. . . u
ntil I obey Him” (Rosaria Butterfield’s book, discussed on the previous post). I discuss this idea of the connection between our feelings and our actions in chapter two, “How Our Emotions Work” of my book. It’s very true that the main source of our feelings is our thoughts: “As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 22:7 KJV). But where do the thoughts come from? They seem to arise spontaneously most of the time, don’t they?
Those who say that we are just products of chance and our entire mental processes are therefore chemical reactions would then have to go on and say that our thoughts are simply random.
But that can’t be right. There’s a fascinating discussion of this very question in Plato at the Googleplex, one of the first books I discussed on the book blog page. Plato the philosopher has time-traveled to the present and in the last chapter he visits a neuroscience lab. It’s actually a very funny section. Plato patiently explains to the scientist in charge of the lab that, even if there was the ability to track every single neuron’s firing at the point where Socrates decided that he would choose death rather than exile at his trial in ancient Athens, we would still have discovered nothing about what caused Socrates to make that decision. There have to be something above the actual physical processes, something that Plato calls Mind.
I have been fascinated in my own life as I’ve studied this subject in relation to the source of our emotions to see how much it is indeed possible for me to control my thoughts. I don’t always know the wellspring of my thoughts, but I can direct that spring. One way to do that is to go ahead and choose to do the right thing. As I perform that action, my thoughts and then my feelings change. If you’ve read my book you know how fond I am of kitchen-cleaning examples, and there have been a couple of times just this week when I’ve been so tempted to just leave the mess until morning. One time was just last night when I sat and watched THE GAME (and if you have to ask what game, just remember where I live). So, it was victoriously over at about 9:40, but since I’d started dinner preparations very late for a number of reasons, there had certainly been no cleanup. I had at least put most of the dirty stuff into the sink and run water over it, but the greasy bacon pan was sitting on the stove and the dishwasher had to be unloaded first. And it was nearly bedtime! Somehow, though, I’ve developed this almost physical feeling of being mentally pushed, if that makes any sense. That push was reminding me of how truly unhappy I’d be if I got up to those things still sitting there and how truly happy I’d be if I went ahead and just did it. We needed to leave the house for Gideon’s oncologist appointment at about 8:00 this morning, so there was every chance that I wouldn’t have time to clean things up then. I just went ahead and took the first step: blotting up the grease from the bacon pan with paper towels. And somehow, there I was, unloading the clean items and loading up the dirty ones. Jim came in at some point and said, “Are you going to stay up all night cleaning?” (He’d been installing our new router, so he hadn’t been sitting around. And he does plenty of kitchen cleanup, believe me. So does Gideon, when he’s not feeling horrible.) I got it all done and was indeed extremely happy this morning to see that orderly kitchen. The example itself may be minor, but the principle is not. So Butterworth’s principle holds true no matter what area is under discussion. If our minds are saturated with Scripture, then we know what to do most of the time. We think scriptural thoughts, we follow through with the actions of obedience, and then the feelings follow. We can’t wait around for the feelings to arise before we do the right thing. It just doesn’t work that way!