When I say I am not touchy feely I don’t mean I don’t
have feelings. I love the guts out of my siblings. I am crazy about my wife and
kids; I dream about them, pray for them, smile about them and weep over them. I
have loved every church I have ever served. I will admit that I rarely get
fired up over any athletic competition but I have been known to cry during a
movie. (Field of Dreams gets me every time.) I enjoy children and love to hold
babies. Puppies are adorable. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets give me chills. The
best times of my life are sitting around the table chatting with my family and
friends.
When I say I’m not touchy, feely, I mean I don’t run
my life by my emotions. I have discovered that naking emotional decisions is
generally a really bad idea. Think first. Think again and then spend some time
thinking about it. It seems that every time I watch the news I see people making
emotion decisions with poor results. I’m not just talking about the idiot who
attempts to rob the local quick market armed with a toy gun and gets blown away
for his efforts. Though there always people who get all emotional about it and
cry on television news and want to know how that could happen. Let me tell you;
it happened because he was an idiot. Boohoo, blame it on the gun. Boohoo, blame
it on the system. Boohoo, blame it on the schools. No, blame it on the guy who
did a really stupid thing. Life is dangerous enough without making bad
decisions. Decisions have consequences.
The news hits that someone was shot. We feel bad about
it so we hit the streets in protest of something (Guns, police, the schools,
the government, the family – there is just a huge group of things to choose
from.) or post our unhappiness on Facebook. Do we wait to hear what really
happened, wait for all the facts to come in, wait for the investigation? Oh,
hell no. It makes us feel bad so we fire off in all directions. And the reality
is, whatever the investigation proves, it we don’t agree with it, we won’t believe
it. What’s interesting is that the same scenario happens over and over again
and we never seem to learn from our experiences. Perhaps it is because our collective
attention span is so short we are not aware that the investigation proved our
jumped to conclusion to be incorrect. We’re too busy emotionally responding to
the next thing that strikes us wrong; rushing out to throw a hissy fit over
something we know almost nothing about. We don’t need any facts cause we run on
feelings.
It is how we got to the whole transgendered bathroom
fight we are now having. I have several good hearted friends who are aghast
that some state passed a law requiring men to use the men’s room and women use
the women’s room. As for me, I will never set foot back in that state – unless I
have to or want to. I can’t think of a single adolescent boy who doesn’t feel
that he should be allowed in the girls’ room. My good feeling friends don’t
want anyone to feel left out or unaccepted or looked down on or unloved or
treated poorly. I don’t want to do that to anyone else either. But does feeling
that way mean I can’t draw a conclusion that tells me you are wrong? Loving
someone doesn’t mean I always agree with them or think what they are doing is
right. My understanding of love is just not that shallow.
It seems to have started with the lady who claimed she
was black because she felt black. Really? Well if she FELT BLACK SHE MUST BE
BLACK. Ignore the facts that both of her parents are white and no one found any
black people in her family tree. We know that she is black because we are ruled
by our feelings. Now if I was born a male but feel like a female I must really
be a female – I’m transgendered. Feelings are what life is all about. Feelings
rule. Okay, I can go with this. Today I feel like a 6” 8’ professional
basketball player who has women falling over me. I can easily dunk the
basketball, run the 40 yard dash in just over 4 seconds and have a full head of
hair. I feel it so it must be true. If that sounds stupid to you, you probably
need to rethink the whole transgendered bathroom thing.
How about we go back to an earlier way of thinking. (I
realize that is heresy for many of my readers.) Instead of jumping to
conclusions based on our emotions, I suggest that we mix together some reason,
logic, reality, a whole lot of thought, add just a tiny dab of emotion and then
draw a conclusion.
Bill McConnell is the Interim Minister at
Norwood Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a Church Transformation
consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church
Transformation events. His latest book on church transformation is DEVELOPING A
SIGNIFICANT CHURCH and is available at Westbow Press.
He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect
with him on Facebook @ William T. McConnell or on
Twitter @billmc45053 or visit his Amazon Author Page @ Amazon
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