day no. 15,726: the fluctuation of faith and feelings

"One must train the habit of Faith... Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes.

This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods 'where they get off,' you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. 

The first step is to recognise the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and church going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?"
-- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Feelings, moods and emotions change. Faith cannot be rooted in them for the simple reason that nothing can be rooted in them. They are not anchored down. They are not fixed points or consistent coordinates. They cannot be counted upon to be present two minutes from now, how much less to hold the weight of an entire belief system like "til death you do part" together?

At some point, every person needs to tell their emotions to "hit the showers." As Lewis points out, if you don't or refuse to, you cannot be a sound Christian... or a sound anything for that matter. You cannot commit to any position because you cannot count on your mood to last.

Most people lose their faith because they can't remember where they left it. They set it down and never picked it up again. But their feelings followed them around, speaking up when tired, or when late for something, or when hungry or lonely or the like.

Faith must be pursued.

Feelings pursue you.

Feelings drift.

Faith anchors. 

Faith takes effort.

Feelings do not.