Topic: Feelings Make Wonderful Gods – Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry [John Piper Ministry] 28 September 2020

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Feelings Make Wonderful Gods

A Demon’s Guide to Human Emotions

My Dear Globdrop,

I received your last letter and sit perplexed by what wasn’t contained. No incident worth mentioning, then? I am no fool to believe all that Slubtub blathers, but when I searched for a less dramatic retelling, I find nothing. Am I to conclude that you’ve failed to grasp the severity of the situation?

As Slubtub had time to tell it, a female patient of his was “venting” about her mother — meaning, emitting the most lip-licking lewdness, succulent slanders, and gently-glazed gossip — that is, until your man interrupted to suggest that maybe she was “slightly overreacting.” That maybe she shouldn’t feel that way.

Overreact? Shouldn’t feel this way? Nephew, others stood by watching — where were you? If not for years of indoctrination, some might have taken the proposal seriously. Can you imagine it? Decades of work undone. Thankfully, your uncle turned the rudder, redirected her venom at your man, and ensured no shipwreck. The crowd nodded intuitively as she chastised him. Your man — cornered, alone, and embarrassed — quickly retreated behind an apology. But none of this makes your report.

On your watch, your man has come to believe that he can — and ought to! — control (and even train?) his emotions. This flicker must be snuffed out immediately! Past generations knew this — and what aches it caused us. Men and women assessing their feelings by standards other than pure, unadulterated instinct — I shudder to recall such times.

No. No. No. A new temple has been built, a new priestess ordained, new shrines erected, indeed, a new religion has formed, centered around they, themselves, and their feelings.

Emotions Make Wonderful Gods

Emotions, Globdrop, must rule the mind, not the mind emotions — and never the Enemy both. It sickens us to see any creature, much less those under our charge, surrendering to the Enemy’s strangulation. Not that he eliminates their emotions — if only! He too knows their power, and means to make use of them for his own purposes, for his own glory, as we often detest.

What other Monarch insists so doggedly on governing even his subject’s emotions? He commands what they fear (and not), what they disdain (and not), what they become anxious about, grow angry over, delight in, love supremely — and on and on. Praise be to our Father below for liberating us from such shackles.

Never forget the distance between us, nephew:

We want pets; the Enemy wants men.

Kittens that purr when you scratch behind the ears, emotional puppies whose tails wag when you rub their bellies — these are what we love. For all their pride in technological innovation, with all their presumptions of progress, most are easier to steer now than ever before.

We have sowed abundantly in their schools and media, abundantly in various philosophies, abundantly in unexamined prejudices against “objective truth” and “grand narratives.” From this, we begin to reap. The little human animals are effortlessly triggered, difficult to pacify, defiant toward authorities, and intolerant of opposing dogmas (especially the Enemy’s).

Animals well-fed on slogans and trending sentiments make them emotionally fat for the day of slaughter. Instinctual, Globdrop, instinctual.

We want individuals; he wants imitations.

The Enemy, as uncreative as he is, wants to mold them into dreadful conformity, sculpting them to the awful image of his own Son. Little hims scurrying about everywhere — could heaven itself be more unbearable? Of course, he pretends to conquer them, remake them into “what they were always meant to be,” but we, of all beings, know propaganda when we meet it.

We, on the other hand, love them just the way they are. We want them to be more like them, in fact. We want them to self-actualize, to give full reign to their natural expressions, their authentic selves, to ever be who they are, because, as only a handful of the humans ever truly consider, they are born ours, not his. We wish them to finish as they begin: our children, our followers, our food.

We want mobs; he wants a church.

Raw passion, as you may have noticed of late, is never so useful as in groups. They travel places in herds that they would never alone, and a stampede is always a most effective means for destruction. Through Headquarter’s carefully crafted half-truths, we stir them, shepherd them, incite them — and then lend a match. When feelings, not thoughts — when our spirit, not his — drives them, mobs soon become monstrous.

Consider fully the potential of mobs. Has not the excitement of men produced the most wonderful achievement in human history? In the heat of the moment, some bystanders felt a sudden rush of passion and roared with all of hell — “Crucify him, crucify him!”

Make Him F.E.E.L.

Their emotions, from birth, are lions to be let free, not pets to be trained. On your watch, your man has come to believe otherwise. Return him to the catechism immediately. Make him F.E.E.L.

F. Feelings make me. Play this on repeat. Equate who he is with how he feels — not what he thinks, believes, or belongs to. To feel biting anger and not express it is to not express himself — and you know how we hate inauthenticity.

Slubtub’s little feline, for example, what she heard when your man interrupted her deliciously venomous monologue was, “Don’t be who you are.” She heard a rejection of herself, not a rejection of her emotions. In her mind, the two were one, as they must be for our purposes.

E. Emotions happen to me. Teach him that emotional excitement happens to the humans — that they cannot actually hope to fight them or to train them, nor should they.

Do they fight their eye color? Their yawn when tired? Their watering eye when gazing at the sun? Why fight the involuntary curse word when cut off in traffic? Their laughter at the well-crafted profanity? Their reflexive fantasy when seeing an attractive woman? Let them always think that their emotions happen to them — never that their emotions might be halted, rejected, even reversed.

E. Emotions interpret reality. Emotions must inform reality, never visa versa. When they begin to judge their emotional reactions using make-believe obscenities like just or unjust, true or false, right or wrong we’ve lost ground.

This is precisely what your man attempted. Overreaction? By what standard? Who says? There is no such thing. We would have them yawn at their stingy father’s funeral, slouch jealously at their sister’s wedding, and crave their neighbor’s stuff, never asking if they should feel that way.

To bridle their passions, the Enemy would hand them silly promises, absurd claims about reality, and even a new heart to pair with his own horrifying Spirit. He wants them truly happy in their newfound slavery, joyful even in their sorrows, disgustingly hopeful and blindly satisfied.

Do not let him meddle in our affairs. We must never again hear the dreadful sentiment repeated, “My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth.”

L. Love is love is love is love. Love, the chief jewel of all unquestionable feelings today, is a label we love to stamp on whatever was highly objectionable only yesterday. Love between an unmarried man and a married woman; love between two of the same sex; love for women and their choice over the life of the unborn. In other words, a colorful banner of love covers (and encourages) a multitude of sins. Let the god of love reign.

Nephew, send him deeper into trusting his feelings. Send him feeling all the way to our Father. Let his own heart lead him over the cliff.

Your expectant uncle,

Wormwood