September 2, 2024
What a title! What in heaven’s name can it mean? This article will examine how easily our preoccupation with emotions and feelings can manipulate us. As important as they are, our intellect is where moral decisions must be understood and justified. This is a problem that inflicts all of society and even the Christian Church. My focus will be on how the left, progressives, and weak ‘Christian’ leaders have been compromised and how they are attempting to change (destroy) our nation, the gospel, and culture. Their tactics involve emotional manipulation through lies, deception, and subtle manipulation. The enemies of God have always employed these methods, dating back to the Garden of Eden. Real children of God never use these tactics.
Those whom the Spirit of God leads are children of God.
Real Christians are led, not by their emotions and feelings, but by the Word of God as understood by our intellect. The Holy Ghost uses the truth to guide us and teach us. When we forsake the truth, to appease our lusts, emotions, and feelings, the result is compromise. Compromise is sin. When Jesus said You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free, He did not tell you to feel a certain way and that feeling will set you free.
Intellect, emotions/feelings, and will
God created us with these three faculties: Intellect, Sensibility, and Will. Feelings, emotions, or sensibility are a passive state of mind and not under our direct, immediate control. Feelings and emotions are the effects or results of our thinking. If you want to feel a certain way, you must direct your mind to thinking about a specific person, thing, or situation. For instance, when I choose to think about my wife, feelings of love and affection naturally flood my being. Those feelings are pleasant but are not the direct result of willing. I can’t, by a direct act of my will, feel love or affection for my wife. I can choose to think about how wonderful she is, and those feelings arise naturally because that is the way God made us all.
But none of us can feel by a direct act of our will. For example, none of us can feel compassion by a direct act of our will. Try it. Tell yourself to feel compassion right now, right this very moment. It will not work. However, we can choose to think about a tragic situation we recently heard about, and feelings of compassion will automatically arise in us. This naturally happens to both sinners and saints alike. Most people, including Christians, I suspect, believe that those feelings are virtuous in themselves. But they are not, because they are merely passive. Both the righteous and the unrighteous have the same feelings and same capacity to feel.
If you want to feel anger, who must think of a situation of injustice, and you will, by nature, feel anger. It is impossible to create the feelings of anger by a direct act of your will. What you do with that feeling of rage determines if it is sinful. However, the fact is that feeling compassion or anger is neither immoral nor virtuous. It’s human.
The problem is that our feelings are generally thought of as virtuous in themselves. This is a massive deception and is misleading many people. It is especially disastrous in the Christian world. For example, if two people have strong feelings of love for each other, that alone doesn’t make it right for them to be together and engage in intimate relationships. What if one of them is married to another person? Is that love (feeling) holy, or is it a sinful love? It is sinful. Such couples are ‘feeling their way to damnation’ for that is the result of what they are doing.
“For this cause God gave them up to vile affections (feelings); for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.” Romans 1:26, 27, emphasis added.
In this passage, the message is that the affections (intense feelings of love) of homosexuals and lesbians are vile (disgusting, sinful, highly offensive) in the sight of God. These vile affections (emotions) are a result of rejecting God. This is the wrath of God revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men and women who hold the truth in unrighteousness. They know the truth about the Creator God, but refuse to comply and accept it. God gives them over to vile affections (feelings and emotions) or a vile love, which is seen in homosexuality.
We often hear that gay couples love each other and that makes it good, excellent, and pure. There is no doubt that they have strong feelings of affection and ‘love’ toward each other. No one disputes that. The issue is that God calls these feelings vile affections and sinful. They are feeling their way to damnation unless they repent of this sin.
When Jesus commanded us to love our enemy, He did not mean for us to feel a certain way about them but to act in a certain way toward them. Good feelings may come in time, but the commandment had nothing to do with feelings or emotions. It was all about what Jesus expected us to do. He commanded us to pray for those who mistreat and abuse us and to do good to those who persecute us. He commanded us to love our enemies. That love was not the feelings of affection that most people, including Christians, believe Jesus expects us to have toward them. The feelings of affection may come in time, but they may not come. In any case, we are to love our enemy. We can love our enemy. It is a choice, often a difficult one.
Why is this understanding critical?
It is critical to understanding what is righteousness and what is sinfulness. It is essential to understanding why the truth, as revealed by the Holy Ghost, is crucial in discerning how we should respond to deceptive appeals to our emotions and compassion.
Take, for instance, the situation where the daughter of a Christian couple comes to them about the daughter’s decision to marry another woman. How are they to address this? What are they supposed to do? If they follow their emotions/feelings, they are very likely to compromise their Christian beliefs. What they have always believed and taught their daughter was that homosexuality was sinful and that there is no such thing as a godly marriage between two people of the same sex. It makes no difference what the Supreme Court has determined. God has not changed His mind. But many parents, when faced with this situation, do change their minds and no longer believe and follow what God commands.
