Emotions and Works

Growing up Assembly of God, faith-alone and anointing of the Holy Spirit were drilled into me every Sunday.  I was consistently preached that it isn't about emotions.  We shouldn't trust our emotions.  We shouldn't rely on our emotions.  Our emotions are deceptive.  Being emotional isn't a sign of the Holy Spirit, necessarily.  Then, in church, especially when a charismatic evangelist or missionary was guest speaker, it would become an emotional roller coaster in the church.

I remember sitting there as a child watching the other congregants crying, wailing, speaking in tongues, dancing, clapping, even being "slain in the spirit" and wonder why I was just sitting there feeling, well, not much, really.  Was I not holy enough?  Not saved enough?  Was I selfish and didn't believe enough or selfish and refused to let the Holy Spirit "take control"?  Just before leaving the AG church, I found myself completely drained every Sunday by the craziness of emotions.  From the music, specifically designed to work us up, then bring us back down, to the urges from the pulpit of praying more, harder, deeper until we were sobbing or shouting or dizzily babbling tongues, to powerful sermons that tugged at heart strings, I was exhausted.  And I was picked on for not participating in the emotional tirades.  Sure, I may have shed some quiet tears thinking of my Savior and what He did for me, but I wouldn't throw myself on the "alter" up front and sob.

But, it wasn't about emotion.  That's what they said.  So, when I later explained how moved I felt in a Catholic Church, how I loved the beauty, tranquility, and sanctity, I was told I shouldn't rely on my feelings, my emotions.  It isn't about aesthetics or outward experiences.   If I felt or experienced something during Mass, it was just my own emotions and they shouldn't be trusted.  But, if I felt or experienced something in an AG church, well, that was the movement of the Holy Spirit!  It's not ok to find joy in Catholicism, but it is perfectly ok to sob and carry on in an AG church.  To experience peace in a Catholic Church is an emotion that shouldn't be trusted, but to emotionally spend myself in an AG service is an experience of the Holy Spirit.

Let's move on to works.

One of the reasons I left the AG church was the confusion of faith-alone, not works.  Not works.  It isn't works.  Catholics are saved by works, and that's wrong.  We are saved by faith, not by what we do.  Faith, just faith.  Only faith can saved you.  Works can't.  But, you're doing it wrong.

It was this constant "never enough" subtle theology that brought horrible condemnation and confusion to me.  You're saved by faith, not by works, but you're doing it wrong.  It was never outright spoken, but inferred so often that it began to anger me.  Evangelists constantly came in giving some formula for success as a Christian.  Not exactly health and wealth gospel, but yes, it was.  Funnily enough, they would condemn Catholics for their prayers, sacraments, and practices that could earn them fewer years in purgatory, or salvation, or whatever.  But in the same breath say that if you tithe 10% of your gross income faithful, God will bless you financially.  Or if you have enough faith, He will heal your illness.  Or if you speak in tongues you'll get fill in the blank.  Or if you aren't receiving earthly blessings, you must do A B C and D and you'll get them.  Works.

AGers also do not believe in once-saved-always-saved, which I agree with.  But, there you go again.  If you are saved by faith-alone and not by works, then how can you lose your salvation by doing or not doing the right or wrong works?

My conclusion is that we cannot escape our emotional experiences.  Nor can we fully rely on them.  They are part of how God made us and how we experience our faith, but they are not the final say on how we are doing or where we are in our walk.  I now believe that it most certainly is important that I feel more at peace within the walls of certain Catholic Churches than I do within the walls of certain Protestant Churches.  The older churches call to me.  I cannot stand Vatican II modernism, nor can I stand modern Prot Churches.  Nor can I stand older churches that have kicked God out or have embraced modernism.  I can only stand to go to my current protestant church because the people are nice.  I can only drag myself there because I consider it a social club and not a church.  Why?  Because they removed the crosses from the sanctuary.

(Just as a side note, it is funny how protestants complain that the Catholic Church has allowed indulgences, and yet those aren't Saints or Bible people staring down at us from the stained glass windows of protestant churches that have them.  They are benefactors of the church immortalized in glass and lead.)

I also conclude that we cannot escape from works being part of our walk and salvation process.  To have faith is a work!

Protestantism, I believe, is basically trying to answer questions that Catholics already answered or what Catholics faithfully call mysteries.

Evangelicalism, I am growing to believe, is nothing more than humanism wrapped neatly in Christianized paper.