“Most head churches do not touch the heart, most heart churches do not bother with the head, and almost all of them ignore the body as if of no account.”

“Further, the head churches are usually not contemplative, the heart churches have little discrimination or training in the more subtle emotions whereby we see truthfully, and the body people have either left the church or, even worse, stay in the pew but do not take it seriously as anything real, urgent, or wonderful.

(Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, pg. 14.)

From time to time I like to ask others what a Christian friend taught me: SASHET. I would ask others to authentically and transparently share whether they are:

* Sad
* Angry
* Scared
* Happy
* Excited or
* Tender

I never would have liked such an emo exercise even half a dozen years ago. But today I’m more than happy to hear anyone articulate and express their deepest felt emotions and sentiment.

“God created feelings. Sure, like anything else, they can be misused and abused. But the intent and purpose of feelings came from God. Since He created emotions, why is it difficult to believe that He Himself has emotions? The Spirit is grieved when there is a breach in relationship, whether it be relationship with God or relationship with other people. When we are disunified, unloving, hateful, jealous, gossipy, etc., that is when we grieve the Spirit of God. And since He is the creator of emotions, I believe that the Spirit grieves more deeply that we can even understand… I believe that if we truly cared about the Holy Spirit’s grief, there would be fewer fights, divorces and splits in our churches.”
– Forgotten God by: Francis Chan

God has feelings too and everyone should read this book it really is opening my eyes to the Holy Spirit.

That being said, I feel as though both sides (cerebral and emotional) need to be deeply involved in the study of Scripture. The cerebralists need to constantly be challenged by the emotional vulnerability and openness of the Trinitarian God. And emo Christians need to submit to the Holy Spirit’s desire to produce in them the fruit of self-control as well discernment marked by deep wisdom. In all of this, as you said at the end of your article, we shouldn’t demonize each other but rather have dialogue and seek to lovingly balance each other out. We are called to love God with every aspect of our being and we should do everything we can to help each other do to do so.

But thinking about the work of the Spirit a bit more, I believe that His net effect is to produce in us deep, divine joy for He is instrumental in bringing us into an intimate relationship with the Trinitarian God. As the Westminster Catechism states, part of our chief end is to enjoy God forever.

A few comments ago, forests raised a great question, something like “Can a belief be a sin?” I think we should expand this discuss to explore how or if we sin with our mind, heart and will… which comes full circle to the issue of adding in our body.

I’m no longer overly concerned with “right thinking”, but I love to think! I don’t care so much about “right behavior”, but I see the need to keep each other accountable! And I don’t accept that there is any one “right feeling”, but my emotions are growing back!

For more important to me now are the following:

being orthoscopic – having the right proportions in how we view something

being orthoepic – having the right pronunciation and articulation of language

being orthopsychiatric – having the right concern for mental or other disorders in youth

[oh by the way we just surpassed 13,000 comments a few comments ago!]

“For instance, the Holy Spirit is not mainly concerned with elements of pathos, although this is a by-product of his work. Primarily, he is concerned with disseminating and uncovering truth (John 16:13). He reminds us of the very words of Jesus so that we are kept from error. Although the Spirit expresses grief over man’s plight, both Father and Son display emotion as well. God the Father is jealous and Jesus wept, for instance.”

I greatly appreciate this respect for Scripture. I also appreciate Ben’s though provoking article.

I haven’t really commented on the content you present here Ben, because this article induces mild PTSD symptoms in me :) I just get sick to my stomach when I see any kind of diagram of the bible text… I had an overdose of such diagrams during my ubf years, when we over-analyzed the bible text and dissected it like an alien creature.

On the other hand, emotionally-inclined people (which I think neither you are I are), might have little issue with the attributes of the Spirit as “heart, emotion, feeling,” etc?

Don’t you think that “Word people” think spirit/emotion can easily become aberrant?

Don’t you think that “Spirit people” think that “Word people” are just rigid, inflexible, critical, dry propositional-based people?