They love their daughter, and her partner seems to be such a friendly, kind, and nice person. Also, these two women seem to ‘love’ each other very much, and they do not want their daughter to be unhappy. Love is love. These two people love each other deeply. How could God be against their intense love and affection for each other? Romans chapter one must mean something else. It can’t be interpreted by what it clearly states.
This type of situation happens all too frequently. What does God expect from the parents of gay children? In this story of a gay daughter wanting to marry another woman, if they truly love their daughter, how will they support her? The world, and even some ‘Christians’, will tell them that if they love their daughter, they will embrace her lesbianism and her desire to marry another woman. If they don’t support her in this decision, the world, and even some ‘Christians,’ will claim that they hate their daughter or that their parental love is weak or perverted. The daughter may also think that they hate her, if the parents don’t embrace her plans and her lifestyle. What is a godly parent to do?
If the parents’ emotions/feelings control their thinking and decisions, they will compromise the truth of the Word of God. However, if the parents’ faith and supreme loyalty are in the Word of God, the truth of God controls their thinking and decisions. Consequently, they will not embrace this wicked decision their daughter is making. They will not attend the wedding, nor offer their home as a refuge for the newlyweds. This is what the Bible calls love and the world calls hate.
There are evil forces within the evangelical church that are attempting to convert these evangelical churches to gay affirming congregations by emotional manipulation with stories like the one I just told. It also includes the very real attempt to reinterpret the well-known ‘clobber passages’ in the Bible. These passages, gays call clobber passages because they are so clear about how evil the sin of homosexuality is to God. For example, let us consider 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. That passage states that no unrighteous person, including the idolater, adulterer, thief, coveter, or homosexual, will inherit the kingdom of God. There is no such thing as a practicing gay Christian, an adulterous Christian, a murderous Christian, or an idolatrous Christian.
The enemies of truth have novel misinterpretations of all these very direct and clear ‘clobber’ passages to explain away what the Word of God teaches. All of these new interpretations are lies meant to deceive. There are lots of these false teachers out there who are infiltrating evangelical churches. Their goal is to get them to reject Biblical authority and compromise the truth, sin against God, and become gay affirming.
This is where the title of this article arose, “Feeling your way to damnation.” If the parents, in the story I just alluded to, cave in to their feelings of affection for their daughter, they pave the way for their daughter’s eventual damnation by God. They also put their own eternal destinies at risk. If they hold fast to the truth, despite their feelings of great affection for their daughter, they may eventually save their daughter’s soul. Only the truth will set them and their daughter free. Their feelings of affection for their daughter will not set her free but may send her to hell. It may send them to hell as well, for they are causing one of these little ones to stumble. If they, as parents, affirm their daughter’s sin, they are also sinning because ‘what you do through others, you do yourself. ’
Of all the issues that I might have used to illustrate this problem of letting our feelings and emotions control our wills, why did I choose homosexuality and gay marriage? Of the many issues facing Christianity, sexual immorality and sexual perversion are the most critical. Yes, it has political overtones, but more importantly, it is a matter of eternal life or eternal death.
Shepherds for Sale
Author, wife, and mother, Megan Basham, wrote a book entitled, “Shepherds for Sale-How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda.” Her book highlights some of the many ways the well-funded progressives are attempting to co-opt the Evangelical movement. They have already ‘bought and paid for’ the mainline liberal churches in America. And the last holdout to their godless agenda is the Evangelical church. She describes how some prominent figures in Evangelical Christianity (Big Eva) have been bought and paid for. She looks at the leftist issues of: Climate Change, Illegal Immigration, the Pro-choice and pro-life movement, Christian media, Covid-19, Critical Race Theory, the MeToo movement, and the issues surrounding the LGBTQ group. Progressive ideology is being adopted by some big names in the evangelical movement. All of these issues are very important, but the infiltration of the gay affirming movement into Evangelical Christianity is the most serious and most effective, in my opinion.
Final Authority
The Roman Catholics have the Pope and Church tradition. And the Evangelical Churches have the mega pastors and Christian Ministry leaders. In both cases, the head of the church is a man, not the Holy Spirit, nor the Word of God. This must change and God alone must sit on the throne of our hearts, minds, and emotions.
What is a Christian?
For many decades, the compromise of Evangelical Christianity has been going forward. Even our evangelical churches are likely filled with unsaved “Christians”. How did that happen? What it means to be a Christian has been compromised. It now means very little most of the time. Christianity has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. Believe Jesus died for your sins, raise your hand in church, confess you are a sinner, and you are going to heaven no matter how you live.
