TRUSTING WHAT WE KNOW [W, 3-31-20]

Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

The time of corona is not a good time to trust how you feel. It is a good time to trust what you know.

When Jennie Edwards Bertrand, the pastor at Hope Church in Bloomington, IL, was trying to explain my credentials for writing about dealing with the corona virus,  she said, “He’s way over on the right end of the vulnerability spectrum.” Meaning that I am a very elderly Elder. [1] That was quite strange. I am rarely identified as being on the right end of any spectrum. [2]

Throughout my career, I was usually consigned to the left end of the line, even though I thought of myself as staunchly conservative. [“Don’t smoke, drink, or chew, or go with girls who do.”]

When Bill and I were appointed to churches in adjoining towns, I was pretty sure my place on the spectrum would be a problem to him. He was on the other end. There was no way we could avoid each other, though. We were in the two largest churches in the District, in the same county, even. At District and Conference events, we approached each other warily, like dogs on the street.

Well, as you would suspect, because that is the way this sort of story is supposed to go, we became good friends. He loved introducing me as “my liberal friend,” as though he were both surprised and pleased that he even had a liberal friend. We talked about a lot of things that he didn’t feel comfortable discussing with his conservative friends.

One day, he said, “What I appreciate about you is that you don’t let your feelings get in the way of your witness. When you don’t feel like God is there, you don’t say that. You trust what you know, not how you feel. We conservatives are big into feelings. ‘He lives within my heart.’ But sometimes my heart is dead and doubtful. That’s when we have to trust not how we feel, but what we know. ‘I know that my redeemer liveth.’”

A time of upheaval, the time of a viral pandemic, is not the best time to trust our feelings. The more upset the times, the less reliable our feelings are. This is the right time to trust what we know, both in science and in religion.

We are often told, “Follow your heart.” But my heart has sometimes led me astray. Jesus did not say anything about feeling the truth.  He said, “You shall know the truth and it will make you free.” [John 8:32]

John Robert McFarland

1] Jennie and I are both Elders, despite our age disparity. “Elder” is the designation for any fully-ordained Methodist clergy person.

2] It reminds me of the time Helen and I were at a Marcus Borg conference. He was doing the ecclesial version of the Catskills resort welcome—How many are from New York? How many from Florida? How many… With Marcus it was—How many are Baptists? How many Methodists? How many Unitarians? There were only a couple of Unitarians, over against the wall. Marcus deadpanned: “Unitarians to my right; how unusual.”