feel: the power of listening to your heart
Matthew Elliott
Tyndale House Publishers (March 5, 2008)
288 pages
ISBN-10: 141431664X

I’ll admit it, I put off reading feel (official website here) until the plane journey back from Scotland. The puke orange cover turned me off, and I’m not a big fan of lowercase book titles. Clearly, the author and publishers didn’t exactly have me in mind as a target audience–or the marketing department made a huge mistake–as this review will explain.

With the context of a more conservative American protestantism in mind, Elliott argues that Christians have too long suppressed their emotions in favor of a too intellectualized faith. Instead, Elliott writes, we should reclaim Biblical principles and listen to our hearts–embracing, not stifling our emotions.

To that I say, “sure.” As one who doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve and who understands that this trait is surely largely influenced by my culture and religious disposition, Elliott’s basic thesis challenged me in positive ways. But that’s about it. After reading feel I wasn’t pushed to a new place in my faith or life, just every so gently piqued to reconsider questions I ask myself regularly.

Elliott does deserve great credit on one account, however, for he wrote his PhD dissertation on the role of emotions in the New Testament. Elliott surely knows scads about emotions, the history of biblical interpretation, and where the two converge. He could have easily written to too high a level, scaring off the average reader. Elliott should be commended for taking the advice of his friend Stan who told him to “Throw your PhD in a safe, lock it, and write the thing out of your head.” (If I was in an especially critical mood, I’d say he could have used more clearly academic examples throughout rather than the folksy ones he chooses instead, but I’ll be nice–it’s a fine balance.  I mean, Calvin’s definition of faith is so throughly about feelings, and Calvin’s seal was a flaming heart!)

Surely, Elliott is correct in his assessment of some American religious traditions and their inappropriate squelching of emotions. Something happened in our history and we’ve made faith into a head trip, without enough heart and hands involvement. Much of American Christianity is all about being saved by making an intellectual discussion rather than loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. So I appreciate Elliott’s intent. That said, I haven’t experienced sermons, as Elliott has, that preach specifically against emotions. In fact, my Columbia Seminary experience and Presbyterian ordination process, if anything, seeks to emphasize the role of emotions in one’s life. Seminary these days is all about discerning how one truly feels, verbalizing and working through the feelings, and reflecting on how these feelings affect your relationship with others.

So the book didn’t really do too much for me, though I was totally put off by some statements. For example, Elliott discusses how he has dealt with a recent bout with cancer. In a section on “keeping” emotions, he tries to argue for living in one’s emotions rather than writing them off–I’m all for that, totally. But then in the context of cancer, he discussed how the disease is “a test” for him and how he “should not waste his cancer” and therefore must believe it is a gift not a curse, and must use it as a means to witness to the truth and glory of Christ, and by his cancer learn never treat sin as casually as before [these are adapted from a list of John Piper]. I know dealing with cancer is crazy-hard and is best done in many difference ways, but Elliott’s assumptions that it is a test from God make me want to scream. That might be helpful for him, but I don’t think it’s a positive way forward for most folks, especially those in my future congregations. There’s another few examples like this–where Elliott’s much more conservative understanding of God’s actions in the world really get my hackles.

More helpful to me would have been some more practical examples of how one could feel more. I felt the book skimmed the surface for 288 long pages.  It was a nice skim, I get Elliott’s concept, I even agree with his thesis, but I don’t quite recommend the book.