Salvation has also been reduced to what a person knows, an intellectual enlightenment of sorts. If you know and believe a couple of key facts, you are saved irrespective of how you live subsequently. Then there is the other group who have reduced Christianity down to emotions and how they feel. Do you feel love for God and others? Again, if you feel love irrespective of how you live, you are saved, is what they are told. In both cases, a person can possess specific knowledge or experience certain emotions and still be on their way to damnation, rather than paradise. They are knowing and feeling their way to damnation. Until there is a fundamental change in motive and behavior, there is no authentic Christianity.
Many Christians attend church and are moved emotionally by the worship music performance and maybe even the message. Often it looks like and sounds like a Christian rock concert. But they are not really changed by the truth. Think of the mega churches that offer a first-class experience in sound, lights, and music but offer no absolute truth and no rebukes regarding sinful practices of those who attend their church. They seldom talk about sin and especially the major sins of baby killing and homosexuality. They rarely address the requirements or fruit of saving faith such as righteousness and holiness. These are clouds without rain and cisterns without water. Flee before it is too late.
At the other end of the institutional church experience lies the formal and liturgical service, characterized by its solemnity, rituals, and formality. In these churches, feelings and emotions are also excited by the pomp of the priests, the ceremonies, and the setting itself. It too is very appealing to the emotions. But, like the rock concert church, the truth is often compromised, and the church member leaves feeling good about themselves, even though they remain unrepentant and unchanged. They are feeling their way to damnation, and they don’t even know it.
Our enemy has perfected the art of emotional manipulation. Whether we listen to music, watch a movie, or hear a sad story, our emotions are constantly being manipulated, and most of us are unaware. This manipulation is most definitely applicable to major media outlets. TV programs, news casts, and commercials are all attempting to brainwash us. Sometimes that happens in small and subtle ways, and other times it is in your face. Praise God for Vid Angel. Without it, most TV and movies would be unwatchable with all the foul language, nudity, sex, and homosexuality. All of that material is meant to break down our moral barriers. It works effectively.
Unfortunately for most of us, life boils down to amusement. For the godly person, life is musing on the truth of God. Scripture tells us to muse or meditate on the truth of God’s word. The world and many evangelical churches offer services that amuse (no thinking, just feelings and emotions). Amusement parks are places we go to entertain ourselves and not think. Many churches are amusement parks with a thin veneer of Christianity.
An Evangelical Pastor becomes gay affirming.
I inadvertently ordered the following book. It must have been a coincidence because this book is providing me with examples of emotional excess and emotional manipulation. Pastor, husband, and father, Ken Wilson, wrote the book titled, “A Letter to my Congregation-An Evangelical pastor’s Path to embracing people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender into the Company of Jesus.” The title says it all.
Ken is inviting all these sinful people to experience the real Jesus, without their repentance, as if that were even possible. Every faithful evangelical pastor invites all people, including gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people, into the company of Jesus by telling them about the requirements of repentance and faith, the only doorway into the company of Jesus.
‘Come as you are, ’ as the hymn goes, but leave a new creation. “For if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17. That conveys the truth that anyone in Christ is not holding on to their sinful practices of the past. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, “and such ‘were’ some of you. Not such ‘are’ some of you.
Ken Wilson’s invitation, ‘come as you are and leave the same way,’ is a direct denial of the passages cited above. That is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is so much false, misleading, and deceptive teaching in his book that I would need to write a book to address it all. What comes immediately to mind is this passage.
“But we have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” 2 Corinthians 4:2
Handling the Word of God deceitfully
My assessment of his book is that it is written in “craftiness,” and his “handling of the word of God is deceitful.” Let me give you a couple of examples. Mr. Wilson believes that the institution of marriage is overemphasized in its importance. You heard that correctly! That is why the issue of gay marriage has been such a problem for Christians. “When we are focused, as the church is today, on defending marriage against perceived attacks, we forget that Jesus did not make the defense of marriage a major plank in his kingdom of God platform.” He goes on to say that Jesus downgraded the importance of marriage compared to the Jewish idea of marriage. (page 157). The author stated that Paul, the apostle, also downplayed the significance of marriage. Is this the blind leading the blind?
He neglects to mention, that I could find, that God is the one who instituted marriage in the very beginning. It is God’s institution. I find it impossible to believe that God downgraded this institution because of man’s unwillingness to live by it. This is much like the argument that homosexuals use to defend homosexuality. They say that Jesus never spoke even one word about the sin of sodomy. Therefore, it must not be a big deal to Jesus. Wrong again. Jesus never said one word about bestiality or incest either. Are we to assume God is okay with any of these abominations? I think not. Jesus came not to destroy the law of Moses but to fulfill it.
