Human emotions, as chaotic as they seem, are nevertheless rooted in spiritual reality. I was reading along in my Bible the other day, minding my own business, when I was suddenly struck by how the great themes of existence - the rush of romance, or the bravado of battle, for instance - are weighted with divine significance. Which brings us to a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma: which came first?
Is spiritual reality built like a scaffold around human emotions? Or are human emotions born on the wings of spiritual reality? I believe we know the answer, but it seems we forget."He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart..." (Eccl. 3:11)
"...They should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." (Acts 17:27-28)
I owe a good portion of this idea, if not all of it, to G. K. Chesterton. His journey of faith, as presented in Orthodoxy, is a remarkable account of how a man who is honestly honest with himself will finally, joyfully, recognize and receive the truth he has been stupidly staring at for so long.
"The whole history of my Utopia has the same amusing sadness. I was always rushing out of my architectural study with plans for a new turret only to find it sitting up there in the sunlight, shining, and a thousand years old." -G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Image Books, 2001) pg. 126
Contrary to New Age thought, you do not have the truth inside you. But you do have inside you enough clues to make the truth very near. In "hunt-the-thimble" terms, you are "really hot."
Image courtesy of passageministries.org
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