Feelings Beware
What the Gaza crisis can show us about ourselves
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This week I delve into some crucial principles in Proverbs and bring the focus back to the “natural realm”. My recent two posts have focused on understanding God, while this one focuses on ourselves. The story here is about the humanitarian crisis of the Gaza War. However, like my other posts here, it’s the principle that are the focus, not really the story. And, I’m far from any sort of expert on what’s going on in Gaza. I’m just using some of what’s being said about the war to illustrate the pitfalls of human nature.
This is the fourth post in this series of using real events to showcase Biblical principles, and help people thrive in life. Here are the previous posts:
Choosing Our Identity, in 1776 and today
The easy thing is to just make ourselves feel good by letting this interview reinforce what we already think, and cast aside the rest.
(1) Judgement and feelings
How well do you process and judge information, with respect to current events, or your daily life? We might think that we can just hear things and form the right judgements, but we’re usually unaware of how our feelings can blind us.
Here I highlight the importance of putting ourselves and our feelings to the side when we think critically, using the example of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. And if it’s hard to think clearly about something that’s distant from us, how much harder might it be to be wise about our personal lives?
You might not care much about what's happening in Gaza because you have enough things on your plate. But getting good results with things on your plate depends on having wisdom, and I hope that these seven sections can sharpen this crucial skill.
(2) The heart is deceitful
The Bible describes how trusting in one's heart, or in oneself, is dangerous and should be replaced by wisdom and trust in God (e.g., Proverbs 28:26; Proverbs 14:12; Proverbs 16:25; Jeremiah 17:9). The crucial difference is between thinking simply and believing that we understand things, versus walking things out with God, and gaining judgement from Him, as well as from experience (e.g., Proverbs 3:5-7; Hebrews 5:14; James 1:2-5).
For example, Paul showed wisdom when he chose to go to Rome to be tried, instead of the closer and presumingly easier option of a Jerusalem trial. His heart might have wanted to go to Jerusalem and get things over with quickly, but Rome was actually further away from his enemies, and God had told him earlier that he must also testify in Rome (Acts 23:11).
It might look like Paul was just following God's instruction and not exhibiting a whole lot of wisdom or judgement. But Christian wisdom relies on seeking God for direction, and filtering experience through the lens of Scripture (e.g., Proverbs 9:10).