Faith and Feeling

I'm preaching a sermon series on Sunday on the fruit of the Spirit. Last night, we talked about kindness, and my basic theme was that we have mistaken the "feeling" of kindness for the action of kindness, if we feel like being kind that is enought, and we don't have to change the actions that we make. For examples, I used the General Rules of the Methodist Church. These were things that were move us to action, first, eliminating sinful action and then starting good action; love of neighbor and God.

This brought me to thinking about religion in general, and I guess within my parrish in specific. So often, I beleive that we mistake feeling for action. If I am under convcition of sin, that is enough. I don't have to actually repent and change, just merely feeling that guilt is enough. At Coy, folks like thier "toes stepped on," and I tell them that is all nice and well, but having the toe stepped on is not enought, the foot must then turn adn repent.

When we mistake feeling for action, trouble begins. CS Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters,

"The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it ... let him do anything but act ... as one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.”

These feeling or emoitons must product action. We must not mistake they way we feel for a changed life. Kindness is not emtion only and repentance is not conviction alone. They must both produce action; they must both produce a changed life.