Facts vs. Feelings

If you notice the trends of modern culture, you might have noted that a lot of decisions that people make and reactions that they have are emotionally driven. If you have ever thought, “That person should have stopped to think first,” you are not alone. People from all walks of life have noticed that ours is a society that seems to be more emotional rather than rational.

Consider, for example, an article from The Guardian—no paragon of conservative values—entitled “Facts vs. Feelings: How to Keep Our Emotions from Misleading Us.”[i] Or “Feelings are not Facts: A Dangerous Confusion,”[ii] published a few years back on the website of the Huffington Post. A couple times a week, someone will come to me with another online video. The video will be of people acting in such a dramatic fashion that one wonders why screenwriters even try to write fiction. At the root of the actions of such people is a mind ruled by emotion.

If Tim Harford—the author of the above-cited article published last year in The Guardian—is correct in his assertions, the problem of emotions clouding our judgment is a problem that tends to be universal. In fact, Harford even asserts that education exacerbates a problem known to psychology as “motivated reasoning,” “thinking through a topic with the aim, conscious or unconscious, of reaching a particular kind of conclusion.” By the time Harford was done quoting psychologists on the subject of motivated reasoning, I wondered if I could trust any scientific study ever again. To be sure, humanity is subject to emotional decisions.

Does God have anything to say about reasoning based upon emotion instead of fact? I confess that I had wanted to write on this subject for some time, but a suitable text of Scripture evaded me. I considered Solomon’s admonition to “buy the truth and sell it not,”[iii] but that did not include the definite statement about emotion. Also from Solomon, this observation came closer to hitting the target: “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.”[iv] Still, while there was definite truth there about controlling one’s spirit—assuming the emotions are part of the spirit—it was not exactly what I was looking for regarding the context of a decision-making process. At this point, I had to take a step back and wonder if I was trying to run with an idea that was not specifically emphasized in the Scripture. Maybe you’ve heard the joke: “I’ve got a great sermon (article); now I just need a text to go with it.” I prayed about it and then waited.

Until today. God answered my prayer for a specific text that illustrates everything that I wanted to say. Hear the story of Israel after hearing the report of the twelve spies recently returned from the promised land:

And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness! And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? Were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.[v]

Israel had pinned their hopes on the idea of a new land ever since Moses had come to them to speak for God. The sheer number of miraculous events that the people had witnessed was unprecedented in human history and would not be equaled again until Christ walked the earth. God had visited Egypt with 10 plagues, parted the Red Sea, fed the people with manna and quails, provided water out of a rock, given help in battle against Amalek, and communicated His law from the top of a mountain. Now, as Israel stood one river away from gaining the prize that had sustained them through years of slavery, a majority of the spies brought back an evil report. God had said to look at the land, but the majority report focused more on the people than on the land. The land was God’s blessing; the people were the obstacle.

Outnumbered 5 to 1, Joshua and Caleb struggled to get their ideas across to the people. Assurances that they were well able to overcome the giants did not resonate with Israel. In fact, the people cried and wept that night. In this emotionally overwrought frame of mind, the people began to bat around ideas.

I wish I had died in Egypt.
I wish I had died in the desert.
God brought us here so that we could die and our families be taken captive.
Let’s choose a new leader and go back to Egypt.

Each of these ideas was worse than the one before. Had the people died in Egypt, they never would have known freedom or seen God’s power. Had they died in the desert, they never would have known the richness of blessing that God had prepared for them in the land. God had miraculously preserved their lives from the greatest empire in the world at that time as well as from other lesser enemies. Was it reasonable to assume that He would abandon them now? Egypt was a place where the people were required to work, but not given the proper materials with which to do their job. Their babies were murdered and their backs beaten. True, they had food to eat, but their life was mere existence and very hard.

By contrast, Joshua and Caleb had a different message based upon facts. Here were some that they brought to the discussion:

We are able to prevail.
The land is an exceeding good land.
God will bring us into the land.
The land flows with milk and honey.
There is no reason to fear the people.
Their defense is gone from them.
God is with us.

Without a doubt, the facts that Caleb and Joshua cited were spiritual in their overtones. Given the fact that God had visited Egypt with 10 plagues and had miraculously cared and fought for Israel up to this point, it only stood to reason that He would continue to do so, walls and giants notwithstanding. Joshua and Caleb knew firsthand that God’s promises of the goodness of the land were true beyond anyone’s imagination. If Pharaoh had been powerless against God, surely these Amorites would fare no better. These men brought facts to bear upon the situation.

Sadly, in the end, emotion ruled the day with the children of Israel. Of all the adults present there that day, only Caleb and Joshua lived to actually enter the wonderful land that God had promised them. The rest of them died by various causes during a period of 40 years of wandering in the desert.

But, as John Adams noted many years ago, “Facts are stubborn things.” The same facts that were true when Joshua and Caleb first saw the land were still true 40 years later when Israel finally entered the land of God’s promise. These men could rely on truth and ordered their lives accordingly.

In follow-ups to this article, I will discuss some times when we as human beings are particularly vulnerable to emotional rather than rational decisions. Until then, I would urge you to cling tenaciously to what you know to be true and order your decisions on that basis.

[i] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/sep/10/facts-v-feelings-how-to-stop-emotions-misleading-us, accessed May 6, 2021.

[ii] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/feelings-are-not-facts-a_b_8726718, accessed May 6, 2021.

[iii] Proverbs 23:23.

[iv] Proverbs 25:28.

[v] Numbers 14:1-4.