Despite my questions above, I do truly eschew and despise dichotomous thinking and communication. But I posed them in dichotomous ways for the sake of argument, simplification and clarification.

I primarily took issue with the descriptives applied to the Spirit because they appear to be undue, modern impositions. I don’t understand where else these characteristics come from and thus I don’t think that it’s a helpful way of describing Him. But please enlighten me if I’m off course here.

Clearly, each of the attributes I listed under Father, Son and Spirit also applies to each member of the Godhead.

This simplistic triumvirate categorization is primarily for us to hopefully help us understand that we are made in the mysterious and complex and unknowable image of a triune God.

This, I think, has been helpful to me, and to a few people that I have shared this with, since we humans are also complex beings, while we tend to carricature others ad infinitum: “Oh, he’s just a Pharisee,” for instance! :-)

That being the case, I think it’s extremely important that we view God rightly (although some would like to argue from an apophatic point of view thereby indicating what God is not, which is also valid). Anyway this my long-winded and overly polite way of saying that I strongly disagree with you about the characteristics of the Trinitarian God you listed.

For instance, the Holy Spirit is not mainly concerned with elements of pathos, although this is a by-product of his work. Primarily, he is concerned with disseminating and uncovering truth (John 16:13). He reminds us of the very words of Jesus so that we are kept from error. Although the Spirit expresses grief over man’s plight, both Father and Son display emotion as well. God the Father is jealous and Jesus wept, for instance.

My take is that the emotionality associated with the Spirit is a modern sort of hijacking of his attributes. In 1 Cor 14, Paul says that if anything, the Spirit should bring order, not the chaotic and extactic aberrations associated with their worship services; these aberrations were most likely artifacts from their pagan practices.

Also, the Father is much more than just a planner or central processing unit for he is intimately involved in every aspect of our daily lives (as well as the affairs of nonbelievers) via his divine providence. He was also, through his Spirit, directly involved in the raising of Christ from the dead (Eph 1:20, Rom 8:11).

Ok, stepping down from my soapbox now.

Joe, Brian, Addressing the body is a great point, which I did not think of. In response though, might not our heart (emotion), mind (cognition) and actions (volition) be all communicated through our body?

I am reminded of Will Smith saying in the movie Hitch that 60% of our communication is expressed through our body language, 30% through the tone of our voice, and only 10% through our words. (See http://www.ubfriends.org/2011/12/28/4285/)

You might have seen this already regarding Pope John Paul’s excellent “Theology of the Body” as popularized by Christopher West: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxsZ7jm0GUE

This is all relevant to the gist of my second book, Goodness Found: The Butterfly Narratives. I am strongly convicted that Jesus liberates us so that we can go to the marginalized. We are free to “touch lepers”. To go to the “ends of the world” may mean to go to the edges of society and discover the margins of our own humanity. And we who follow Christ are not only free to do so, I believe it is our mission.

And Nouwen rocks.

This quote struck me deeply:

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” — Henri Nouwen

So I too have much to learn about issues and topics related to LGBT people and marriage, etc. I don’t have all the answers, I just know that I am compelled to enter this arena and examine such things in light of Scripture and Tradition and my own faith.

Strangely after leaving ubf behind, I was intensely drawn into discussions on the margins of society– athiests, homosexuals, and numerous odd religious people. I am finding that these conversations must be had, no matter how messy or ugly, because such people exist all around us. I’ve had discussions with the marginalized among ubf people–there are athiests, homosexuals, suicidal and all kinds of people in the midst of the ubf community, and most church communities.

Nouwen’s example is one of my guides to living outside the camp.

For the time being, I am opting out of most discussions and controversies surrounding homosexuality. Not because they aren’t important. They are very important. I just don’t feel that I’m qualified to opine about homosexuality until I get a better understanding of God’s designs for heterosexuality. Recently I read Jean Vanier’s classic book Man and Woman, God Made Them:

http://www.amazon.com/Man-Woman-God-Made-Them/dp/0809145553

It’s a fascinating look at people with severe mental disabilities how the L’Arche community deals with their sexual expression. This book made me think about the spiritual dimensions of sex which are so poorly understood. It made me realize how little I actually know about what healthy sexuality means.

