Evangelical Christianity
Sometimes I wonder where the boundary between spirituality and feeling good about yourself lies. When you walk into a room with loud rock music, people dancing and focusing upon feeling good about themselves, what causes the feeling?
Is it that God is touching those in the room?
Or is it that we're doing the things that facilitate us feeling good?
If we have a 'flow' experience - where we lose track of time, where we're focused on something bigger than ourself, where we are overloading our sensory capacity - is that God, or is it really merely a positive emotional experience?
When I have walked into some large Evangelical Churches this year, I've sensed that people in the room have thought that feeling good equated to God supporting their experiences. Maybe they're right... Maybe God is making them or letting them feel good. Yet what if the same experience can be simulated without involving God?
Then again, if people are enjoying the experience, what does it really matter?
If personal enjoyment and popularity are the criteria for establishing whether something has God's blessings, wouldn't you find that sex is the best devotional activity ever? I wonder whether these same Churches would endorse such a line...
But it does matter... as someone who lives with the personal knowledge that spirituality is real, for someone to assert that just "jumping up and down and feeling good" is God is as blasphemous and even idolotrous as saying that God is a tree stump.
posted by Daniel @ 11:01 pm
1 Comments:
The sense of rythmn, especially in church services allow our feeling of greatness to enter our lives. The power of voice is a unique human attribute for we can remember songs which inspire and invoke feelings in us. For our society to boom in greatness and personal happiness, more song and rythmn are important to allow a feeling of greatness and ectasy. I often wonder why young people go to Rave Parties and fill themselves with foreign chemicals, when the Church songs and music you mention cannot replace it? Old hymns invoke in us a feeling of greatness and a sense of compassion we have towards ourselves and to God. So why have old hymns lost their connection to the modern day masses? Why do they not stir the emotion and goodness in people? I guess like everything, music now has to be mass produced in order to receive a response from the masses.
Garry
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