"Disappointment" by Julius LeBlanc Stewart.
When I was
in my early 20s, I went to a prayer meeting where the preacher said, “Isn’t it
wonderful to be a Christian. We don’t suffer from the ups and downs of emotions
like neurotic people.”
I’ll never
forget sitting there thinking, “My emotions are up and down. Am I neurotic? Is
that what is wrong with me? He is saying it means you aren’t a Christian! Is
that right?”
This
happened in the 1970s. I would bet most pastors now realize most of their
congregation is neurotic in some way or another. Here is the definition from
Wikipedia:
Neuroticism is one of the Big Five higher-order personality traits in the study of psychology. Individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely
than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness.[1] People who are neurotic respond worse to stressors and are
more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor
frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They are often self-conscious and shy,
and they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying
gratification.
I don’t
know, but it sounds like most of us to me.
I confess, I
have done what that preacher did: assume. He assumed none of us in the room had
those up and down emotions because he didn’t. He assumed all Christians were
like him. He assumed Christ had taken care of all that in everyone.
I have
assumed things about people. I have often said, “Well, they weren’t real
Christians if they could do that!” You know what? That was wrong of me. I was
actually saying they had no relationship with God at all. I don’t think I had
the right to say that.
Our lives
are a journey with God; we learn on this journey. We walk, fall, get up, run,
crawl, get up, walk… The times we fall
may be when we are closest to God, who knows? Not you, not me. I am so guilty
of the sin of judging people. I’m ashamed of myself and pray I will quit doing
it. I know very well there are people who think I am not a Christian because of things I do.
I hope and pray I can just love people without judging them. Just love them. Let God worry about what
they are doing. Let him clean them up and clean me up in his own time.
In closing,
on my last post I mixed up which quotations I was putting together. I left out
a really good quote by Thomas a Kempis about feelings that I still want to
post. So here it is:
MY SON, trust not
to your feelings, for they will quickly be changed into something else. As long
as you live you are subject to change, even against your will; so that you are
at one time merry, then sad; at one time quiet, then troubled; now devout, then
worldly; now diligent, then listless; now grave, and presently
light-hearted.
But he that is wise
and well instructed in the spirit stands firm upon these changeable things; not
heeding what he feels in himself, or which way the wind of instability blows;
but that the whole intention of his mind may tend to the right.
So, I guess that pastor was wrong. We can have emotions that swing all
over the place and still be Christians.
