Smiley Face
“Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things;” Deuteronomy 28:47 NASB
Glad heart – “The first and most common cause of suffering is sadness. Nothing invokes such severe judgments as one’s complaints and dissatisfaction with one’s lot in life. The Torah emphatically cites sadness as the root cause of life’s curses when it says (Deut. 28:47), ‘Because you failed to serve Hashem with happiness and goodness of heart when everything was abundant.’”[1]
Is Rabbi Arush right? Is the root cause of life’s curses sadness? We’ve been taught that the cause of all our suffering is the Fall—Adam’s disobedience. We’ve been taught that the world is broken because of sin and there’s nothing much we can do about it except try our best to improve things where we can. We’ve been taught that salvation is the only cure to this fracture in creation. But maybe we are wrong.
Rabbi Arush effectively argues that unwavering trust in YHVH is the key to a life of contentment. That might sound naïve, but his biblical approach is notable. A life that eschews complaints is a life that finds meaning and purpose in all things. As the author of Ecclesiastes notes, “Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools.” Perhaps we need to take another look at the “Feelings Wheel,” and notice that “sad” is one of the basic disruptive emotions. It is the root of guilty, ashamed, depressed, lonely, bored and tired—and all their manifestations. Certainly sadness is behind so much of our discontentment, perhaps even our self-possessed efforts to change our moods—and the subsequent sins that are precipitated by those efforts. Being sad requires some serious investigation and restoration. Notice the connections.
How does unwavering trust correct this all-too-common experience? Let’s start with those outer emotions. If I believe that God actually knows the deepest longings of my heart, and He is anxious to satisfy them despite my disobedience, then when I feel remorse, I am reminded that He is working through my emotions to achieve His purpose in me. Remorse is replaced by anticipation. What is God going to do next? How will I respond to His engineering? The guilt that remorse initiates becomes a pathway toward greater awareness and appreciation.
But what if I feel stupid or inferior? What then? Both of these emotions lead to shame and depression that are really variations of sadness. Both demand that I think of myself as less than the person I wish to be or the person God created me to be. And in this regard, both emotions are idolatrous for they imply that God made a mistake, that I’m not good enough as I am for Him to accomplish what we both want. Feeling stupid or inferior presupposes that the divine hand that brought me into this world is not able to fulfill the goal of being God’s representative on earth. My ego evaluation trumps God’s. The answer is found in the sovereignty of the Lord. He will complete the task unless I refuse to let Him. But what I really want is to feel adequate and worthwhile, and I am the only one standing in my way.
Isolated? Of course! Sadness pulls me into myself and away from others. Sadness in that face in the mirror reminding me that no one really loves me. And the proof, of course, is that I don’t love me. These feelings of isolation sap my energy. I become apathetic about life and just want to sleep, to escape into dreams whether awake or unconscious. Loneliness, boredom and emotional and physical exhaustion soon arrive.
Perhaps this is why the biblical view of human beings is social. If my very existence is a function of the community, then I cannot be alone and be alive. Isolation is a form of spiritual death. The solution is involvement, connection, community. Of course, no one who is slowly dying from this emotional disease will run to find community. That will have to be part of God’s engineering—and the outreach of those who know that reality of the “body.”
All of this suggests that evangelism might be much more a function of emotional safety and connection than of rational arguments and compelling conclusions. Perhaps instead of knocking on doors we should be listening to hearts.
Topical Index: feelings wheel, glad heart, emunah, Deuteronomy 28:47
[1] Rabbi Shalom Arush, The Garden of Emuna, p. 90.
Compelling argument indeed! But being emotionally involved in the life of others (which is the sign of life in ourselves) is impossible unless and until we are already there – already involved, already emotionally connected with God, self and others. You have to have the oxygen mask on your own face first. HOWEVER, I get what I give away! So which is it? I was confused for decades about the order of operations. I tried to give what I didn’t have, first. That did not work. Then I tried to be selfish and ‘make’ my world functional without consideration for those I wasn’t helping very well around me so that I would somehow ‘have’ something to offer. That didn’t work either!
What was missing? Flow. The verse says we get forgiven AS we forgive others. Flow. We love AS we are being loved. Flow again. I am not a love generator; I am not even a love terminal; I am a love vector. To get the love, forgiveness, peace, and all the other fruits of the Spirit of God, I have to become willing to extend the same back to Him, myself, and the world around me. This return (repentance) from isolation is what restores the possibility of love again. This gets me back out of rebellion (which is the attempt to keep myself ‘safe’ when trust is broken) and effects the (re)joining of my will with His. I was created to be a symbiont (mutual will) with heaven, as my Example showed me.
