The question of the week in Elevate class was whether we were thinkers or feelers. I am a thinker. Apparently thinkers tend to try to make God logical or explainable. To be a Christian is to be a mystic, our text claimed. You can't be a 100% thinker and accept Christ because you can't understand God enough to simply accept Him out of logical knowledge. This is probably true. I do think there is a real danger at both ends of this spectrum, though. If you think everything can be scientifically explained then you will never have enough answers and if you think that all truth is a mystery your doctrines will probably veer from truth quickly.
There is one major reason that I am not a feeler. I hate to be manipulated, especially by emotional means, so I would rather know whether something is true before getting all wrapped up in it. It's probably something like the person who has been burned in relationships so many times they are afraid to try any more. I am completely emotionally cold in any situation where I think my emotions might be manipulated.
At the beginning of class we had a perfect illustration of going too far in feelings without much thought. An individual from the church came into class to explain that we should not be shopping at Target because they are not allowing the Salvation Army to solicit for donations on the store premises. This is true, but not the entire story. Target has actually had this policy for all groups besides the Salvation Army for a while, but decided recently that if the policy were to stay in place it should apply to the Salvation Army as well. This is understandable, and it is hardly an assault on Christianity. If Focus on the Family says it's true--but I digress.
Because of situations like this, one of my favorite web sites that I visit very frequently is snopes.com. The purpose of the site is to investigate whether specific urban legends, email forwards, and old wives tales have any truth to them. There is a page that contains the latest updates to the site and I frequent almost daily. I was floored by the numbers of false stories I have heard in a church setting that are detailed in the Glurge Gallery and the page on Religion. At my office you have been "snoped" if something you asserted has been proven untrue. Believe it or not, I am not the most active person to "snope" others in my office.
For all my passion, though, I have to acknowledge that it all pushes me more to the extreme of not allowing myself to be a feeler. It's not wrong to be a thinker, but it can't be healthy not to be a little bit of a feeler too. I believe that this is a conflict in my personality that I will always have to deal with. I'd rather overthink something than be sucked in emotionally to it. I just need to make sure that isn't my undoing.
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9 comments:
I thought about what you wrote here and I feel... :) :)
"If you think everything can be scientifically explained then you will never have enough answers and if you think that all truth is a mystery your doctrines will probably veer from truth quickly."
I so agree with you that there are dangers to both extremes. I had a former pastor that I really enjoyed learning from while I was in high school. By the time I was out of college he had left the ministry because he kept looking and searching for the answers to the point that he know longer knew what to believe.
I also agree that equally so if you never study and see the truth that is provided you are more easily persuaded to believe whatever new thing that is labeled "christian" that comes along.
I think this is the part where I challenge you a little.
Obviously, no one is all feeler or all thinker. And I wasn't sure how to word it: thinker or feeler, gut or head, heart or head.
I think what we were getting at is, How do you generally process information. Some may have that intial instinct, intuition, feeling and then go on to think about it to come up with a conclusion. Others may think about it first and then base their feeling off of information.
This is where I challenge one of your statements. (I am a feeler (i think), must be if I don't know because if I was a thinker than I would have it figured out already.) I too do not like to be manipulated by emotional means, but I don't think its fair to equate the emotional with the feelers. I think emotions play both spectrums equally. I am not generally and emotional type of person, but i do allow true emotions to show when it is proper.
Dust, here is a question for you. What are you afraid of if you show emotions? Is it embarrassment? It is easy to watch someone get emotional and watch them do something silly and make fun of them. That's what I'm afraid of. I can see how it would be easy to teach oneself to show no emotion and play it safe.
I get real bored with thing easily. I do something a couple of times and get it down, so i'll try to test the limits and see what the new challenges are. I think that is why I go with my gut, heart, feelings first because it is more romantic and more dangerous. Sure there are times when I blow it hard, but the risk is fun.
Dust, honestly I have no idea what i just said. Now, I feel that I am a thinker.
It just occured to me that maybe all of this depends on circumstance and for me, if I am in a creative, right brain mode or a logical, left brain mode. I switch back and forth all the time.
"I think what we were getting at is, How do you generally process information. Some may have that intial instinct, intuition, feeling and then go on to think about it to come up with a conclusion."
It may be a little unfair to equate emotion with being a feeler, but not completely. From my perspective a thinker may acknowledge emotion, but would not allow emotion to have an impact on how he or she approaches a decision.
"What are you afraid of if you show emotions? Is it embarrassment?"
