Feelings or Facts? Why Don’t We Have Both?

The “Why don’t we have both?” Taco Shell ad girl, then and now

Why Don’t We Have Both?

If you’re an Aussie, and you want to feel old, then look at the picture above. It’s the Old El Paso taco shell girl from that famous ad. You may remember the ad I mean, in which various family members were arguing about whether they should use soft or hard taco shells.

The solution comes to the youngest family member, who pipes us, “Why don’t we have both!” Cue cheering, hoisting of young girl into the air by elated family members, and accompanying Mariachi music. Cue a brilliant, “sticky” marketing campaign!

So that’s some twenty years ago. How does that make you feel?

Okay, so that’s a cheeky segue into the topic of feelings versus facts. And it goes without saying that the secular culture of the West champions the former - feelings/emotions - over facts. Older generations tend to ask themselves “What do I think about such and such?”, while younger generations tend to ask “How do I feel about such and such?”

There is certainly a tendency in the modern age - an overriding one - to link one’s personal authenticity with aligning oneself with emotions, and letting them direct decisions and attitudes. Of course this tendency did not spring up overnight, and it is inbuilt into the West’s understanding of itself through several hundred years of philosophy around the nature of the self, and the nature of knowledge.

Untethered Feelings

Now, granted, most people who champion the emotions, and claim that our emotional responses are our true selves, have not been reading Rene Descartes or his friends, but they may well have been singing along with their children to Frozen songs. Or to any Disney or Pixar songs really.

The water we swim in in the modern Western world is the world in which emotions rule and in which expressing them fully is an indicator of your personal liberty. We look within ourselves to find out who we truly are, and then let that out to the world (we call it expressive individualism).

Your authentic self is your untethered self, so don’t allow anyone to contain you or control how you express who you are. Look into your heart, find your true self, and shout that to the world. In this you will find fulfilment.

But, with some irony intended, is that actually true of us? Are we simply emotionally driven people? When we give our emotions the primary place in our identity-formation or our actions, is that our true selves? is that our fulfilment?

And where do facts come into it? Why do some people appear to be more cerebral - more of the mind - while others appear to be more emotional? And why is it that some expressions of church, indeed some denominations, highlight facts, while others highlight feelings?

Perhaps we should go with the Old El Paso girl? Why can’t it be both? After all, don’t we see both in the Bible? Or more to the point, don’t we see both tethered to each other in the Bible? Our problem is not that we are too emotional, nor is it that we are too cerebral. Our problem is that we can struggle to tether feelings and facts together, thereby over-emphasising one at the expense of the other.

Rethering Our Emotions to Facts

It’s worth checking out the podcast that Chris Cippolone, director of Life To The Full, conducted with me, over this tension in the Christian life. Chris explains how, when he ran a Bible Study based on a “feelings” driven book by an emotional mature, but quite intense pastoral leader, one of the more cerebrally-driven attendees started to question whether he himself was even Christian.

Chris explains how, in the ensuing pastoral conversation with this man, he had to show him that the gospel was the basis of his salvation, not his lack of emotively driven response. It would be strange, after all, if the gospel created a psychological bifurcation.

You’ll note too in the video if you watch it, that we use the word “affections”. It’s an older word for the emotions, but the Puritan Christians in the past used it in the context of how their emotional life was to be tethered rightly to the truths they knew about God. Emotions were not the problems, it was simply when they were allowed to float free from truth.

Our modern culture could do with a re-tethering process. The Puritan Christians were well aware of what they would find if they looked deep within their hearts - they would find a heart - in the flesh - that was set against God. But they would also find a heart - in the Spirit- that had been liberated from the storm-tossed emotions that were being battered by Satan and sin.

Think of like this: Psalm 42 is, like many in that Old Testament hymnal - a self-reflection - an internal conversation actually - about the state of the writer’s emotions. “Why are you cast down, oh my soul?” That’s a question we often ask ourselves. What the writer of the Psalm goes on to do, however, is to tether those feelings to the facts about God.

He tells himself to put his hope in God. Not in some ethereal “manifesting”. Not in “the universe”. Not in “karma”. But in the God of historical action who has saved his people. That historical action of salvation is completed in Christ in the New Testament. Which means as God’s people today, it’s perfectly fine to admit where we are emotionally. In fact the Psalm begins with a highly emotive image; a dehydrated deer panting for water in a desert.

For too long older generations - and even now among many men in the West - suppression of emotions is seen as the path forward. Yet that has led to many an addiction or suppressed trauma. We are emotionally dehydrated and we slake our thirsts at the wrong wells.

God wants us to be emotionally fulfilled at best, and emotionally regulated at least, by the quenching waters of the Holy Spirit directing us towards His fruit, which includes self-control, which we take to mean all manners of self-control including internal emotional responses.

The Christian is supremely placed to be emotionally grounded in the facts, and factually built up emotionally. A perfect blend. Or in taco shell terminology, soft and hard.

And when we get that right? Cue cheering crowds and Mariachi music!