Marriage according to God
Marriage, as God intended it, has always been a significant plank in God’s view of His kingdom on earth, even though in the next life we are not married. It is simply not true that marriage was not a significant issue in what Jesus taught. He had a lot to say about marriage, adultery, and lust. Is Pastor Ken letting his emotions control his thinking?
The author, Pastor Ken Wilson, wrote the following, “We’ve heard it said that marriage between a man and a woman is God’s ideal. I don’t think so.” (Page 157). He thinks celibacy and singleness are the ideal because Paul and Jesus never married. Paul stated that it would be best if people didn’t marry. This is his higher calling, not marriage. He neglects to mention that God also commanded Adam and Eve and all of us to be fruitful and multiply on the earth. That is hard to do if everyone is celibate. Is Mr. Wilson expecting us to believe that disobeying God’s command to multiply and fill the world is the ‘higher calling’?
“Marriage is for those who can’t cut it,” according to this Pastor. (Page 158). By inappropriately elevating marriage (think of all the divorces and the excuses we allow for divorce), we have done a disservice to the institution, according to him. We have put too much pressure on marriage. All this nonsense is to convince others that marriage between two people of the same sex is not that big a deal. “Hath God really said that a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?” See Genesis 2:24. His reasoning is as pathetic as it is unbiblical.
“People prefer to believe what people prefer to be true,” said Francis Bacon hundreds of years ago. People tend to believe what they want to be true, rather than what is true. Even Pastors, like Ken Wilson, will manipulate the word of God (handling the word of God deceitfully) so that their interpretation allows them to live the way they want and believe what they prefer to be true.
Should Christians separate over the issue of gay marriage?
I will end with his statement, “Why are we separating over this (gay marriage) as if our very identity in Christ were at stake?” (Page 159). He has no problem believing that you can be a practicing homosexual and Christian at the same time, which is a lie that will cost many people eternal damnation. He doesn’t seem to care about that, only that they can have sex with the person they ‘love’ even if God has said no. And even if God called these vile affections, Romans 1, Mr. Wilson says God didn’t mean that. They are ‘feeling their way to eternal damnation’ with the help of their pastor. How did his thinking get so twisted? The following statements will provide insight into how this happened.
Clobber passages
If someone thinks he has gone soft on the issue of gay affirmation and gay marriage, he doesn’t believe so because he is not hiding from the truth in the hard passages (clobber passages) from the word of God. He has deceived himself. His explanation for his unorthodox shift is as follows. He has come to know and love same-gender couples who are seeking to be faithful to Christ. (Page 161). Really? Same sex couples are seeking to be faithful to Christ? It must be a different Christ because the Jesus Christ of the Bible would tell them to repent of their sins, “go and sin no more”. His strong feelings of affection have altered his perspective, and the truth no longer holds sway in this pastor’s heart.
Add to this the following and you will have a much better understanding of how this pastor became an apostate. When he visits these gay couples in their home, he ‘feels’ the presence of God as much as he does when visiting other non-gay couples. (Page 163). He is “feeling his way to damnation,” and not only he but those he deceives will end up in hell. He has forsaken the plain truth of God’s word for his feelings of what he calls love.
He has considered all the ‘clobber passages’ and has an excuse for not believing the orthodox Christian position for the last 2 thousand years. He doesn’t understand why Christian churches refuse to embrace homosexuality and gay marriage and make all these people feel accepted and loved. Christian rejection causes so much pain and heartache to people that deserve to be treated so much better. That is the real work of God, according to this blind guide. If you follow this man, you will end up in hell.
Phony compassion
Wilson’s phony compassion is sending gay couples to hell because he refuses to tell them that Jesus commands them to repent of all their sins and to believe in Him. They want to believe in Jesus and go to heaven, without repentance of their homosexuality. Imagine the murderer, the thief, the idolater, the rapist, and the adulterer who refuses to repent of their sins but still expects to go to heaven. They will accept Jesus, if He changes His mind about their sins. But they refuse to change their minds about their sins, and they refuse to repent of their sins. Sick stuff indeed. If that makes sense to you, then I wonder if there’s hope for you. Feeling our way to damnation is a very real and present danger.
The real gospel
The true gospel is summarized for us in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Paul tells us that the unrighteous, including professing Christians, will not inherit the kingdom of God. Anyone who practices the sins of adultery, theft, fornication, murder, idolatry, covetousness, homosexuality, and so on should not expect to go to heaven. Paul goes on to say that such were some of you, but now you are washed clean and no longer walk in any of these sins. Praise God.
Feeling one’s way toward damnation is a very real concern. Our culture and most churches believe that feelings and emotions are the very definition of virtue. These are their laws of morality, not the Word of God and not the truth. Until they submit to the truth of God, they will be blown around like weeds in a windstorm. A great evangelist once said, “If you will not think, you cannot be saved.”
