why are Bible-fundamentalists so emotional rather than intellectual when it comes to the Bible?

Question

they seem to think that being emotional will reveal the true meanings of the words in the Bible, but in truth being emotional hinders people to really understand anything.

they say, "I FEEL the Holy Spirit is guiding me" yada, yada, yada...

isn't that an example of being emotional?

Answer 1

Those are all signs of brainwashing..

Answer 2

I am a Christian- I believe the Bible to be the word of God- knowledge is a great thing- I am not saying that looking at scripture in an intelligent way is wrong- for study it isn't. However, I will defy anyone that has a personal relationship with God , not to get emotional. What is wrong with having feelings about the love of God for us? I cannot help but be emotional when I think of how a sinner like me, could be loved so much that He hung on the cross so that I could live. I do look at scripture intelligently= however a person is not very intelligent if they can't get emotional as well. God created the mind and the heart.

Answer 3

I would call the statement you cite as being emotional. HOWEVER you cannot simply dismiss the emotional mode of understanding as being "inferior" as the intellectual.

For the record, I am not a Bible-Fundamentalist. I am a Hellenic Polytheist who has studied the Bible in both English and (in the case of the New Testament portion) in Koine Greek while I was growing up as an Orthodox Christian and afterwards from a Pagan perspective. Certain things about the Bible are best understood in the emotional mode as they are designed to appeal to that mode of understanding......

For example, the poetry found in the Psalms or Song of Solomon is designed to evoke emotional responses and as such cannot be fully appreciated strictly on the intellectual level.

Answer 4

i really don't like generalizations... i am fully a Bible-belelieving Christian, and i am in constant pursuit of the true word meanings, their context given the time the various books were written and their deeper/growing meaning as it applies today... i am COMPLETELY open "new" revelations of word meanings, even those that challeng traditional "church-dom"... i think that we are naive to think that we have a full understanding of the Bible... and we are ignorant when we stop seeking for fresh understanding through both meditation on the Scriptures, themselves, as well as through ongoing scholastic research and academic dialogue

if someone believes that they are "hearing" or "feeling" the Holy Spirit, how can they present that without someone getting hung up on whether they actually "hear" or "feel"... when we say "i know because of the Holy Spirit", i am told that i am ignorant and can't know what is not provable... so emotional? maybe... but then how would you suggest we better present this experience?

Answer 5

To be fair, there is an amount of emotion when it comes to communing with the Lord. However, this charismatic movement that has taken hold in our country in the last 10 years leaves alot to be desired. God says to use our head and our intellect and to test everything. Some get so caught up in emotions, they arent actually knowing truth through knowledge of the word, but through emotions which arent dictated by God. I am thinking of some extreme examples like the church that believes that God was giving them gold teeth to replace their missing teeth (why not new white ones) and the ones who advocate this crazy in the spirit stuff (speaking chinese in the spirit, giving birth in the spirit, etc) These obviously dont represent the whole of the charismatic movement, but it is gaining a new type of following.

Answer 6

Because as we have developed the capability to better map out the brain-mind over time, we've discovered there are more connections running from the middle brain (emotional, lesser evolved) to the frontal lobes (reasoning, more highly evolved) than vice-versa. Therefore this would appear to be more of a human thing rather than a bible-thumper thing :). If you don't believe me watch a hardcore skeptic debate sometime. Or politics on the news.

A Human thing.

Answer 7

What you are dealing with in these people is a personality type. There is a kind of personality that relates to their religion better with the fundamentalism and emotional emphasis that you observe. Not everyone is "called" to that because other personalities deal with the religion in other ways.
I got that observation from a Catholic priest when I asked him about the Catholic holy-rollers I was seeing in the parish... a relatively new phenomenon in Catholicism 20 years ago. They were having their own masses and prayer meetings, speaking in tongues, having healing services, etc. all of which is/was fairly foreign to traditional Catholicism.

Answer 8

They feel that being all emotional will make you see it how they do. For example, say you are talking to a bible fundamentalist, and you make a good point, then they might instead of trying to counter your point wih logic, they will get louder and start yelling at you. As if being loud will make people change there minds.

Answer 9

well, because the one can not engage ones intellect while at the same time taking the cultural myths of an ancient desert tribe of nomadic goat herders as literal fact.

feelings is all they have and they don't dare stop to examine how and from where these feeling come. that would spoil their mysticism and crash their FEELINGS of being the special receivers of The Truth. (and people with that much ego to protect and project are bound to be excitable.)

Answer 10

Because the claims of the bible don't hold up to intellectual scrutiny. So people who promote those claims must do so by trying to appeal to emotionalism. Usually fear.

Answer 11

I believe its your opinion. We believe that the Word of God is alive and still being spoken to us. We take it on a personal level, we don't need esoteric experiences to understand it.

The Bible is not just informative and declarative but it is God speaking to us and a lot times imperative.