During my meditation this morning I caught myself musing about an issue that all of us face: How can we be filled with passion yet constrained by Biblical truth. How can we be filled with the Spirit that produces spontaneity in our lives, while not overflowing with rash actions that we attribute to God?
Question:
Do we have to sacrifice one for the other? Is there a balance in abandonment? I say resoundingly, “YES!”
I found my answer by remembering the passion that Jeremiah expresses in the rigid structure of Lamentations. Lamentations is a book that screams emotions. Jerusalem has been destroyed. The people of the Jerusalem had been killed, maimed, abused, and ejected from the city they loved. Throughout this book Jeremiah displays a passion for God and grief for a wayward people that puts this book as the king of the hill when it comes to emotions. However, Jeremiah does not abandon reasoning and quality thinking in the middle of his flash-flood of emotions. Why do I say this?
Consider the following: Lamentations is the most formally written book in the Old Testament. It has five chapters in total and chapters 1, 2, and 4 are divided into twenty-two stanzas. Each stanza begins with successive letters in the Hebrew alphabet, moving through the entire alphabet – an acrostic poem. Chapter 3 has twenty-two stanzas and each stanza has exactly three lines. The three lines in each stanzas starts with the same letter, and each of the stanzas begins with a different letter in the alphabetical order. Chapter 5 is the only chapter that is not an acrostic, but it has twenty-two lines making it fit the pattern of chapters 1-4.
Point:
A person does not have to sacrifice thinking clearly while being strained emotionally. Jeremiah was profoundly moved by the chaos and terror on every side, but sat down and constructed a writing that took tons of thought and the book does not suffer by having the emotion drained out of it in the process.
When someone wants you to excuse them for being passionless in order to be thoughtful, or not being thoughtful since they can’t help it when they get so filled with passion or emotion; remind them of Jeremiah. Plead with them for balance in abandonment!
That’s an interesting question, but the answer of “balance” seems to be premised on the fact that spontaneity would be of the Spirit, while control or restraint would be of the flesh (or at least by natural reason). I think it could just as easily work in the other direction–the flesh motivates us to action and Spirit restrains. I think its not so much a balance between the two (not too much of the Spirit and not too much reason) but all of both. We muster all of our God-given reasoning and wisdom in pursuing the supernatural, Spirit-led call of God. But then, I’m no Jeremiah. 🙂
Eric, thanks for the distinction. I agree. There are times that we fall into the trap of believing that we have to lose one value in order to receive the other. I am reminded of monks who hide away in order to hear the small voice of God, but miss God’s booming voice addressing societal issues because they are hiding away. We must guard ourselves in applying truth that we don’t bind ourselves to a form that will hinder experience and vice versa.
There is some good teaching on Lent at http://www.mhbcmi.org/listen/ the sermon entitled Temptation of Jesus. Just FYI.
Catch ya on the Flip-flop