“Trust Your Feelings, Luke”

Almost anyone in my generation immediately flashes back to Luke Skywalker’s harrowing flight over the surface of the Death Star. He is sweating bullets as he makes his way towards the tiny two-foot target at which he’ll only get one shot. At this most pressing moment, the voice of his dead mentor, Obi Wan, comes into his head: “Trust your feelings, Luke.” Luke has been relying on his equipment, the targeting sights of his X-wing, but now he decides to abandon those precision instruments and take the shot by…his feelings. He looks at the target, makes a judgment as to the right timing, and shoots. Of course, it’s a perfect shot, and he blasts away from the Death Star just in time to escape the powerful explosion.

What an amazing moment! Everyone cheers. We know this is exactly the right thing to do, because it worked! Luke trusted his feelings and achieved amazing success against all odds.

This illustrates the spirit of our age. We have been losing trust in traditional authority structures. All the institutions—higher education, Federal government, State government, mainstream media, etc.—seem to have failed us lately, and everyone has his own barometer and compass. But before we lost trust in those institutions, they successfully bestowed this worldview on the populace: trust your feelings.

According to today’s weltanschauung, our feelings should be our main concern.

How is your marriage? Well, how do you feel about it? Have you lost that loving feeling? Maybe it’s time to trade your current spouse model for a new one.

Are coworkers making you feel bad by telling you you’re not working hard? Are they trying to improve you? You shouldn’t have to put up with that!

Did your friend hurt your feelings? Maybe you need to dump that friend. You don’t want negative feelings hanging around, right?

What’s that? You don’t feel like you are the gender you were born with? Well, you shouldn’t be made to feel bad about that. Let’s get you changed into the gender you feel like you are.

And now you feel like you are a bird and want to fly off the top of the Eiffel Tower?

Political commentator Ben Shapiro often says, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” Indeed.

From a Biblical worldview, we learn it is, in fact, often dangerous to trust our feelings. The heart of this matter has to do with authority: where do we put our trust and who directs our lives?

You ask an atheist, “Is there such a thing as morality?”

He will reply, “Sure there is.”

“Where does morality come from, then?”

When pressed, the atheist usually gives one of two answers. Either morality is created by community standards (that is, we collectively develop a cultural standard of morality), or morality is a self-created concept (that is, we each decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong). Both of these paths boil down to a “trust your feelings” model. We are either trusting our own feelings or trusting the feelings of the bunch. Either way, this is submitting to man-made authority.

Our current culture does not want to hear about an objective standard of morality which exists outside of us, which tells us what is right and wrong and what is beautiful, good, and true. People don’t want to be told there are objective measures to beauty or truth.

A murderer may think a corpse is beautiful. “It’s beautiful to me,” he insists, “and who are you to say otherwise?” Modern “artists” often create objects which the art world is supposed to take seriously and say, “Wow, that is beautiful,” when they are objectively unlovely (often that’s the point). A crucifix submerged in human urine is objectively ugly, gross, crass, and blasphemous, despite the author’s claims to the contrary. Depicting Martin Luther King’s embrace with his wife as bodyless arms intertwined has thrown the nation into a tizzy. The sculptor didn’t intend to make this point, but depicting people without their torsos symbolically eliminates the heart of the human, an unintended illustration of C. S. Lewis’s excellent statement about “men without chests.”

On the other hand, enduring works of art such as van Gough’s “Starry Night,” Waterhouse’s “The Lady of Shallot,” and Monet’s “Japanese Footbridge and the Water Lily Pool, Giverny” are objectively beautiful. They depict their respective subjects in balanced, intriguing, and soul-piercing ways.

How often do we hear, “You have your truth, and I have mine”? Many, especially in the younger generations, believe they can own their own truth and no one has a right to tell them otherwise. Sorry—that’s not true, and I’m here to tell you otherwise.

Allowing our feelings to rule identifies us with unreasoning animals, as we react according to instinct and not according to objective standards of morality. Though we have different skin pigmentations, we all belong to the same race—the human race—and we all have one Father and Creator of us all. He created our feelings, and He instructs us on how to use and control them. He created gender, and He, in fact, assigns gender. He gave us no liberty (or ability) to change gender or to change the gendered roles He has assigned to men and women. He tells His creation how to operate. The majority’s rebellion against His dictates does not change the reality of God authority.

If this truth makes you feel bad, the reality that you feel bad does not change the reality that God exists and is who He is. Many wandering souls seem to say, “I don’t believe in God…and I also hate Him.” Because they don’t like God, they claim He doesn’t exist. If people could murder God, they would have done so by now. But God still sits on His throne commanding His will to be done.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then He will speak to them in His wrath, and terrify them in His fury, saying, “As for Me, I have set My King on Zion, My holy hill.”

Psalm 2.1–6

Sadly, those who reject their present reality will be blindsided with reality later. The adulterous woman wipes her mouth and says, “I have done no wrong,” but hiding the evidence doesn’t erase the crime.

The only sensible (wise) path on earth is God’s way through Christ Jesus. He established the Kingdom of His Son (Col. 1.13–14), into which he transfers those who trust in Him. Christ sits at the right hand of His Father, ruling now in a present kingdom. Our feelings don’t change the truth. We must subject our feelings to the Lord Jesus, as all things must be subjected to Him. Amazingly, when we subject our feelings to Him, we find the greatest feelings of all—peace and joy—in the process, because the reality is that God loves His children.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

Proverbs 3.5–8