Do you believe that God places a higher priority on emotion or intellect?
In the Charismatic church ( of which I have been a part of for a very long time ) I have come to understand that God uses the emotions of man for His purposes. It is as though emotions have been linked to spirituality. The more emotional the display, the more significant the spirituality. I have also come to understand through direct but mostly indirect teaching intellect to be prideful and something that we one day will be delivered from. It is as though intellect and flesh have been linked as synonymous. So of course, if spirituality is good and intellect is bad we choose to chase spirituality. I want to challenge your thinking concerning this.
Intellect in Websters is defined as “the power or faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands”. For much of my charismatic experience (as I stated earlier) it has been something that we should seek to repress and limit the function of for the sake of deeper spirituality. Wisdom is a high prize in scripture and in the charismatic experience. Websters defines it as “knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action.” Hmm…. interesting. So if wisdom is the knowledge of what is right coupled with the understanding or “just judgment” as to its practical application; and intellect is the mechanism by which one gains knowledge couldn’t we surmise that wisdom can not be obtained outside of intellect? After all, you have to possess the knowledge to apply it. The word judgment itself in this context implies reasoning. So again I ask, can you achieve wisdom outside of intellect?
I will make one other point before I am excoriated by the hyper-spiritual emotional types in my life. Emotion is subject to intellect in the most fundamental of ways. If I were to tell you of the death of a three year old child it would evoke sadness and negative emotion in you. Before you continue reading, pause here and ask yourself why you see the death of a three year old as sad…………(pausing to answer)……..Most answers will contain the word “know” in the first few words. It is sad because you know the potential of the life of a child. Learning of the death of that child saddens you because of what you know to be true about what that child could have been. Conversely, if I were to deliver you news that a rich relative left you millions of dollars (and it were true) you would feel elated. This is because of what you know to be true about what you can do with that sort of money.
I submit that emotion is subject to intellect because we have no emotional response to a thing outside of our knowledge of it. The more intimate the knowledge the stronger the emotional response. The more vague the knowledge, the weaker is the same.
So pull this idea into out Christian experience. Most people whom I have met who oppose the spirit filled church do not have a problem with God. They usually have a problem with the carnival act that follows these sorts of emotionally charged services. Ironically, we as a people historically have had one of the worst reputations for manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. We love the gifts of the Spirit but minor on the fruit. This is evidenced by our “gifts of the Spirit” seminar to “fruit of the Spirit” seminar ratios that we hold. Have you ever heard of a fruit of the Spirit seminar? I haven’t. Maybe they exist but they sure aren’t as prevalent as the healing, prophecy, signs and wonders seminars. The irony here is that most of these seminars hinge the supernatural experience on faith. When Galatians 5:16 tells us that faith works through love. There is the new testament pointing the key ingredient that we teach as being the catalyst to the signs and wonders we covet back to the fruit of the Spirit.
Jesus said “greater works” we would do because of the Holy Spirit being with us. Have you ever considered that the disciples while they followed Jesus, as well as the people whom Jesus performed miracles for while he walked the earth were not saved? They couldn’t have been. Jesus had not died for their sin yet. They were believers, but degenerate in mind, soul, and spirit. Could it be that the greater things that Jesus said that we would do would revolve around the empowerment to manifest the fruit of the Spirit on the earth through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit living in us? I am not saying that the gifts of the Spirit have passed away, quite the contrary. I am just not sure we will see them at work again on the earth as they did for Jesus until we manifest enough of the fruit of the Spirit in our collective character that the gifts become the overflow of the LOVE relationship we have with God, not the basis for its proof. Could this be the embodiment of the people described in 2 Tim 3 being “lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God. Having a form of Godliness but denying the power thereof.” I submit that the noise and emotionalism that has defined our services is the “form of Godliness” and that the fruit of the Spirit is the “power thereof.” How many people have we alienated and pushed away from God in the name of a move of God. Yet we leave those services largely unchanged in character, with questions in our own heart about the real world validity of the things we experienced. In Mathew 7:22-23
Many will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” And then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”
Guess what my Spirit filled peeps, these are Spirit filled people He is addressing. Not too many mainline evangelicals prophesy, cast out demons, and do many wonders. He calls them those who practice lawlessness. Sobering to my understanding thus far.
I submit that our emotionalism is void of intellect and driven by carnality. A desire to manufacture a tangible move of what we consider to be deep spiritual activity is akin to spiritual pornography. We come for what we get out of the experience but never fully give ourselves to the intimacy that produces the fruit in our character. The scripture that talks about having a form of Godliness but denying the power thereof immediately follows comparing that person to one who visits a harlot. Not by mistake in my mind.
I am by no means saying that our charismatic experience should be devoid of emotion. On the contrary, when we come to a balanced understanding of the Holy Spirit and His wonderful work in our lives we can enter into the fullness of a healthy emotional life toward ourselves, God, and man. It is when our emotions are guided by wisdom which is defined as the ability to apply knowledge to situations that we have collected in our intellect that we reach a place of true balance. Add to that balance a deep, experiential manifestation of the presence and power of God in our lives, combined with an outward working of the fruit of the Spirit and we become irresistible to the lost. In this balance we can close the carnalval (intentional play on words) and open a real dialogue with a lost world about a real piece that is really missing from their life.