For example, even though I don’t agree with some of what the Catholic Courage ministry is doing, I am far more encouraged by the Catholic response to LGBT issues than the Protestant response, which has been overwhelmingly negative and caustic. At least us Catholics don’t freak out over gay people and are willing to enter into the conversation.

My next article will spark conversations about the theology of the body I’m guessing. I will be submitting two book reviews, of “Washed and Waiting” and “God and the Gay Christian”.

The gospel has enormous implications for the body. Paul called our bodies temples of the Holy Spirit (1Co 6:19) and urged us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices for “spiritual” (not opposed to physical) worship (Ro 12:1). Evangelical Protestants have tended to reduce these teachings to two things: working hard to get the job done, and not sinning by consuming drugs & alcohol or engaging in sexual immorality. Very utilitarian. But the NT teachings about the body are much richer than that. The redemption of the body is a core teaching of Christianity and a central message of Easter. It seems to me that our theology of the body has become weak or nonexistent.

I noticed something has been omitted from your diagram and discussion: The body.

This is not a criticism, just an observation. For some strange reason, we (modern western Christians) have gotten so comfortable speaking of the religious dimensions of our life in terms that are completely divorced from our creaturely physicality. As if we could be fully functioning, healthy Christians without any bodies at all. (Except maybe using our bodies as vehicles for “doing.”) Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with this?

Just sayin.

“If you understood (God), it would not be God.” St. Augustine

“God, the eternal Presence, does not permit Himself to be held. Woe to the man so possessed that he thinks he possesses God!” Martin Buber (1878-1965).

So, as you correctly pointed out, my triumvirate descriptive of the Trinity is clearly and vastly inadequate, yet by His grace, we are able to know Him quite clearly and adequately.

The mystery of the Trinity will always be beyond our characterization and our knowing. Yet he can be known to our complete satisfaction and fulfillment.

Brian, I agree that UBF theology has gone off into unhealthy and abusive tangents (including the enforcement, imposition, and [over]emphasis on the doing and the thinking, while neglecting the feeling). Interestingly, this quite fit in with my own natural personality disposition of being what I would refer to myself as a cerebral, “non-PDA” sort of person who simply loves to live (impractically) with my head in the clouds and oftentimes even without my feet touching the ground. That’s why my wife reminds me often to “live out the sermon I just preached on Sun!” That’s why I need her.

Though UBF should be responsible for her faulty theology, yet I will not blame her, but rather see God’s sovereign and mysterious hand in allowing me to encounter such a church–flawed as she was/is–all of my days.

In my observation, and in the ubf community context, one of the first steps is to begin to face the facts and to understand some fundamental human psychology.

For example, we need a healthy dose of understanding Leon Festinger’s 1950’s cognitive dissonance theory. We ubf shepherds rarely cared about people’s beliefs because we knew what Festinger knew: change a person’s behavior and his/her beliefs will be changed.

The problem is that we are human beings. We become less and less comfortable when our beliefs don’t match our behavior, and we can only tolerate so much of the behavior modification. In time, our human nature cannot withstand the contradiction between our perceived world and our real world. We humans can only change our thinking so much until our emotions kick in.

Not only ubf, but all of Christendom would benefit from understanding these things more deeply.

You are correct, ubf is indeed about “doing”. We can see this when we examine what ubf teaches in the heritage. ubf focuses a lot on behavoir modification. However I cannot say that corporately ubf is a “church focused on right doing or Christian doing”. The heritage ideology has to be rooted out and renounced as wrong until everyone is free.

But in an ironic sense, ubf is often about “thinking”. We all spent so many hours sitting on folding chairs doing nothing. I wasted so much time just sitting there in meeting after meeting. This is not “right thinking or Christian thinking”. My time in ubf was a lot of meditating on trying to figure out how the bible justified our ideologies and slogans.