Flesh or Spirit? Discern the Difference
Clarifying what it means to find much-needed joy through inner healing
As argued in my recent piece entitled How Far Do We Trust Our Feelings? Christians must experience joyful feelings as we follow God. I use “must” in two senses of the word: It’s both a necessary outcome of following God and it’s also the assurance of doing so. Without joy (or less intense joy, called peace) we easily swerve to judgmentalism and hypocrisy. As we’ve learned from neuroscience, our minds function best and are open to hearing the Holy Spirit when deep-seated peace is present, but if it’s not then our thinking gets clogged by negative emotions and there is little connection to the Holy Spirit in that state. If we are feeling nothing, then we’re dead.
This amazing combination of joyful emotion and godly thinking was prophesied in the scripture: “Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed.” (NKJV, Psalm 85:10)
I was at pains to point out this kind of joy has nothing to do with euphoric feelings of “the flesh” which is all about self-gratifying the body or soul. It's not hard to recognize which type of positive feelings are present – whether they’re from the flesh or from the Spirit – because we can check the behavioural fruit. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.…” (Galatians 5:22, 23). “Love is fulfillment of the law” Paul says elsewhere.
Deeply feeling the joy and peace of God, therefore, goes hand in hand with living the godly life. This amazing combination of joyful emotion and godly thinking was prophesied in the scripture: “Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed.” (NKJV, Psalm 85:10)
From the outset of Church history, unfortunately, the grace-filled gospel message of Jesus has been willfully and ignorantly abused. The promised experience of refreshing springs of living water has been distorted to excuse indulgence in selfish passions which has never been more prevalent than today. As often the case, Christians are being influenced by culture – not the other way around!
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. As far back as the Me Generation of the 1970s – after the era of psychedelia and counterculture of the 1960s – our disillusioned youth rejoined the holy grail of the American Dream and notched up the quest for personal gratification to a higher level, advancing a plethora of innovative comfort-products in pursuit of “the good life”. Western society, regrettably, is now experiencing the threat of environmental disasters, the onset of deadly pandemics and the specter of nuclear war. Fresh waves of anxiety and emotional trauma have skyrocketed, compounded by social media that knowingly promotes intense incivility at levels that historically was reserved for one’s distant enemies.
Christians are suffering an epidemic of mental health issues as much as everyone else in mainstream culture and many have turned to various modes of therapy for means of coping. Currently trending is an adaptation of self-therapy that promotes reckless escapism with an unapologetically anti-social bent. Spreading like wildfire through social media and self-help websites, it’s all about abandoning traditional mores in pursuit of whatever feels good. Without a transcendent moral code, people will justify and slavishly appease their need for joy, ease the pain of trauma and find their inner selves – even if transitory.
This disturbing trend was recently the focus of an article in a recent New York Times article by Tara Isabella Burton. (See www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/opinion/mental-health-therapy-instagram.html.) She explained that some people feel at liberty to cancel important social events, abandon publicly polite responses to the politically unlovely, and de-prioritize disciplined habits of healthy living. On the front burner are petty indulgences that scream for attention and subscriptions to unsavory acts of personalized pampering. We’ve gone from healthy lifestyle habits to a toxic form of individualism, packaged as a moral prerogative.
As Burton notes in her article, secular therapists are holding the line:
“Plenty of therapists note that the mandates of therapy culture aren’t representative of actual, clinical therapy. It’s important for clinicians to help patients differentiate between how they’re experiencing something and “if that experience is actually being triggered by their own past trauma,” said Traci Bank Cohen, a Los Angeles-based psychologist. She draws a distinction between validating a patient’s feelings — making the person feel listened to with compassion and care — and affirming a false reality.”
We expect, of course, not to find Christian therapists affirming such a wrong-headed “toxic form of individualism” camouflaged in a hedonistic theology such as “since God loves you, well, why would He stand in the way of whatever your little heart desires?” We all face the daily grind with varying success in the ebb and flow of daily battles, and sometimes the self-pity leads to excusing our indulgences. But Christians should know better: obeying the whims of the moment is not the biblical gospel of self-discipline that leads to the good and abundant life.
We need to attend to our emotional wounds with increasing urgency and get the truth we need to hear into our hearts that beat with the emotions of love, joy and peace.
The statistics of Christians not coping with the current malaise, in spite of the church’s best efforts, are too dire to ignore. One in five adults struggle with mental illness, and 1/3 of students at religious schools say they struggle with depression according to recent reports by The Better Samaritan of Christianity Today. The wonderful sermons, soaking evenings and genuine fellowship isn’t working for everyone. We need to attend to our emotional wounds with increasing urgency and get the truth we need to hear into our hearts that beat with the emotions of love, joy and peace.
Christian inner healing therapists do not accept personal narratives and truths as presented by our clients. We choose to listen, have empathy, and then go probing for the Truth – and the Holy Spirit faithfully reveals the needed truth our hearts need to hear. We don’t require revelation to come loaded in AR-15s in the misguided attempt to exterminate error. We don’t need to quote scriptures to further traumatize people with genuine emotional struggles and pain. We believe the Holy Spirit is gentle as a dove; Jesus is gracious as a gentleman.
At this seemingly dark hour, there is an urgent need for inner healing more than ever. We need joy for our brains and peace in our hearts to live out the gospel, not just cognitive awareness of a Biblical worldview. The challenge is to reach the many seasoned Christians who don’t recognize the signs that show they’re suffering from emotional trauma – and struggling needlessly with without the joy of the Lord. This results in poor character development, low levels of spiritual transformation and poor relationship and leadership skills. This has persisted for decades even in Christians communities that have prided themselves on Biblical teaching. If not, many may lose their way, and fall headlong into the abyss of self-centered, narcissistic sociopaths as we are increasingly observing in the world today.