Part of it is a concern about being played for a fool. Maybe that is fear of embarressment, but I think it is more than that. If you bang your head in a doorway enough times you eventually learn to duck.
More of it has to do with the fact that there have been times in my life that I felt like a doormat. The last thing I want to do is allow others the ability to control me through emotion.
I think that intuition is an emotional thing, though I could be wrong. I am pretty sure that intuition can be influenced by emotion, but I don't know that. :)
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Of course I am going to approach this from the slant of a "thinker" since I know no other perspective. I don't think I am too far off, though.
"It may be a little unfair to equate emotion with being a feeler, but not completely. From my perspective a thinker may acknowledge emotion, but would not allow emotion to have an impact on how he or she approaches a decision."
True- emotion may play a part for a feeler, but being emotional (the physical manifestation)is attributed to thinkers as well as fellers, if that what you want to call them.
I think people who play sports will understand what I'm talking about. I hear this discussed on sport radio all the time where they talk about not over thinking a play and just going with your gut. It comes to a point where you have practiced and trained all your life and you got to go on your instinct. So to me this issue isn't about emotion or being emotional, but if you are a person who generally relies on their instinct or one who has to know all the facts first. I would guess most people will judge how accurate their instinct based on their record and if their instinct is generally incorrect then they will become more of a thinker.
Girls generally have got that accurate intuition and studies show that most girls process with both their right and left brain equally, where us guys usually have to make a transition to get into that different mode. Since we are generally in our left brain that would make us more of a thinker.
I think both a feeler and a thinker will come to the same conclusion if they fear that someone is trying to control them through emotion. I say that because I am a feeler and I can sense when someone/thing is being manipulative and the thinker may process the logic of the manipulator and find it false. Maybe the whole thought and logic process of a thinker is something that the feeler already knows...like the brain is a calculator and it gives you the answer but you don't see the math and how the one is carried.
What really is your hang up with showing emotions? You are at a point in your life where you won't be cotrolled by it, so what really is going on? Think about it.
You may be right about intuition. I do think that intuition is tied to emotion somehow. I only believe that based upon my own intuition. :)
I don't think my "hangup" is in showing emotions. It is in whether I choose to become emotional about something.
There are things that I am emotional about: Family, the Crucifixion (and everything that goes with it), and other things I feel strongly about. I like to think that my emotion is dictated by my beliefs and not the other way around.
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I am a little confused with how to approach this because I think we are and aren't talking about two different things. Your point that I have interpretted is that you can act from thought or from intuition. As I am contemplating this, I think that "intuition" is probably allowed to encompass more than it should. Let me see if this is true with this question:
Do knee-jerk reactions fall under the heading of a gut response or under intuition?
The things that bother me are when people act without thinking, but they also don't seem to be following any good intuition.
"The things that bother me are when people act without thinking"
This bothers me too!
Knee-jerks seem to be an emotional reaction and is a response that someone chooses to have that is independent of the knowledge. Intuition or that 'gut' feeling is just something that you know and you can't explain how you know at the moment.
When we were in chicago we took this train to a neighborhood that was south of the city. We were looking for a house by frank lloyd wright on a whim. We knew it's approximate location and thought we could walk their from the train. Soon into our walk from the station I had a gut feeling that this wasn't the safest of neighborhoods, so we turned around before we got shot. I am not the kind who gets spooked out because of scenes on TV. I just felt that we should go back.
Over the Rhine has a line:
Intuition, deja vu,
the Holy Ghost haunting you
Is it a gut feeling, intuition, or the Holy Ghost - I don't know?
I think that is right. I do think that a lot of people who respond in a knee-jerk way think they are using intuition or thought.
Wow! That was a lot to catch up on. I think I'm equally feeler and thinker. I get really annoyed when people try to make me boycott things because I feel like they are playing on my emotions. I know there must be more to the story, I like to play the devil's advocate. Like the Target thing- Target is also coming under fire because they won't put Merry Christmas in their ads, but they will put Happy Holidays. This is being described as blatantly anti-Christmas. I think it's okay to realize that there is more than one holiday being celebrated this time of year. ABC news interviewed a lead guy in this Target ban (who also was upset that President Bush used Happy Holidays) and asked if we had a Jewish president if we should still expect them to send out cards stating Merry Christmas. The guy said "Absolutely." Ahhhhh!!! I turned the tv off. So my brain said he was stupid, but my emotions made me scream at the television.
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