Negative emotions are valuable information about the state of affairs in my particular milieu; I need to assess that info rationally and compassionately and make an adjustment. All negative emotions, I have decided, are trust issues. Trust got broken; I got hurt. Fix the trust (faith) I get better. When you read the word “faith” substitute the word “trust” and see if the verses don’t make more sense. You might could say that all negative emotions are some sort of symptom of the lack of faith.
I have seen too many people think all they have to do is generate a new set of emotions to replace or cover the previous ones; or, even worse, ’embrace’ their negative emotions (whole books have been written about how fear is really your friend: no it isn’t!). That does not work either! Clogs or ruptures in the flow of love are all a product of some fracture of trust at an elemental level, and only when we fix that, do we feel better. If we want to help others, we have to repair the trust issues between them and ourselves, too. Restore the flow. That is when those heavenly fruits become operational THROUGH us. I get it when everything and everyone else around me does, therefore my focus should be on caring about the state of where everyone and everything else around me is, for sin is where I quit realizing that I am a sum total, or reflection, of my connections with all else.
Peace is where the power lines get hooked back up in my neighborhood. A return to the vulnerability that trust (faith) manifests as (think of faith as the power lines between all of creation, and you will begin to see why we need the faith OF God to sustain us) is the repair crew that reconnects the circuit of love from the great Generator. I experience that vulnerability when I lay down my arms of self and quit trying to be my own generator. Repentance (surrender) is where I return to His arms. That puts my plug back in the wall (power web) of life. There’s nothing like connections! Halleluah!
What is the faith of God? His trust. He trusts His creation, and that trust is what holds it in reality.
We need His trust in us, too.
We are called to share His faith in Himself, us, and the rest of His creation, for that faith is what manifests the reality of heaven.
May I add…
Let’s do without expecting a reward so that we are never disappointed and can therefore not form the negative responses…
thank you Skip, this is a very deep and succinct ( word ) circle which we have printed. We will seek and do with Hashem’s help the
‘blue, green and yellow’. And , remind ourselves when we venture into the ‘pink, orange and peach’ that it is not bringing us life.
blessings and Shalom,
Tom and Brenda
It is a basic human tendency to want to blame someone else when one does wrong. I tend to see this insistence of blaming Adam for our suffering as silly. It seems to me to be and enabling excuse so one can continue to wallow when life isn’t all bright and sunny. Blame someone else if you will.
I have been many different people over 50 years and some of that was a selfish person who never did much of anything wrong! It was always someone else that was to blame. Not me! I don’t believe that I was very pleasant to be around 🙂
I have come to realize that all in life is a choice. I have so many more choices than I ever thought were possible!
There is a time for everything including many of the feelings on the feeling wheel. The idea is to choose to move on and get back on the sunny side of life!
The posting today helps me understand how one who would choose to complain all the time (negativity) and be so inwardly focused is not trusting in God for much. I never thought about it this way and it makes sense. Perhaps I can be more helpful to someone who is struggling in this realm now instead of just avoiding such negative behavior. I don’t enjoy being around negativity and tend to avoid it. This gives me something to think on and for that I am thankful 🙂
Dawn, if you will an awaking (your name) and so you have had. Choice….that is the fall…Hashem has given us that (choice) so we may learn how to love Him and so love those around us, being one with Him.
Skip’s right. We should be listening.
If we do, we can hear the thirst of man.
And if we are truly following Yeshua, He tells us, we too
will have “streams of living water flowing from within him.”
Thusly, we are equipped.
Hi Rich,
Recently I’ve been looking through some boxes of pictures and articles I’ve saved. I’m trying to do some organizing of photo albums and misc.things I’ve collected over the years for my sons…I think this is something mother’s often do :-)) Several weeks ago, I came across a poem I had printed out for each of them. The author’s name was on the poem, and it sounded so familiar to me, but, try as I did, I couldn’t recall where I had heard that name. Today, I was finally able to connect the dots…that author was YOU…Rich Pease. You posted this poem back in 2014 and I thought it was awesome and powerful. Today, I still think it is. Thank you!
A GOD WHO RUNS TO US:
I am a confessed wastelander.
Spent far too many years there
Pursuing all the wrong things.
I also confess that while there, I felt pursued.
I had a keen hunch Who my pursuer was.
After years of shameful extremes an foolishness,
My “pursuer” became very front and center in my life.
