lives, looking to the incarnate Word—Jesus—to guide every step of our lives. Don’t stop there. Teach them how the authoritative Word speaks to every area of life, going to great lengths to speak God’s truth on the matters to which they are deferring to the authority of their feelings. Feelings never should eclipse truth. Truth always should direct our understanding of our feelings. The only trustworthy feelings are those grounded in truth.
2) Teach Them About the Dangerous Practice of Trusting Their Feelings
The Scriptures and the history of the church are filled with stories of those who refused to equate the absence of good feelings with the absence of God (Noah, Abraham, Joseph, David, Job, Paul, etc.). They held on to the truth they knew, even though their feelings led them down the road of being tempted to do otherwise. I have learned never to make choices when my emotions are especially high or low. If I do, I might give my feelings the sway they shouldn’t have. One of the best and most convincing tools in one’s youth ministry arsenal is to become vulnerable with students, sharing the good, bad and ugly from your own life and feelingsbased choices.
3) Make Sure They Know Following Jesus Doesn’t Always Feel Good
Do you remember singing “Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy are the people whose God is the Lord”? I do. It messed me up. I thought difficulty in life was a sign of God’s absence. Not until much later did I understand the life of discipleship is costly, painful and usually quite difficult. Students need to know growth usually comes through suffering. In the words of one preacher, “God often puts His children to bed in the dark.” Rarely is it something we like. We need to teach our students to meet the unchanging God who is in the midst of their suffering rather than invent a god that makes sense at the moment.
By the way, after pulling his hands into his chest a few times, Ian finally got it. When I swung around and picked him up after his initial successful run, he looked up at us with a big smile on his face. “Now that felt good,” he said, as it should. From time to time, living a life in submission to the Way, the Truth and the Life will feel very, very good.
