Feeling

There is often much enthusiasm surrounding a T.V. ministry.  Some of the T.V. ministries make great appeals to the emotions and stir up rousing sentiments but deny the importance of the mind.  Now feelings are not wrong.  Feelings of love, joy, peace, and many other responses are all gifts from God.  He created our capacity to feel, and above all He created us with a capacity to enjoy Him.  One important Christian catechism asks, "What is man's chief end?"  and answers "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever."  So we see that enjoyment of God is one of the central purposes of our creation.  God also created us to enjoy relationships with other creatures and to enjoy the natural world.  The problem with the message of many televangelists is not their appeal to desires or feelings; the problem is that they settle for "mud pies in the slum" rather than "a holiday at the sea."  They, along with their followers, are far too easily pleased.

Even if we do gain perfect health and perfect wealth and achieve the power to accomplish many miracles, we can still lack the key to ultimate satisfaction:  knowing God.  Augustine once said, "Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee," not, "until we find our rest in miracles," or, "in prosperity," or "in great feelings," but in God Himself.  All humans have a spiritual hunger that only God Himself can satisfy.

Even an atheist, Franz Kafka, recognized the importance of satisfying his own spiritual hunger.  In one short story, The Hunger Artist, he summed up his thoughts.  He wanted his other works burned but insisted that this one story be saved.

Please read the following more than once.

In a typically bizarre fashion, Kafka has the hunger artist making his living by professional fasting.  He is the practitioner of a once venerated profession.  Seated on straw in his small barred cage, he is marveled at by throngs of people.  After forty days, his fasts were terminated in triumph.  His manager would make a speech, the band would play, and one of the ladies would lead him staggering in his weakened state out of the cage.  

However, the day arrived when fasting was no longer understood or appreciated by the people.  He lost his manager and had to join a circus.  His cage was placed next to the animals.  He became depressed by the smell, the restlessness of the animals at night, the raw flesh carried past him and the roaring at feeding time.  The people barely glanced at him in their hurry to see the animals.  Even the circus attendants failed to limit his fast by counting the days.  Finally, he was discovered lying in the straw, and in his dying breaths he told his secret:  "I have to fast," he whispered.  "I can't help it.  I couldn't find the food I liked.  If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else."  

Kafka was a writer of parables.  The parable of the hunger artist is not about physical hunger but about spiritual hunger.  Kafka was the hunger artist, and he realized he was starving to death spiritually, but he couldn't find any food he liked.  

There is a hunger within us all that only God can satisfy.  That's what C.S. Lewis meant when he said, "We are halfhearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us."  The meeting of those material desires is not wrong in its proper context.  Yet we can be far too easily pleased.  The followers of these preachers are gorging themselves on junk food.  It is attractive.  It is sweet.  It tastes good.  But it does not satisfy, and it ends up destroying its host.  Many preachers today appeal to our desires for well-being but fail to emphasis (or perhaps fail even to see) the real need.  Christians need the knowledge of a just, holy and merciful God.  We need to know God's character and His attributes.  It is not that we desire too much.  We are not asking for too much when we demand health, wealth, and happiness, but too little!  Some preachers are passionate about things that can only bring partial satisfaction.  They appeal to halfheartedness when infinite joy is offered.  They call us to settle for "mud pies in a slum" because they cannot imagine what is meant by "a holiday at the sea."


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