Because of His faithful lovingkindness mentioned in Ps. 107,
I began making my move of repentance and acceptance.
And then, He made His move!
I’m sure I share this with most of you.
“But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him
And had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck
And kissed him.” Luke 15:20
It’s so true. We have a God who runs to us!
How forever grateful I am.
Thank you again for sharing that. I believe it has touched many people.
Shalom
Jesus said, “Whatever you do for the ‘least of these’ you’ve done to me.” I like what you wrote here but I don’t think anyone “wants” to have those negative feelings. These emotions develop in early childhood. If you’re a child and your “co-creators” call you stupid all the time, you’re going to “believe” that you are stupid. What else would you believe, especially if you don’t have other significant relationships that tell you something different or show you how to get out of this thinking.
There has been so much childhood trauma – molestation, abuse, neglect, abandonment – the list goes on. Most of our church are survivors of this, but the hardest part is learning to “trust” God. With each one, and I’m speaking of my own experience as well, is coming to grips with, “God allowed me to be _________.” It’s a roadblock. Are there idols – absolutely! How do you cope with this kind of trauma – especially if you live in an area where there are many unhealthy relationships and cycles of generational poverty and abuse. I think that going on the journey with God is being “willing” to let Him reveal all these wounds and lies and through a process of truth and safe relationships, uncover what we really believe so we can confess them to each other and be healed.
This takes a community of vulnerable people. My experience has been, many don’t want to open up and be vulnerable. Creating an environment that makes it safe is hard and takes time to develop. In a Greek-oriented culture that loves independence and doing my own thing is fighting an uphill battle until God lets the bottom drop out.
We’ve been practicing this kind of community. Its a beautiful thing when people feel safe to share what’s really going on. I highly recommend it!
Yes awesome post for me – thanks Skip !!
God is ALIVE!
Orphans are sad and act helpless …………..
I am no longer an orphan !!
I also believe we need to renounce being orphaned and claim and cry out Abba Father! Who do we really believe is our Father? With the Spirit help and some friends I finally walked out of my false refuge I had made for myself -of all my childhood & adulthood trauma and sad sufferings. If you go to a funeral for an orphan minded father- you will hear his children share sad-sad-sad orphan narratives of isolation and comparison, rejection, abandonment and those narrative comparisons are old and aren’t even true!!!……………
I just did a study on the word orphan from Ezekiel,John, Romans, Galatians and in the strongs#3490 hebrew the word was yathowm .In the Ancient Hebrew Lexicon orphan and fatherless are the same hebrew word, The definition of yawthowm/yathom is lonely,isolated and BEREAVED . Bereaved means a person in deep sorrow from loss of a loved one, deprived, grievous loss, to leave desolate …………
Some definitions of fatherless is: one not full , to not exist, nothingness, a search or work with no results, lacking or inability to do or have something , a search for a place of unknown origin , to fail ,unprotected
God forgive me I’ve been living life like i am sad and having the faith of an orphan as if my heavenly Father died !!
I love the allegorical book Hinds Feet On High Places – where she exchanges her companions of Suffering and Sorrow for Joy and Peace.
Dr. Robert Plutchik was a
psychologist who developed the psychoevolutionary theory of emotion and in 1980 drew what became know Plutchik’s wheel of emotions. Google it and you will see that He listed 8 basic emotions and showed that the root of sadness was grief. I find that insight profound in that we are sad and grieve when life is lost, when death wins. We all are (or were) dead in our sins and trespasses and we grieve for our own death…our lack (or loss) of eternal life. Only the gift of resurrected eternal life from the touch of one who was dead and now lives can bring life and end our grief. Our union with Yeshua not only gives life, but forever takes away our sins, sorrows, grieves, loathing, rage and terror.
“But what if I feel stupid or inferior? What then? Both of these emotions lead to shame and depression that are really variations of sadness. Both demand that I think of myself as less than the person I wish to be or the person God created me to be. And in this regard, both emotions are idolatrous for they imply that God made a mistake, that I’m not good enough as I am for Him to accomplish what we both want. ”
Wow! So powerful for me today! I’m starting on a new work adventure, and I’ve been feeling very inadequate and inferior, doubting my abilities, even though I fully believe that HaShem has put this opportunity here for this time. But, considering that these feelings are essentially implying that He has made a mistake and that I’m not good enough as I am… talk about a wake up call!
“He will complete the task unless I refuse to let Him. …and I am the only one standing in my way.”
I don’t want to hold Him back!